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The time has come to learn that there is more to the world of sport than football. Neither as spectacle, nor as adrenaline, nor as a way of making the most of what we know about this wonderful sport called tennis.

It's not about gratuitous pride, it's simply the desire to break down some barriers and look in the direction of other sports, we can't stay stuck, stuck only on football.

Let me give you a simple argument for this: at a time when a real World Tennis Championship is taking place in Melbourne, should we be watching Turkmenistan's football matches and betting on the Congo championship? To me it seems very unfair to tennis, but also unprofessional for those who bet like that, I tell you facetiously.

To choose football from a completely unknown championship over top class tennis, for which the information is much more readily available seems to me to be totally wrong.

There are plenty of myths to debunk in this area, the most important being "there is no long-term profit to be made from betting on tennis".

I'll reserve the right to disagree with this, and try to give you some small tips on how to bet and win on tennis betting, based on my experience as a tennis bettor.

1. Playing tennis, you need to know, from the court, the game you are betting on.

Yes, that's what I'd like to start with, it's a neglected aspect when talking about tennis betting.

In order to bet successfully it is very important to know the game you want to bet on, it is very important to practice it, to feel it, to realize, at least a little, how players feel when they are with racket in hand facing an opponent on the other side of the net.

Does this seem irrelevant to you? I will elegantly disagree.

IF you have ever held a tennis racket and know the game, if you know at least a little bit what a player feels on the court, if you know how hard it is to execute a shot that on TV seems like a piece of cake, you can play sports betting much more knowingly.

Because you realise that the player has not positioned himself well on the ball, that he has not bent his knees enough, that the backhand shot does not have enough spin and that is why it stops so many times in the "belly" of the net, that the lateral movement of a very tall player is poor, that a backhand volley is not an easy shot to hit, even if you are near the net, that one or other of the players on the court relies only on the serve and does not have the necessary strokes in their arsenal to give them a "B" option when their serve does not "go in".

And many other aspects of the game itself, but also of the body language of the players at different times of the matches.

No, contrary to appearances, I don't think I've philosophized too much about this aspect.

I put forward a controversial point of view and had to argue it.

Otherwise, anyone who watches tennis thinks they have become a specialist. Both at commenting on tennis (that anyone can do, for free) but also at betting on tennis.

Here it is more unpleasant because it is done for money and can seriously damage the financial, physical and mental health of the unwitting bettor.

I am convinced of the importance of this fact, it is a matter verified over time.

It is similar to what happens in football. If you've never kicked the ball, I don't think you can really "feel" the game and you can't successfully play sports betting on football.

I have heard and even read about betting strategies on tennis according to theoretical algorithms, from people who have never played tennis.

I admit that I denied them from the start because I don't believe in their veracity and their chances of success.

Maybe I was wrong and maybe those strategies based purely on statistics are successful. But I for one wouldn't bet on cricket if I didn't know the rules and what they were all about.

Finally, maybe I am too traditionalist, too conservative, but I have some principles that I don't want to abdicate. For the simple fact that they've proven to be profitable over time.

I don't deny that there might be good tennis bettors among those who have never laid their hands on a racket in their lives. Some exceptions prove the rule...

2. Watch tennis, watch live broadcasts, search for Betwinner apk free download link and study a lot of the games of the tennis players you are betting on.

This is very important. It has happened many times, in my pioneering days, to bet on a player I had watched live and who seemed to be in good form.

Unfortunately, wrongly, I had not seen his opponent playing lately, I only knew about him from dry statistics, such as percentage on the first serve, second serve and how many aces he gave.

Needless to say, most of the time such matches were lost.

That is why I advise you to bet tennis on a match involving two players you have seen playing recently, very recently, not a few months ago.

3. Understand and use tennis betting odds in your favour

Rankings have some relevance when setting odds for a tennis match. But a much smaller one than in football.

There will always be an unseen "battle" between punters and bookmakers to find "value" odds, as they are called.

This point is very closely related to point 4, but also to 1 and 2.

If you have enough flair to deduce, from what you see live, in the game of tennis players, the technical and psychological data of their game that you need, you should not even be interested in the bookmakers' odds.

Sure, no match is the same as another, but at least you know you have the freshest data about the game and you are no longer influenced by the odds, but only by what you have seen with your own eyes and processed with your tennis-trained neurons.

