Kohlschreiber v Balazs

[cheven]

This is a pretty surprising one, thought Kohlschreiber would be the massive favourite in this matchup.
But you can back Kohlschreiber at 1.65. (it's 1.67 at pinny but the website is not working...again!)

What are your thoughts, guys?

Balazs is playing out of his skin?
Kohlschreiber is being cautious before the Olympics?

[HOT WINGS]

Think Kohl will tank it before Olympics? Seems like he might be itching to get there, I would be.....

[EaglesPhan36]

Watch out with the tank theories here. This is a 250 level tournament that means minimal points gained and prize money. If someone like Kohli comes here, I expect him to compete. He could make the 3 grand you get for playing farting into a cup and selling it on ebay. He. May lose @ some point, but IMO that will be because he gets outplayed or has to decide later in the week about scheduling.

[samuelito00]

Olympics start 28th July. If Kohl wins, he has one day left (assuming he loses next round) to get to London.

Kitzbuhel to Innsbruck/Salzburg or Munich takes 2-3 hours, flight to London 2hrs+cab drive. Basically no time to prepare.

no bet for me, gl all

[beefcake]

Whoever shows up late to London,be it Hasse or Kohli,fade them in the first round at London.Personally if I was selected to the Olympics and had to play a QF on Friday in Austria, I would be dammed if I was going to miss a once in a lifetime chance of marching with my countrymen in the Opening Ceremonies over some shit bag 250 tourney.

[Snowball]

how much olympics means to these players is a personal matter
which we don't get good insight to, for the most part, unless
you scour foreign domain websites and translate. in general i think
it means more for doubles.

[benandjerry]

imo either Kohl shows up and in that case most likely its a 2-0 victory, or he doesnt and he obviously loses, see little point betting on Kohl ML, if you decide to back Kohl you might as well take the plus money at -1.5 sets.

[ngates815]

Took Kohl last night at -165....Only to win 150, because I don't like taking a guy with the olympics looming.

Was tempted to throw more on him, but held off...Looked this morning and could of gotten Balazs at +195 at one point, but didn't have enough to make sens hedging to me...Now if I woulda put to win 300 or so, then guarantee myself 100, then I'd probably just do it.

[PharaohUB]

Is Kohly throwing in the towel? 3 double faults first service game haha. I got +258 on Bal

[benandjerry]

3 double faults first service game was it? thats tanking at its finest

[benandjerry]

weird thing is didnt they say Kohl was through in the doubles? why would he tank this match then...

[PharaohUB]

weird thing is didnt they say Kohl was through in the doubles? why would he tank this match then...

I'm not convinced yet that this is a tank job. I hope so though.

[PharaohUB]

Actually his doubles match was scheduled today. This may be a tank job. The rain is helping. If Kohly thinks matches are going to get moved back this week, he definately doesn't want to make it to the next round.

[benandjerry]

but now HE complained about court being too wet and they suspended, why on earth would he want a delay if he was tanking...

[Hangoverblack]

I tell you what. I threw the tanking theory out the window an hour ago when I saw he agreed to play doubles here. He has also shown some resistance on returns first two games. I would look to LIVE BET KOHL if he goes down a set. He wins this match.

[PharaohUB]

It's all a show. They were suspending the match anyway. They suspended the other court at the same time.

[PharaohUB]

He's trying to lose, but make it look like it's the courts fault.

[EaglesPhan36]

LoL. You guys are hilarious. I said it before and believe it. He may well lose, but he's going to get beat by the better player on that given day. He had absolutely nothing to gain by showing up and losing in the 1st round. Like I said, the prize money/points for doing that is so small when you're talking about a guy who has made good coin in this game and could have made more probably doing public appearances in Germany LoL.

[samuelito00]

yeah and do you really see Kohl playing in a 250 event 1 day before the opening ceremonies?
missing opening ceremonies to make $1000 lol on a win

[PharaohUB]

I think you have to take all factors into account. I don't know all the factors. But Kohly looked like he was trying to lose those first 3 games. Live betting has this match from +300 down to even money over one early break of serve. That's a little drastic. The money is suspicious of Kohly throwing in the towel. Kohly can win the next 6 games against this guy if he wanted to. Maybe he got there and the weather is shit and doesn't want to risk injury. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time to play when he signed up, but now he's there he is having second thoughts. Who the hell knows. He's one person. You ever sign up for something and regret it? What happened in that Andreev match yesterday? Weird shit happens in tennis. There is no doubt about that.

