Pinnacle

What Are Blackjack Side Bets?Side bets are bonus bets placed on a round of Blackjack on outcomes beyond whether the player or dealer will win. The majority are staked at the start of the round before the cards have been dealt alongside regular bets and many have fixed odds that usually offer greater payouts than the simple 2:1 rewarded for beating the dealer.Play Blackjack at Pinnacle Casino

Play Blackjack

Side bets provide an exciting way to make Blackjack games more interesting whilst offering you a greater number of ways to win. So what are side bets, what side bets are available and are they worth it? Read on to find out.

Blackjack Side Bets Explained

Finding a niche market in betting can often lead to value. This can be anything from specialist knowledge of handball betting to extensive experience in betting on Japanese baseball. Providing you know more than the bookmaker, there is money to be made.  &lt;Bet on soccer at Pinnacle&gt; They also make for interesting and potentially profitable bets, as they can be a little more reliable

Soccer odds

A corner is one of the most inexplicably exciting events in soccer. Only around three per cent of them lead to a goal, but you can guarantee that the attacking team’s fans will roar their approval and encouragement if their team are awarded one. Read on to find out how you can benefit from betting on corners.

Corners betting in soccer: Value in a lesser-known market

Poisson Distribution is a mathematical concept for translating mean averages into a probability for variable outcomes across a distribution. For example, if we know Manchester City average 1.7 goals per game, so by putting the Poisson Distribution formula tells us that this average equates to Manchester City&nbsp;scoring 0 goals 18.3% of the time, 1 goal 31% of the time, 2 goals 26.4% of the time and 3 goals 15% of the time.

Bet on soccer at Pinnacle

Poisson Distribution: Predict the score in soccer betting

What is Expected Value?The amount a player can expect to win or lose if they were to place a bet on the same odds many times over, calculated through a simple equation multiplying your probability of winning with the amount you could win per bet, and subtracting the probability of losing multiplied by the amount lost per bet.A simple example of Expected Value (EV) put into practice -&nbsp;if you were

Bet Now

The Expected Value of a bet shows us how much we can expect to win (on average) per bet, and as such is the most valuable calculation a bettor can make when comparing bookmakers' odds. How can you calculate Expected Value in sports betting in order to predict your winnings? Read on to find out.

How to Calculate Expected Value

<p>Jonathon studied Finance and Economics at the University of Sydney, where he wrote a thesis on EPL betting market efficiency as part of his Finance Honours degree. He has since worked as an Equity Strategist and as a Bookmaker. Jonathon has a particular interest in tennis, cricket, and behavioural biases.</p>

