Breaking News. . .Sopot

The reports coming out of Poland and London concerning irregular betting patterns on a match involving a TW favorite, Nikolay "Kolya the Obscure" Davydenko are somewhat disturbing. A stat in one of the comments at the Fox site (wait until you get a load of those!) caught my eye. The poster wrote:
In todays Vasallo match he (Davydenko) was leading 6-2 4-1 [note that Davydenko lost the set, 6-3, so this cannot be accurate; hat tip to Comment poster Sophie for that catch. But I am allowing it to stand, because I assume it was just a typo - PB] and was traded at 1.8 (means 55% winning probability) normal would be 1.2 (83%) That means he was traded 4 times higher than usual and he lost the game from that point on!

The other disturbing thing here is that it was a second-round match in Sopot, not a Wimbledon quarterfinal, yet it attracted $7 million in betting action - roughly ten times what is usually bet on a this kind of match. My guess is that there is some kind of story here, for sure. But just what kind, I'm not sure.

The most interesting element in this story grows out of a hypothetical: What if somehow the match was fixed? Just how would the ATP, Betfair - or anyone else - establish that, short of someone with insider knowledge approaching them. Think about it. The ATP and/or Betfair will say they are "investigating." But how, exactly, does the ATP investigate something like this?

My guess: they interview the principal and, unless one of them,for some reason, hands the ATP a smoking gun, the case is immedaitely closed. The only meaningful investigation would seem to be one that followed the money, but the ATP isn't the FBI or CIA - or a deep-pocketed entity like the NFL. And I doubt that Betfair would plow significant resources into a comprehensive investigation - mainly because it has the right to suspend and terminate betting, and even renege on payouts. So the only cost to Betfair has been the commissions it would have collected. It isn't like the firm had to swallow a huge hit by paying out to winners of a fixed match.

So who would really be motivated, or sufficiently flush, to conduct and finance the kind of full-blown investigation that might actually make potential match-throwers fear reprisals?

Here's a chilling bit added to the Associated Press feed on this story:

I don't know much about this gambling netherworld. The whole thing creeps me out.

PS - update as of 4:06 PM. thisBBC story  has Betfair officials saying that after Davydenko won the first set, his price "drifted out, not in", which is unusual because you would think it would be the opposite when the World No. 4 is hammering on some journeyman. So it seems entirely possible that people who picked up on Davydenko being hurt (as Vasallo did, according to his own admission in the Fox story) early in the match flooded the betting site, taking a calculated gamble on Kolya NOT being able to finish or win the match.

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