AUSTRALIAN OPEN BOTB - ROUND 1 'SYNDICATED' REPORT

I'm afraid I'm only going to manage round-by-round reports instead of daily reports this time and even that's going to be a struggle. However, I'm putting a lot of the things I might put in daily reports on the botb1 twitter feed http://twitter.com/botb1, simply because it's easier to post things as they come up rather than finding a decent period of time to write everything up at the end of each day, so report/trivia junkies may like to follow there if they are not doing so already.

If anyone wants to fill in some days, do feel free!

ENTRANTS

444 entrants, slightly down on last year largely because Tennisopolis didn't promote 'our competition' (as they call BOTB!) so heavily this year. Regular readers will know that one-off Tennisopolis entrants tend to make loads of entry errors, so we aren't too sad about that.

The record for the number of teams managing to get 5+ entrants has been beaten easily though - 20 different teams have managed it this time, which is great news! (though possibly not for the 4 teams who ended up missing out on the team KO!)

R1 UPSETS

The biggest upset in R1 was 99% pick Kolya losing to Florian Mayer. 95% picked the Russian to get to (at least) R3, 63% to R4, 45% to the QFs (c.f. Berdbrain 33%, Verdy 17%, Dammit 3%, all of whose QF pickers had the most to celebrate), 9% to the SFs, 1% to the Final and two entrants even had him winning the whole thing!

Kubot 3% beating Querrey, Dodig 5% beating Ivo, Becker 8% thrashing Gulbis, (Q) Hernych 14% beating Istomin and Kavcic 21% beating Anderson were the other big surprises of the round.

In the swing matches (67/33 or closer), Russell 66% beat (WC) Ebden, Nalbandian 64% beat Hewitt, Marchenko 62% beat RRH, Seppi 55% beat Clement, Gil 48% beat Cuevas, Schwank 46% beat Leo Mayer, (Q) Sweeting 44% beat DGT, Mannarino 43% beat (WC) Harrison, (Q) Raonic 42% beat Phau, (WC) Tomic 39% beat Chardy, (WC) Paire 36% beat Cipolla, Riba 34% beat (WC) Ball and Dimitrov 34% beat Golubev. If you got most of those right, you probably ended up near the top.

TEAMS

A decent show of GEM power from the French players saw the Gasquetaires on top after day 1 with BT.net 2nd, but by the end of R1 those positions had reversed, with the help of the team size adjustment factor which compensates for the statistical tendency of smaller teams to have more extreme scores, both high and low.

Like Billy the Bookie bot (the best of the bots in 2 of the previous 3 AO pick 'ems), MTF had a mediocre day 1 and a good day 2, which saw them rise 5 places to 3rd, dislodging world no. 1 team TAT, who had been 3rd after day 1.

There was quite a battle to avoid finishing R1 outside the top 16 (and hence missing out on the team KO and the KO component of the team ranking points) - lanternes rouges at the end of day 1 the Bangors could only manage to move up 2 to swap places with Tennisopolis, with the Ducklings sandwiched between them also missing out, but AM.com (17th after day 1) escaped the drop zone on day 2 at the expense of the Daily Forehand.

INDIVIDUALS

Monday's show of GEM power saw francky (RG) in the lead at the end of day 1, with marina36 (also RG) and newbie sj (DC) a point behind and 17 entrants a further point back.

By the end of day 2 though, Deathless Mortal (MT), up 19 to 1st, had not only taken the lead but had also equalled the record for the highest score in R1 of a BOTB (56/64) which has stood since Wimbledon 2007, when Invu2day (MT), who ended that contest nearly halfway down the table, and Billy the Bookie bot also got 7 out of every 8 R1 picks correct.

Also breaking the old AO R1 record, --cj-- (TA), up 2 to 2= after climbing to the top and opening up a 3-point lead at one stage, SteveWalker (BT), up 48 to 2=, high scorer of day 2 with 30/32 Suliso (TA), up 128 to 2=, FERNET (MT), up 18 to 2=, and tonton (BT), up 18 to 2=, ended R1 just 1 point behind, with 13 entrants headed by world no. 8 Imoen (BT), up 13 to 7=, a further point back.

ON THE RISE

The biggest riser on day 2 by far was Claudia (AM), up 275 to 62= after scoring 28/32. HoneySuckle (DC), up 234 to 103=, and Anne (IN), up 236 to 147=, also soared more than 200 places.

DODGY DROPPERS

With all 444 entrants scoring more than 50%, the gorillas were already going hungry at the end of R1, 4 points adrift of serial gorilla botherer Mom of Twins (IN) and newbie alleke (TN) in equal last.

The biggest fallers on day 2 were Jennifer3164 (AR) & andrewjshields (RF), both down 277 to 327=, while Glad18 (RG), dn 275 to 279=, and lone Tanzanian entrant Mdudu (TN), down 259 to 279=, also fell more than 250 places.

OUTLOOK

The end of R1 leader managed to hold onto all but two R2 winners, but four entrants went one better and somenow managed to only lose one - they were Jojo56 (RG) in 32= (who has since been challenging for the lead), Bismarck (NB) in 62= (another big riser since), Big Al (CC) in 103= and Kamui010 (MT) in 147=.

TEAM KO

The L16 pairings are as follows - results to be based on the results in AO R2:

(1) BritishTennis.net v (16) Tennis.com
(9) GBTennisGirls.com v (8) Centre Court Forum
(5) DrawChallengeForum v (12) JamieMurray.org
(13) RogerFederer.com v (4) TalkAboutTennis
(3) MensTennisForums v (14) AndyMurray.com
(11) BBC 606 boards v (6) Rusedski.co.uk
(7) NewBallsPlease v (10) MyTennisLounge.com
(15) Tennis4you.com v (2) RichardGasquet.net