4. The current sport form of tennis players

It's not enough to know that Roger Federer is an extraordinary tennis player that's generally true.

Wait for at least one of his matches in the competition you want to bet on, maybe even then he's in a weaker form, or maybe he's coming in harder, even Federer has been known to do that.

So, don't bet first-round matches, especially at Grand Slam tournaments, where the men's game is played on a "three sets out of five" system, wait to see how the players move in the first round.

The same goes for players who are coming back from injuries that take them out of the circuit for long periods. Even if your name is Rafa Nadal, coming back is extremely hard after such a break.

Without official standing matches ( official, not exhibition, not set upsets to 4) you can't go straight in and win a Grand Slam tournament.

I repeat, a Grand Slam is played on three sets out of five system, so it's much more demanding than a regular tournament, where it's played on two sets out of three system.

Conclusion: Pay close attention to how the tennis players you want to bet on played yesterday, the day before yesterday, not to what they played a year or two ago, that is irrelevant.

5. The mindset of tennis players

We know that Rafa Nadal is mentally strong and Fabio Fognini is quite mentally labile - these are the examples that I find most handy at the moment.

Rafa can play a point "forgetting" that the previous one was lost by a 1 mm self. On Fognini, this would drive him crazy and a cavalcade of lost points one after the other would follow.

I won't go into technical things here, the mind is also educated, you are not born with it strong or less strong and so you are doomed to stay all your life.

Strictly related to our subject, it's important to know how the players we bet on are mentally, if they can mentally resist losing some points on their serve or some points they should have won, but lost due to childish mistakes.

And we learn this about the mental by watching many matches of those in whom we want to invest 10% of our monthly winnings in sports betting.

6. Playing surfaces for tennis

Generally speaking, the surfaces on which tennis is played can be classified as hard or soft surfaces.

Hard surfaces can be outdoor very common in North America or indoor, used in winter, especially in European tournaments.

The Grand Slam tournaments Australian Open and US Open are played on outdoor hard courts.

The grass, on which the Wimbledon Grand Slam tournament is played, is also a fast surface, while clay, on which the Paris - Roland Garros tournament is played, is the slowest surface.

Some players are somewhat specialized on a certain surface, for example, the Spanish and South Americans are native clay players, and the North Americans (the best example being John Isner), hard.

It is known that Rafa Nadal is the undisputed king of clay, having won 11 Grand Slam tournaments at Roland Garros.

Lately, however, we have more and more "all-round players", those who play well on all surfaces.

The best example of this is the Serbian Nole Djokovic. 

Before betting, I advise you to look for statistics for the matches played by each player, to find out which is his favourite surface, where he feels best, where he has the best results.

7. Motivation of the tennis players you bet on

When analysing a tennis match, we have to pay a lot of attention to the previous year's tennis player's performance (so we can see if a player has some points to defend in the ranking or not).

In tennis, we have a rather strange system of calculating the points that tennis players lose or gain from participating in a tournament. This system is based on their performance in the previous year.

Basically, a player is "obliged" to achieve at least the same results as the previous year in order not to lose ranking points. It is said that the player has to "defend" his points.

This should motivate him not to lose points and not to go down in the ranking. Often, however, this pressure to defend points has the opposite effect, it inhibits players.

Motivation is very often the case for weaker players who are rated against favourites, and this is an aspect worth considering.

To achieve glory and financial gains, underdogs can get super-motivated and make great matches against those who are a priori favourites to win the match.

A match between old and traditional rivals can also bring the motivation to make a great match.

It is the case of legendary matches in tennis history, it is the case of the breathtaking duels between Nadal and Federer, Djokovic and Federer or Djokovic and Nadal in the last decade.

This aspect, of the motivation of tennis players, is very important in the analysis of a tennis match, it is vital sometimes.

8. A tennis match cannot end in a draw

In tennis there are only two betting options, 1 or 2, a tennis match cannot end in a draw which is a seemingly trivial fact that can give us the courage to bet on the final result.

Similarly, for Asian handicap and Asian total, there are still only two options. For these, after a simple mathematical calculation, the probability of winning in sports betting is 50%.

So there are, obviously, more chances of winning than if there were three options on the final result, as in football, for example.