It's a funny thing, the power of suggestion. How someone or something can suggest it is one thing, only to be something else entirely. Multiply this effect when basing judgement upon prior experience. Now add in to the mix a few hundred people, all thinking or wondering the same thing with all the persuasive and herd like properties that carries, and you have a nice recipe for chaos and pandemonium.
Yesterdays match between Elena Dementieva and Patty Schnyder was one such affair, but crucially, only for those of us participating in the Betfair market. You see, in the real world, there was nothing about this match that suggested anything strange at all.
The match was conducted fairly on all real evidence. It involved the usual amount of closely fought service games, double faults, tension and breaks of serve that you would expect from a match between these two players. Dementieva running out the winner in straight sets 6-3 6-4.
Yet on Betfair, you could have been forgiven for thinking there was another match going on somewhere else between two players of the same names. The odds bore no relation to what was really happening, just as they had in the Davydenko v Arguello match, and in another strange match between Mariya Koryttseva and Tatiana Poutchek (the Davydenko match is under investigation). If you knew what you were looking at, the Betfair market for this match was probably as equally entertaining as the match itself.
Dementieva opened at a very approximate 1.75 - a slight favourite, rightly so, though perhaps not as strong a favourite as she might have been if it wasn't for a lacklustre win against Molik the round previous.
What proceeded to happen next was a real mystery, and still is. A procession of money for Schnyder began early in the match, and continued through the entire match pretty much. Even when Dementieva went a break up in the first set, the extent to which the money had come for Patty meant that Dementieva was now odds against, even though she as ahead! This was still the case after winning the set 6-3, aparently she was 10% less likely to win the match according to the odds, even though she was 1-0 up! Very wrong odds indeed.
Bets of £20,000, £30,000 and £40,000 appeared numerous times backing Patty and laying Elena. It's bets of these sizes which cause chaos in weak 2nd round tennis markets, getting this sort of size of bet matched is not an easy task, and they really did want to get them matched! Offering odds against on a favourite who is winning, will do that to some degree. People like myself will feel unable to pass them up, the rest of the people in the market will be scared into believing the money knows something and that it is fixed. And indeed, in light of the amount of money yesterday, this is what the majority of ordinary punters believed was happening.
Tennis is a nice sport to bet on, but it's equally attractive to those that like to trade odds back and forth. (Traders far out number punters in general on Betfair these days.) Most traders, especially those with lesser experience and knowledge, rely upon the (normally fairly predictable) reactions of others to the scoreline - tennis' scoring structure produces a rough mathematical guide to which the prices should follow to some extent, add in market supply and demand and you can come up with ball park guesses of where the price will move to next.
This is good in a perfect World, but we live in a random World, a World where one person can change the entire face of a market and throw out the expectations of a large group of people. People who are used to reacting to prices, people who had no intention of investing for the long haul, who only have a certain amount of pain they can take from a price not living up to expectations. Nowhere in the rules does it say someone can't come into a market and do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the level of (none)sense it would appear to involve. Reactive traders tend to conveniently forget this.
When one person decided they would have a series of very large bets, at what were crazy odds (in the rest of the markets eyes), chaos very quickly descended upon the market place. The first cry of "Fix" didn't take long to appear on the Betfair forum. Soon after, those that thought the first large bet must have been a mistake were clambering to get out of their bets on Dementieva for fear of a fixed match. Now it wasn't just the big player that wanted on Schnyder, the numbers of traders fearing the worst was increasing and so was Dementieva's price - rapidly.
During the 2nd set, Schnyder's price to win the match got down to below 1.4 - 72% chance of winning, despite being a set down in the match! It seemed the fix was inevitable to most, but the match went on totally unaware of what was happening between a few hundred people on the internet.
When Dementieva broke to lead in the 2nd set, it began to dawn that we'd all been watching something that wasn't happening at all. The bubble quickly broke on the Betfair market and prices quickly snapped towards where they really should have been, Dem winning in the end - not without one or two more moments of market panic.
Questions remain as to what happened. Who was the mystery punter with serious amounts of money to seemingly throw at players? Why did they do this?
Dementieva took an injury time out in her previous match v Molik, did someone know something about the injury and it's seriousness? Did they over estimate the impact it might have?
Is this the same person that bet on the other matches with strange betting patterns and where is all their money coming from? They surely aren't doing very well this week... and if you were a match fixer - wouldn't you throw in some bad looking weeks just to make yourself look genuine enough? Fixers trading amongst themselves?
Few will ever know, but a few things are certain, this match wasn't fixed, and not every match that has strange betting patterns is fixed.
Given this, what do you with that knowledge? Yesterday I took on the money and gambled that the match was not fixed. I took a good bet on Dementieva, everything I look for suggested she was a good bet, and to have such incredible odds on offer, I had to bet an amount I was ok with losing in such a situation.
I didn't believe either Patty or Elena were players that would be interested in fixing matches, though I don't know them personally - they are two high profile players with great histories in the sport, I would be amazed if they would want to threaten their reputations.
If you are the trader type then, get out and leave alone - particularly if you are thinking 'fix', it will play with your mind and make you do things you never would normally. Move onto another match. The most important thing anyone (but particularly traders) can take away from this match is the fact that it only takes one person to change a market. No one has to conform to any pattern of odds or behaviour in a free market place - plan accordingly and beware of the expected!
an excellent post steady. Should be mandatory reading for any journalist who intends to write a piece on match fixing
Posted by: DStyle | October 12, 2007 at 04:30 PM
keep up the good work!
Posted by: teo813 | October 12, 2007 at 04:54 PM