Maybe he will come back from rain delay to destroy Balacz. Time will tell. Right now the money thinks there is a 50-50 shot that Kohly is giving this match away.

[Snowball]

well if they call this at least a set is not completed

[samuelito00]

The Historically Weak Fields in Kitzbuhel and Los Angeles

With the Olympics starting in just a few days, it’s no surprise that this week’s two ATP 250 events barely qualify as sideshows. No man inside the top 20 is participating in either one, and journeymen such as Bjorn Phau and Blaz Kavcicare seeded.
In fact, Kitzbuhel and Los Angeles sport two of the weakest fields in recent history, handing out some of the cheapest ranking points ever offered by tour-level events.
To the naked eye, it’s plenty clear that these tournaments don’t measure up to the standard of, say, Halle or Doha. But attaching numbers to those claims is more difficult. You could compare average or median ranking, the cut, the ranking of the lowest seed, or even the ranking of the top seed. However, none of these provide the whole picture.
To quantify field strength using just a number or two, in a way that allows us to compare 28-man 250s to 48, 56, or 64-player 500s, to 128-player slams, let’s turn to a method suggested by Carl Bialik. We’re most concerned with how difficult these tournaments are to win. So, since some player ranked roughly #10 in the world is in the field at almost every event, let’s compare the probability that the #10-ranked player would take the title.
At most grand slam and masters-level tournaments, the #10 player in the world has a 1-3% chance of winning. It’s awfully unlikely, though definitely nonzero. At a lower-level tournament like Atlanta last-week, the #10 player–in this case,John Isner–was the most likely winner, though he had some high-quality competition from Mardy Fish, Kei Nishikori, and eventual winner Andy Roddick. In more extreme cases, like this week’s Los Angeles event, no one inside the top 40 is participating. So if #10 entered, he would be the overwhelming favorite.
The field in Kitzbuhel this week is so weak that, had a hypothetical #10 player entered, he would have a 45% chance of winning the title. That’s the highest we’ve seen on the ATP tour in at least the last four years. The LA draw is stronger in this regard. Thanks in part to the currently underrated Sam Querrey, the hypothetical #10 would have a mere 31% chance of winning. As we’ll see in a moment, though, that doesn’t tell the whole story.
10 events have had sufficiently weak draws to give the #10-ranked player a 30% or better chance of winning, but Kitzbuhel is the worst of all. Los Angeles, while relatively stronger, is the weakest hard court event. In the last year, there have been 42 events flying the ATP 250 banner. By this metric, the average 250 draw would give the #10 player a 23.6% of winning. By comparison, the #10 player has, on average, a 10.4% chance of winning an ATP 500 event. (Hamburg last week was an aberration, clocking in at 22%, higher than half of the 250s.)
Much like next week’s 500-level event in Washington, LA’s Farmers Classic is a direct casualty of the Olympics. As part of the US Open Series, it typically attracts quite a few top hard-courters. Last year’s field included both Fish andJuan Martin Del Potro, and the #10 player would have a had mere 16% chance of winning, on par with the relatively strong 250 fields in Buenos Aires and ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
A slightly different metric exposes the true dearth of quality players in Los Angeles this week. In addition to calculating the probability that the #10 player would win, we can check the probability that the #50 player would win an event. For a draw of any quality, that number is close to zero. For these weaker 250 fields, the additional perspective gives us more nuance. If an event is packed with guys ranked around #100, as LA is, it is easy pickings for someone likeBenoit Paire or Xavier Malisse. If there are plenty of top-70 or top-80 players, the #50 entrant will have a much tougher time.
Measured by the probability of the #50 player winning an event, Los Angeles has the weakest field of any tournament back to 2009. The hypothetical #50 would have an 11.7% chance of winning, better than the chances for the #10 player in Doha, Halle, or Queen’s Club! It’s also the only time I found that #50 would have been than a 10% chance. Unsurprisingly, Kitzbuhel checks in near the top, in third place, with a 6.9% chance of the #50 player winning.
To some extent, the Olympics are to blame. But more generally, it is a reminder than all ranking points aren’t created equal. It’s another flaw in the ranking system: Simply because the ATP awards the same 250 to a wide range of events does not mean that they are equally challenging.
Put another way, the massive gaps between 250s (and, to a lesser extent, 500s) are an opportunity for enterprising players. While some players were resting last week, Juan Monaco picked up the cheapest 500 points on offer all year tojump into the top ten. In Washington, another cheap 500 will go to a player who probably would’ve lost in the first two rounds at the Olympics. There may be more to tennis than ranking points, but there’s certainly more to ranking points than meets the eye.
Below, find more on the rather complicated methodology of this study, along with a table comparing all tournaments of the last 52 weeks.
Calculating the probability that the #10 or #50 player would win a given tournament is a process with many steps. I’ve defined “#10″ as the tenth-best player on the tournament’s surface, measured by jrank, at the time of that tournament.
If that player is already in the draw, I run several thousand simulations of the draw to determine each player’s probability of winning. To avoid the biases inherent in any specific draw, I re-generate the bracket. Thus, the percentages reflect only the strength of the field, not the quirks of who plays who in the first or second round.
If the player is not already in the draw, an extra step is necessary. First, I identify the next-highest ranked player in the draw. (That is, #11, #12, and so on, not #9 or #8.) I replace that player with the “target” #10 player. I then reseed the draw, so that if the #10 player would have been seeded, he is seeded for the simulation. Finally, I run several thousand simulations, once again re-generating the bracket each time.
For #50, repeat the process with the fiftieth-best player on the surface instead of the tenth.
Below, find all of the tournaments from the last 52 weeks, ranked by the probability that the #10 player would have won. Note that clay events dominate the top of the list. In part, that’s simply because the top players, with the occasional exception of David Ferrer, don’t bother with any of those. It’s also because those draws are often full of players who are stronger on hard courts, as is the case in Kitzbuhel this week.

