Our 'For and Against' series has focused on Australian thoroughbred and harness racing punters in recent weeks, so today we wanted to broaden our horizons with an expert sports punter.

Dan Weston is the founder of Tennis Ratings which is a fantastic resource for traditional (pre-match) and in-play betting.

Punting Insights:

Why he trusts the data rather than relying on his gut

How to handle incomplete data and accurately assess young improving players

When he respects the market and when he's happy to take it on

His preferred betting strategy and how he manges his own bankroll

Today’s Guest:

Dan Weston - Tennis Ratings

Dan will be a guest speaker at the inaugural Matchbook Traders Conference in London next month.

If you're interested in learning from sports modellers, traders, mathematicians and programmers you can use the promo code TRADERSCON50 to claim a big 50% discount.

Dave Duffield: Always good to chat Dan and often it's about specific tournaments, but today I wanted to get a different perspective on a series we've been having recently which covers both form analysis and also staking. Your background and your expertise is tennis…. would you describe yourself as a data reliant tennis analyst, or more gut instinct and experience?

Dan Weston:Absolutely completely based on data, I don't really use gut instincts whatsoever. I'm pretty much a slave to the numbers, I'll use them pretty much exclusively. I would say that there's no real situations where you can't use data. The only time would be if a player just hasn't played enough matches and then I would leave the match alone, I wouldn't even get involved with it.

I find that with using gut instincts and lean mentally towards a player, you're creating the dangers of gamblers fallacy where you remember the significant events of the past. Sometimes because they are significant, or you remember when a player blew a number of match points, or something like that, it tends to stick in your mind and you think that player is vulnerable in that situation. Where it might just be a one-off, but because it's a notable event it sticks in your mind, rather than all the times they served out to love and didn't even think about it twice.

So I would look at the data rather than my gut pretty much always. Sometimes the gut is often correct as well. For example, last night in Quebec, Gibbs threw it away again, and she actually lost the match after winning the first set 6:1, having a set and break-lead in the second set, three match points in the second set and a break-lead twice in the third set. I think she traded a very low 1.01, 1.02 kind of price. My gut would have led me to believe that Gibbs was vulnerable as a front-runner, and that's completely backed-up by the data as well.

For example, like last year with Gibbs against Pavlyuchenkova in the US Open when she just didn't want to get over the line in the second set at all. Ended up losing on a tie break before finally winning in the third set. She's no stranger to these low price turnovers. My gut would have said that and the data backed it up, but because I've got the data I'd rather use that anyway, you know, it's there, it's concrete, it's absolute.

Dave Duffield: In that situation when you talk about data, are you talking about break-point conversions and match point conversions and actually winning matches where they've held match points? Or are you talking about their performance versus say in-play prices from Betfair or MatchBook or the like?

Dan Weston:There'll be a lot of ways that I'd look at it. What I tend to do for my own trading is I'll have a kind of a base data thing that I'll look at, which would generally be performance when leading in a match, or leading in a various facet of a match. For example, if they've won the first set, how do they perform by taking the first break of the second set? How frequently do they do that? Are they consistent,