Profitable Words From The Wise

Before the NCAA Tournament, I sent y’all to our friends over at Wise Guy Action for all your sports gambling needs. I told you that if I had money, I’d entrust it with WGA rather than Wall Street. Why? Because I know just how frighteningly insane those guys are when it comes to finding things to bet on.

Case in point, today with their play of the day:

Rafael Nadal vs. Juan Martin del Potro
Juan Martin del Potro +700

Obviously you can’t make a case that del Potro is the better player, but at this price you cannot go wrong by taking a player as skilled as del Potro no matter who he’s playing. Nadal does amazing things on all surfaces, but it is no secret that hard courts are his least favorite surface. Del Potro likes this surface more than Nadal and perhaps it will give him a mental lift going into the match. If these 2 guys played 7 matches in a row on hard courts, del Potro would win at least 2 of them, so it is obvious that getting 7-1 odds on del Potro is a ton of value. Don’t bet more than one unit, because no one but Federer can be mentioned in the same breath as Nadal, but del Potro is a live dog today and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he was able to pull the upset. So far in their all-time series Nadal is 4-0 against del Potro, but keep in mind that Nadal was an early bloomer, and del Potro just grew into one of the best players in the world in 2008. They’ve met once already this year on hard courts; Nadal won 6-2, 6-4 at Indian Wells. Don’t let this result discourage you though, del Potro is every bit of a live dog and at +700 you’re getting ridiculously good value on a player who is currently ranked 7th in the world.

-KJ

Well, in the shadows of all this Jay Cutler to Chicago business, which I trust you we’ll tackle here in a second, you might have missed the biggest tennis story of the week: Juan Martin del Potro defeated world No. 1 Rafael Nadal.

Granted del Potro is the seventh-ranked player in the world, but he had never beaten Nadal and at the odds given, wasn’t expected to change that pattern.

Congrats to WGA. I need to find some money.