Jonathon Brycki

<p>The first week of the 2020 French Open (and a fair bit since) was full of discussion from both players and commentators about the tennis balls being used. Not since the Jabulani appeared at the 2010 World Cup has a ball captured so much attention. But why at the 2020 French Open?</p>
<p>Well, in 2019 the French Tennis Federation signed a deal with Wilson, whose balls would replace the Babolat balls previously used at Roland-Garros. Nadal has described the new Wilson ball as being slow and heavy, with Dan Evans going even harder, stating that he wouldn’t even give them to his dog.</p>
<p>Is a new or different ball really such a big deal? Not really. Prior to the French Open’s switch from Babolat, each of the Grand Slams had a different ball supplier. The US Open uses a Wilson, the Australian Open has a Dunlop, and Wimbledon a Slazenger. Generally speaking, a faster ball (like a faster court) will suit a big server or a more aggressive player, with a slower ball better suited to more consistent, defensive players.</p>
<div class="articleV2 unordered-list">
<ul>
<li><a style="color: #f50;" id="articleLink" href="/betting-resources/en/tennis/how-to-price-a-tennis-match/nbkjm2n7pjg4dnfj/" target="_blank"><b>Game, set, match: How to price a tennis match</b></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>What all tennis balls have in common is that their condition deteriorates over time, and are replaced throughout a match. This happens initially after the first seven games (and the warmup) and subsequently every nine games.</p>
<p>When conditions are slower, such as on clay, there are more breaks of serve. My hypothesis is that as the balls progress through these nine-game cycles, players’ service hold percentage will decrease. If the commentators are correct, this could be even more pronounced with this new Wilson ball apparently picking up clay and moisture from the surface, causing them to ‘fluff up’ more than usual.</p>
<p>While we don’t have enough data for this years’ French Open alone, I do have point by point data for all Grand Slam matches from 2011 to 2018 that had Hawk-Eye, to test this idea. In total the dataset has over 1,000,000 points played in over 150,000 games.</p>
<p>All games were grouped from 1-9 based on how new the balls were. Group 1 is brand new balls, and Group 9 is the oldest ball, in the last game before they were replaced. I assumed the warmup accounted for two games, so the first game in a match actually falls into Group 3. The second game of a match into Group 4 and so on.</p>
<p></p>
<h3>Raw serve percentage</h3>
<p></p>
<p>The charts below plot the server’s point win percentage across these nine-game ball cycles. The chart on the left is WTA and the right chart is ATP.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article1.png" alt="new-balls-in-article1.png" title width="600" height="230" loading="lazy"></p>
<p>As expected there is a downward trend in service point percentage as the balls age. The effect seems somewhat more consistent and pronounced in the ATP, where the server point percentage is two percentage points lower when the balls are in their last game (9), compared to when they are brand new (1).</p>
<p></p>
<h3>Server hold percentage</h3>
<p></p>
<p>How do these raw serve percentage numbers translate to the game winner? The charts below plot the server’s hold percentage across these nine-game cycles. The left chart is WTA and the right chart is ATP.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article2.png" alt="new-balls-in-article2.png" title width="600" height="220" loading="lazy"></p>
<p>The trend we found in server point percentages appears to translate to the game winner. We can see there is a distinct drop off in server hold percentage as the ball gets older. If odds aren’t incorporating this data, a potentially profitable strategy may be to back holds with newer balls, and back breaks with older balls (provided that the inefficiency is larger than the margin). Next, let’s slice the data to consider each grand slam individually.</p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article3.png" alt="new-balls-in-article3.png" title width="600" height="327" loading="lazy"></p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article4.png" alt="new-balls-in-article4.png" title width="600" height="336" loading="lazy"></p>
<p>This ageing ball effect appears most pronounced at Wimbledon. With new balls at Wimbledon the server holds in 84.6% of games compared to 82.6% when the balls are in their ninth and final game. In WTA matches the drop in server hold percentage with old balls is highest at Wimbledon and the Australian Open. A 2.5 percentage point difference at both tournaments. While the French Open seems less affected by the deterioration in the balls, it will be interesting to update this analysis to see if the new Wilson balls change things for the 2020 tournament.</p>
<p></p>
<h3>Game score betting</h3>
<p></p>
<p>Other popular live tennis betting markets include the game score and whether the game will go to Deuce. Following the same reasoning as above, I would expect that the proportion of games won to love (four points to zero) would decrease as the balls age, and the proportion going to deuce (a game of eight points or more) would increase as the balls get older. What does the data tell us?</p>
<p></p>
<h3>Win to love</h3>
<p></p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article5.png" alt="new-balls-in-article5.png" title width="600" height="221" loading="lazy"></p>
<p></p>
<h3>Game to deuce</h3>
<p></p>
<p><img src="/sites/default/files/media-image/new-balls-in-article6.png" alt="new-balls-in-article6.png" title width="600" height="224" loading="lazy"></p>
<p>The occurrence of winning a game to Love does tend to decrease as the balls age, and the likelihood of a game going to Deuce increases somewhat, as expected. The effect seems more pronounced for winning a game to Love, which drops by around one percentage point in both WTA and ATP matches.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p></p>
<h3>Ageing balls</h3>
<p></p>
<p>The data from eight years of Grand Slams indicates that ageing balls do have an affect on serve and hold percentages. The magnitude is somewhere in the order of 1-2 percentage points for both. While this may seem relatively insignificant, in betting markets that are becoming increasingly efficient, a percent or two will often be the difference between getting your money in behind and having an edge.&nbsp;</p>
<div class="articleV2 unordered-list">
<ul>
<li><a style="color: #f50;" id="articleLink" href="/betting-resources/en/tennis/who-is-the-tennis-betting-goat/3xp2xymwnyeur6aa" target="_blank"><b>Who is the tennis GOAT? A view from the betting markets</b></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>It’s unclear whether bookmaker’s live tennis models incorporate the age of the balls, and even if they don’t, the inefficiency may not be large enough to overcome their margin. In any case, incorporating potentially unique data and insights into your model will drive it in the right direction, and improve the accuracy of your predictions.</p>
<p>The ageing balls effect appears most evident at Wimbledon, where the serve plays a more prevalent role in determining the outcome of each point due to the speed of the surface. It is least apparent at the French Open, though if the players and commentators are to be believed, this may change due to the new balls used in 2020.</p>

New balls please: What impact does the ball have on a tennis match?

This article analyses the impact a ball can have on a tennis match, and whether it can help give you an edge in the betting market.

Article

If you’re betting on tennis, you will likely start with the competitors taking part when analysing the odds. The court surface will of course come into play, as will the general conditions the match is being played in. But how often do you think about the ball? How important is the ball in tennis? Read on to find out.