Glad it worked out for us and happy to give the assist. Need to be a little more disciplined, got a little excited.
@wgomel21
Avanesyan +4.5 was one of my leans but got the axe as I was whittling down my card. Of course the other two I cut won as well in Siniakova and Rakhimova.
I live bet the hell out of the Avanesyan match though and did way better than I would've with the game spread. Won a bunch of game by game bets betting on the receiver when the server was going through a rough patch which was a profitable strategy for both players.
And then I made some really long odds bets on Avanesyan that ultimately lost but I profited big time with hedges on Kostyuk. Like during the first set I took Avanesyan 2-0 at +250 and then again at +700. When Kostyuk was broken the third game of the second set I hedged back on her big at +120 to win the set. Then in the final set I took the Avanesyan ML at +650 and +900. I waited and waited for a hedge opportunity on Kostyuk but before the tiebreak I never could get better than -175 and it was mostly higher than that. But Marta came through for me big time with a double fault to open the tiebreak and I hammered her at +160. Would've made more if Avanesyan had won but still came out really really good on the match. Wouldn't have been nearly as good had she not forced that tiebreak though.
Alright enough of these kinds of plays. Mayo up 40- luv loses serve and did not win another point on his serve. Not worth even pizza money, unfortunately we tossed a dollar on this crap. Time to make some money on the Diamond. 
While the Andreeva sisters practiced together growing up, Mirra says it's been years since they've played even a practice set against each other. Asked to contrast their game styles, Andreeva describes herself as more 'Ons Jabeur' and her older sister as 'Iga Swiatek.'
"Now it will be interesting if we will play against each other," Mirra said. "I really don't know who will win.
"I think maybe she will win the first time because she has more experience. But we know each other's game so well. If I will do some drop shots, she will run like 20 seconds before because she knows what I'm doing."
One note about the quote above from Mirra predicting Erika would win the first match is that it was during her breakout tournament last year in Madrid when she had just turned 16 during the tournament. Obviously much has changed with her career's meteoric rise since then.
Here's what I see currently:
Mirra -650 / -5.5 (-110)
Erika +450 / +5.5 (-120)
The sisters seem to be very very close, so much so that they refuse to talk about tennis with each other because they don't want their career and passion for the game to interfere with the sibling bond they have. Also they have decided to split the prize money for the round no matter who wins.
After Mirra won her match this morning, she said this:
"It will be like a nightmare to play against her," she said. "It will be a pretty weird match. She will know what I will do on the court, and I know what she does. I think it's going to be fun for the people who are watching, but really stressful for the both of us."
"We've established a pretty long time ago that we do not want to play sets or matches against each other in the practice because it's not like we're nervous, it's like we're nervous about each other," she said.
"For example, if she does a lot of mistakes or I see she's unhappy or worried, I start to be worried for her, then I cannot play normally. When she sees that some bad stuff happens to me, she cannot play normally, she cannot practice.
"We said we can do normal practices, hitting the ball, moving, doing some crosscourts, but no playing because that would not be good for both of us."
All that being said, the +5.5 games looks really enticing. Erika could quietly be in somewhat of a breakout campaign herself over the past few months. She did lose to the dreadful Tsurenko in qualifying final but I'm pretty certain that was after she was already guaranteed a lucky loser spot. Mirra has mentioned that she likes to kind of wing it on court and make strategic decisions on the fly while her sister meticulously comes up with a gameplan for her opponent. Who better to gameplan against than the person you know better than anyone else in the world? I feel like the familiarity factor greatly benefits the underdog in this situation to keep the match close. And if the match is at risk of getting out of hand perhaps Mirra's love for her sister will cause her to take her foot off the gas a bit so as not to embarrass her too bad.
From everything she's said, Mirra seems pretty stressed out about the match which could affect her play, especially early on. Erika on the other hand has nothing to lose as the big underdog and relatively unknown player to the casual fan. To me the odds seem to be pretty accurate if you're talking about Mirra against a random player at Erika's level but again I think the sister factor keeps it closer than expected.
I'll post the rest of my leans in a bit, maybe with a brief writeup.
Established in 1995,
Hot Forum Topics
