The bookies have them not far from evens - woz slight favourite. Meanwhile, anyone going to take up Andy's challenge:

Anyone know what the record for consecutive breaks in a tennis match is? #facts

Andy Murray (@andy_murray) May 26, 2013

Williams radwanksa got to 13 right now at the french... That's reason for the question, that's most I've seen

Andy Murray (@andy_murray) May 26, 2013

-- Edited by RBBOT on Sunday 26th of May 2013 07:17:42 PM

It is one of those draws where your initial reacion is "Wozniacki is playing terribly, Laura must win" followed by a reality check as outlined by Ratty above. I'm reasonably confident in Laura putting in a good performance but there's no reason why Wozniacki won't play a lot better than the has been in the recent past.

How far back would you have to go when a Robson v Wozniacki match would to have led to us discussing how many games would represent a good return from Laura, rather than the degree to which she is favourite to win?12 months?

Ratty wrote:

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Far be it for me to be insufferably pedantic, but actually we we don't know what Wozniacki's form is like at the moment, we only know what it has been recently.

Unless she has permanently lost her mojo, at some stage she will start playing well again. And that's as likely to be tomorrow, as next week, or next month, or whenever. 

And this kind of egregious human logical error is, alas, very common. For example amateur investors often buy into what they think are "rising" markets, when of course they are just "risen" markets. 

And following this analogy further, buying into (ie - betting on) an "oversold" Wozzer could be a better investment than into a frothy Robbo "bubble". 

-- Edited by Ratty on Sunday 26th of May 2013 06:46:04 PM

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Nonsense.

If you really, really, really must deliberately mis-interpret a well understood common phrase that is never understood as the aggregate of the literal meanings of it's three constituent words, but rather as the meaning it takes as a phrase: 'at the moment' - nobody in the real word questions, 'which moment?' or, 'Oh! Is she playing tennis right now then?" - if you absolutely must bring these things up, if you really really, really have to make that point, prove how clever you are and revel in the scorn you can pour upon others for their supposed inferiority to your planet sized intellect - if you do need to do that, and you feel that a casual tennis support forum is the best place to address that personal need and to further correct such faults in society at large, then fine. Let's address it.

The concept of 'recently' is just as semantically null as 'at the moment'. How recently? I have now idea of how Ms. Wozniacki has been playing in the last 5 minutes, or even if she's been playing at all in that time, that can be 'recently'. Similarly I have no idea what her form was in the passage of time immediately preceding your post - again, a possible interpretation of you 'recently'. I then looked at her last match. She lost the last point, but won the point before that both were 'recently', but, seeing as we are being 'insufferably pedantic', if we want to be precise and be understood without the element of doubt as to our meaning, then recently is far too vague for this purpose unless we highly qualify the period of time to which we refer, and even which frame of reference - recently in geological time?

Notice how nobody previously found need to point this out.

They are just as willing to accept the looseness of interpretation in the usage of the word 'recently' as they were the phrase 'at the moment'. There is so much in it; ellipsis works very hard for the reader there, as it so often does. The common interpretation, the one that necessarily goes explicitly unsaid, but is sub-consciously understood is akin to: "in the period or periods of time up to, and even including, the moment at which I am currently reading this, within a personally defined amount that varies from reader to reader, but that is indicated should be weighted towards an interpretation of short periods of time, weeks or months, rather than longer periods of time, years say; dependant of course upon the frequency of the activity in question and variable if there is a discrepancy into which that context puts this understanding. All happening within the human context and experience of time and the common reference points of such in relation to the span of a human life." or something similar.

But that's really rather a chore to type, and read, and so we created phrases that do the work for us, that people well understand - with good grace. Ah! I see.

Furthermore, if we really wanted to we can go further, given the nature of time, space-time and causality, it is in fact impossible to ever categorically define that anything has ever happened at all at a quantum level and...

Oh! see how far we can wander away from the topic if we want to really prove how clever we are?

Doesn't seem very relevant to a discussion about tennis though, so I'll spare people the additional inaccuracy 'recently' invokes in it's temporal fallacy.

However, I'm sanguine about all this. I see that several contributors have congratulated you on the rectitude of your intervention - whether out of fear of invoking your scorn, or because they do actually genuinely agree with you I'm not sure.

Well, all I do is type up doubles scores anyway - and rather obviously, I don't even know much about tennis, I've never even played the game (yes, really), so I bow to their knowledge and opinion.

So, a few voices telling me to shut up is all it will take to show me that I've got this one wrong - I promise not to take it literally and feel threatened, or wonder why they don't wish me to shut down, or shut sideways.

blob wrote:

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Nonsense. (etc)

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 at someone giving Ratty a taste of his own medicine.

If I had thought about every word carefully, I probably would have used "recently" but this is a forum and I tend to only think about numbers carefully on here - and even then I make (lots of) mistakes. If I was writing an important letter, I'd think about the words a lot more carefully, probably too carefully in fact.

Anyway, blob is absolutely right that almost everyone on here would have known exactly what I meant (though it is the kind of thing that confuses non-native speakers of English and I guess there might be some of them on here - I remember saying to someone Chinese "I'll be around for the next hour" at about 9.30 one day and they took it to mean I'd be around from 10-11 rather for the hour that followed the statement - that was genuine confusion over something all native speakers except perhaps Ratty would have understood!) - I didn't have much time when I saw it, so changed it and added the "edit:" note just for a laugh.

Where he does have a fair point that others have since expanded on is that it'll only take Woz re-finding a bit of form (though she often plays relatively worse in slams than in other events, so I'm sure that is being factored into people's views too) and/or Laura being a bit off for Caro to win their match. If I wanted to be pedantic, I could pick some holes in the markets analogy, but I know what he's trying to get at, so I'll let him off.

I imagine we might all appreciate the Ratster a bit more if he could make the odd good point that he does without being so, er, Ratty about it ... but maybe then we wouldn't have as many laughs or as many excuses for a good rant ...

Phil I disagree, which s unusual! i thought Woz looked, and played, incredibly nervous for the first few games. Laura had chances early on, didnt take them, and then point by point unravelled.

She didn't seem to have any tactics at all today, it was a very weird performance.

Had Laura taken one of her early chances it might have been different, but Woz was able to keep her nose in front and settle down. Laura had to put pressure on early to take advantage of poor form and nerves, and failed to do so, then couldn't work her way back in because she was all over the shop.

Woz played ok, better an she has been, but nothing spectacular. You could say that Laura made her look very good indeed By playing totally to her advantage.

 

-- Edited by PaulM on Monday 27th of May 2013 02:34:59 PM

Making money from something as irrational as betting does of course require an incompetent counter-party. In this case the required incompetents are the patriotic Brits who've let their emotions sway their judgment.

In my opinion Wozzer is slightly more likely to win - say 60/40. You can currently get 11/10 on her at Ladbrokes.

Assuming I'm right (oh come on, you KNOW I am) this makes a very attractive investment - ignoring betting duty you have a 60% chance of turning £1,000 into £2,100, and a 40% chance of turning it into £0. That makes a 26% return IN ONE DAY!!! 

PS - this does not constitute investment advice, bla, bla ...