Patterns
UPDATE #2: As of 10am on Friday, Tennis.com is still reporting that a couple of Australian News outlets are still suspicious over the betting patterns from the match, but the amount of money bet was only $1.4 million as opposed to the originally reported $7.
UPDATE: As of 4pm EST the quote from below has been removed from the tennis.com news ticker (although it still remains a headline on the main page)…Ill keep updating if anything new happens.
Patterns are a very important part of tennis. For example, Rafael Nadal has formed a certain style of play to continually beat Roger Federer and take over the number one ranking. Another example would be how Novak Djokovic has shown a pattern of quitting in big matches when the chips are down. And still another example would be how Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello gets himself wrapped up into gambling allegation with Russian players. Lest we forget his match against Davydenko in August of 2007, and the melee that followed, here is a link with the story. Fast forward twenty months or so to this year’s Monte Carlo Master’s Event.
According to Tennis.com, the first round match between Arguello and Igor Andreev created suspicious gambling patterns. Here is a direct quote from the Tennis.com Newsticker -
“Tuesday’s first-round match between Igor Andreev and Martin Vassallo Arugello at the Monte Carlo Masters has raised suspicions of potential match-fixing because of unusual betting patterns, writes Charles Happell of crikey.com.au. Andreev the higher-ranked player of the two, won the opening set, but a substantial amount of money was wagered on Vassallo Arguello nonetheless. These betting patterns continued throughout the match, which Vassallo Arguello eventually won in three sets – after Andreev had failed to convert on three match points. Roughly $7 million was be on this match, more than 10 times the amount for a match of this variety.”
While this time the two players a ranked a bit closer (Andreev is 22nd, Arguello is 49 compared with Davydenko’s # 3 ranking vs. Arguello’s 87th at the time of their questioned match), is there a doubt in anyone’s mind that something fishy is going on here? As more develops I will keep my devoted reader posted. I mean ‘readerS.’
Oh, one more thing…Roger Federer will not make the Monte Carlo Finals for the fourth straight year, he fell today to fellow countryman Stanislas Wawrinka in straight sets.