Tennis betting: how to bet on tennis

How tennis betting works

You pick something that will happen in a match, a bookmaker gives you a price, and the price sets how much you get back if you are right. Tennis has no draws, so every match ends with a winner. Here are the six bets you will see most, each with a $10 example.

How to read a tennis price

A price tells you two things: what you get back, and how often the player has to win for that to be fair.

• A minus price is the amount you bet to win $100. At -180 you bet $180 to win $100.
• A plus price is what you win on a $100 bet. At +150 a $100 bet wins $150.
• Decimal and fraction prices say the same thing. Decimal 2.50 means $10 comes back as $25. Fraction 3/2 means you win $3 for every $2 you bet.

“Must win” is how often that bet has to win just to break even. Add it up for both players and you get more than 100: -180 needs 64 and +150 needs 40, which makes 104. That extra 4 is the book’s cut, the small slice it keeps on every match. The average cut across our matches was about 5.6 in 100, which is why it pays to look at the price at two books before you bet.

How often favourites win

The favourite won about 68 matches in every 100. That sounds easy to bet on. It is not, because the price already takes it into account.

Men’s Grand Slam matches are the only best of five on the main tours. Favourites win more of them overall, 75 in 100 against 67, because the better player has more time. But look along each row: at the same price, the gap is only a point or two. The book already builds the extra sets into the price.

By surface

Want more detail? Our ATP favourites study and WTA favourites study go deeper on 2024 to 2026, each with a free CSV.

Straight sets, tiebreaks and total games

Straight sets means the winner did not drop a set: 2-0 in best of three, 3-0 in best of five. A tiebreak is the deciding game played at 6-6 in a set. Both matter for set, handicap and total bets.

The surface rows are best-of-three matches only.

• Serve drives tiebreaks. A big serve is hard to break, so sets run to 6-6 more often. Men’s grass matches had a tiebreak about 47 times in 100. Women’s clay matches had one about 22 times in 100.
• Most matches finish in two. About 65 in 100 best-of-three matches ended 2-0. In men’s best of five, 45 in 100 ended 3-0, 34 in 100 ended 3-1 and 21 in 100 went the full five sets.
• The first set says a lot. The player who won it went on to win the match about 81 times in 100.

How best-of-three matches finished, by the favourite’s price

“Dog” means the underdog. In close matches, when the underdog wins, it wins 2-0 more often than 2-1. Think about that before you bet on a long, tight match.

How often a total landed in best of three

Upsets by surface and top seeds by round

An upset is when the underdog wins. It happens about 32 times in 100, and the surface barely changes that. The size of the tournament changes it far more.

You will often read that grass brings the most upsets. In our matches that held for women, 33 in 100, but men’s grass had the fewest, 30 in 100. All three surfaces sit within a few points. Grand Slams had the fewest upsets, partly because favourites there tend to be bigger favourites and men play best of five. Small 250 level men’s events had the most.

How top seeds do at Grand Slams, round by round

Seeds are set mostly by world ranking, so we used the ten highest ranked players at each Grand Slam, 2021 to 2026, against anyone outside the top ten. See the current ATP rankings and WTA rankings.

• Men: top ten players made the quarter-finals in 119 of 222 tries, about 1 in 2, and won all 24 Grand Slam titles.
• Women: top ten players made the quarter-finals in 83 of 227 tries, about 1 in 3, and won 17 of 24 titles.
• What it means: women’s top players lose more often, and the gap grows in the late rounds. Men’s top ten players kept winning about 8 matches in 10 or better in every round.

Retirements and walkovers: what happens to your bet

A retirement is when a player stops mid-match, usually hurt or sick. It happened in about 3 of every 100 matches (923 of 30,490). What happens to your bet depends on your book, so check its tennis rules before you bet.

Some books mix these, and the rule can differ between men’s and women’s matches, or between betting before the match and live. Books change their rules too, so read your own book’s rules page. This is a general guide, not your book’s rules.

• Handicaps and totals: usually refunded after a retirement, unless the result was already settled. If the score was 7-6, 5-4 when a player stopped, that is 22 games, so Over 21.5 had already won.
• Walkover: a player pulls out before the match starts. The match never began, so bets are nearly always refunded. This happened in about 8 of every 1,000 matches (236 of 30,490).
• Rain delays: most bets stand when play moves to later or to the next day. Some books set a time limit.
• Player pulls out of a tournament: a bet on the tournament winner may be refunded in full, in part, or not at all. It depends on the book.

What our matches show

• Timing matters. 765 of the 923 retirements came after the first set was finished. About 1 in 6 came before that, and a one-set rule would refund those.
• Favourites stop too. In 409 of 913 retirements with a price, the player who stopped was the favourite. That is about 45 in 100.
• The player who stops is usually behind. They trailed in sets 541 times, were level 325 times and led just 57 times. If they stop while leading they still lose the match, and a bet on them only escapes if your book refunds it.

Five checks before you bet

• Surface: has this player done well on this surface lately? Results on grass tell you little about clay.
• Rest and travel: did they play a long match yesterday, or fly in from another continent?
• Best of three or five: more sets means more games, so a total of 22.5 only makes sense for best of three.
• Your book’s rules: know what happens if a player retires, because it happens about 3 times in 100.
• Your budget: pick an amount you can afford to lose before you start, keep your bets small and the same size, and never bet more to win back a loss.

No guide can tell you a bet will win, and most bets over time lose a little to the book’s cut. If you want a place to start, see today’s tennis picks.

Figures checked 1 November 2026, each with a second, separate query. Source: tennis-data.co.uk results and average closing prices (the last price before the match) for ATP and WTA main-tour singles, 6 January 2021 to 25 October 2026. Set, tiebreak and game figures use 29,130 completed matches; price figures use the 29,063 of those with a clear favourite, so counts differ slightly from the table above. Retirement and walkover figures use all 30,490 matches. Prices in the examples are made up to show how each bet works. Book rules are a general summary as of November 2026.