I lost the internet for a few days, the gutters were leaking onto my carport, my carport was leaking into my office, even my refrigerator was leaking. Things can only get better in 2008 so let\u2019s put 2007 to rest by finishing up the Wayback Machine: a look back at last year.<\/b><\/p>\n
Gambling Blows Up<\/b><\/p>\n
Rafael Nadal<\/b> continued to battle injuries. Donald Young<\/b> moved a lot closer to fulfilling his promise. David Nalbandian<\/b> resurrected his career and took it higher than ever before with consecutive Masters titles.<\/p>\n
These were all very important events in 2007 but they were on court events. The biggest news in tennis was off the court. Gambling came out of the shadows and ended up dominating tennis news.<\/p>\n
Gambling on tennis is nothing new but the volume of gambling has increased dramatically and for that we can credit technology. Online gambling has made gambling much more accessible. Unless you live in the United States \u2013 offshore gambling is illegal in the U.S. \u2013 all you have to do is logon to betfair.com and start placing bets on tennis matches.<\/p>\n
Technology cuts both ways. It makes it easier to lay down bets but it also makes it easier to uncover suspicious betting patterns which may indicate match fixing. That\u2019s exactly what happened during a match between Nikolay Davydenko<\/b> and Martin Vassallo-Arguello<\/b> at the Prokom Open in August and everyone, and I mean everyone, has been tripping over themselves to assure us that gambling will not happen at their tournament.<\/p>\n
Australian Open organizers are going crazy to make it clear that they won\u2019t tolerate match fixing. They moved a bookmaker off their premises and banned laptops from the stands. Meanwhile, someone can sign on to betfair.com and fix a match and we might not be able to prove it. An investigator might be able to trace the gambler through an internet address but might not be able to connect a player in the fixed match to the gambler.<\/p>\n
What if the gambler is part of a larger organization? Consider this as a hypothetical example. Tony Soprano<\/b>, head of the fictional Sopranos mafia family, fixes a tennis match. If the ATP were able to track down Soprano\u2019s whereabouts, the FBI might be much more interested in murder and mayhem than a possible fixed tennis match and the ATP would be limited in its investigation.<\/p>\n
Since August my gambling education has gone through the roof. I know how to convert US odds to fractional odds and fractional odds to decimal odds. I know what a suspicious betting pattern looks like and I even broke the story of a possible fixed match between Tatiana Poutchek<\/b> and Mariya Koryttseva<\/b><\/a> in September.<\/p>\n