[takzilla]

not sure what they're doing with that tarp actually.

[Hangoverblack]

Is it about to start? Im at work and have no feed, tia.

[samuelito00]

Play cancelled for today.

[samuelito00]

surely KOHL retires

if he doesnt retire.. do you honestly see him trying hard tmrw? lol .. prob finish set and retire

[ngates815]

Due to the rain tennis matches have been postponed, more information after 1900 (20 minutes from now)

[PharaohUB]

Does he gain anything like prize money or anything if he completes the match?

[ngates815]

Does he gain anything like prize money or anything if he completes the match?

I think he has to win today to get prize money and points. Could be wrong.

[ParlayininHTown]

I think he has to win today to get prize money and points. Could be wrong.

Everyone who plays in the first round gets a small prize, but it would be chump change to Kohli. He'd get more for winning, but it still wouldn't be enough to take into consideration as far as gauging motivation.

If Kohli really wants to get to London, he doesn't have to lose a thing. It's called a walkover, people. Kohli can win tomorrow before handing a walkover win to his next opponent. He defends the points from last year by advancing to the next round and still makes it to London in time.

Or Kohli can just retire and not show up at all tomorrow ... or he could go out there and lose on purpose before catching a flight.

At this point, betting on this match seems like too much of a headache. I'd rather bet on one of these crap matches in L.A. or Baku. lol. Best of luck to all who decided (or decide later today) to mess with this one.

[Hangoverblack]

If Kohl doesnt retire today, and plays tomorrow, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn -

He is playing to win.

If that is the case, then the EV odds you can get live on the match are one of the better bets available to a punter on this fine day.

The weather delay actually kills Balazs bettors. Because, either he exits the tourney today (retires less than one set no win for Balazs' bettors) or he decides to not retire today given every opp to bow out quickly and understandibly, and returns tomorrow to give his best effort (no one wants Balazs at that price tomorrow if Kohl is giving 100%).

Aaah the games we play

[PharaohUB]

I just don't understand why he would want to continue in this tournament. I would say maybe he wants a warm up match, but he is going to be changing surfaces. If he doesn't retire, I think anything is up in the air at this point. It makes zero sense for him to continue, so if he does he might throw it since that would also make zero sense at that point. Maybe he is in it for the doubles match with his buddy. Who knows.

[beefcake]

Well I got the Hungary kid at +300.Kohli needs the prep man.Come on out and lose and grab your first class ticket to London.There will be plenty of tail of him to chase in the village.

[Sawyer]

Agreed with beefcake here. No motivation for Kohli. Lets hope he quits the game after losing set-1.

[757sFinest]

So what is Kohl going to do? The Olympics start, what, 36 hours from when he resumes play in the morning. Will he come out, come back and win then bow out or will he lose first set and then have a case of the f#*k it.