The Maanga

My understanding of Economics, particularly business, is based on first principles. That is, I make/back a product only if I can profit from selling it. Although I understand the statistical logic behind the success of new age businesses, I can never trust them to start my business, inspite of the billion dollar corporation called Google.

Extending this analogy to tennis, as always, I wish to state why I support Gasquet, bet heavily on his matches (sometimes even against him), and why Federer is a gambler’s nightmare.

Consider for instance Federer’s superb win-loss record this year: 68-9, which means that he loses twice every 17 matches he plays. It should naturally follow that for a gambler to make any kind of money in the long run the odds for a Federer win have to be greater than 1.13. Unfortunately, Federer is like that over-priced stock which many people have wet dreams about. So the average odds for his win against top 100 players this year could be around 1.07 (out of the hat). Clearly betting on Federer consistently is a losing proposition. Some geniuses here can wish to point to me that a gambler can chose to place bets on favourable odds like the ones when he faces an opponent that he lost to recently, banking on the revenge factor. Bad luck chummy, Federer lost to two opponents twice in a row this year and neither was the butt-picking Spaniard. Lots of money lost there.

And yeah, the sentiment on Federer is so pervasive that arbitrage opportunities are next to nil. I have the suspicion that the free market fundamendaliz stole Entanglement ideas from Jagadguru on the pretext of learning his compassion 101 course and then mixed it with dark arts to form the perfect free market system that cuts out speculators in Federer matches. In other words, nobody benefits from Federer.

Simply put, backing Federer makes bad economic sense for a gambler. Will be more so, in the coming years. If its simply for the thrill of watching tennis, thats good but all I can say is you haven’t watched enough tennis if you think Federer is godlike. And then there are another group who argue about the number of Grand Slams, they are losers!

Will write about how Gasquet provides the much required flexibility in speculation over Federer later.

p.s. Food for thought: Considering Federer won 8 titles this year, he didn’t even win half of the tournaments he participated in and to think the odds for him taking the Aussie Open next year is 1.50 right now and will only get lower. He is worse than Enron.

p.p.s. Federer was a gambler’s dream come true from late 2003 until early 2006.

at Wimbledon should never be compared. Besides the fact that the game will be reduced to pampering the egos of two players, who will later waste precious time to get back to first base by declaring that the game is bigger than the player, it is equal to saying that the State’s topper in 2007 who scored 3 more marks was better than the one who held the record in 2002.

If anything, Sampras playing today wouldn’t have more than 2 wimbledons and Federer playing in the 90s may not have won any.

Gasquet’s anticipated 10, though, should make him a strong contender for immortality, once cellular regeneration techniques are perfected by those smug Stem cell researchers.

The example closest to home is in the scheduling of Davis Cup matches, which though I loathe from the depths of my heart want India to win them all. 

Common tennis sense says that with someone like Rohan Bopanna in the team, a fast hardcourt in an elevated location, somewhere like Darjeeling or Shimla would be perfect to challenge any team in the world, barring Russia, Argentina and Spain. But the geniuses there are, organize the humiliation to take place in Delhi/Mumbai every year. 

If All India Tennis Association (AITA) insists on making money out of these boring matches, they could atleast chose Bangalore as the perfect medium ground between elevation and commerce.

Fortunately, this clownish behaviour is all pervasive and clearly seen in the ATP too, accelerated only by the over enthusiastic MBA types who don’t understand why they should change what they change. 

p.s. For the ignorant, basic mechanics states that higher elevation means the ball travels faster through the air and thus helps faster servers and faster movers.

p.p.s. Not that Bopanna moves fast. But he atleast serves fast. 

It is common knowledge that there are two sides to every coin. The Davis’ coin is no exception. 

Players(most of them) obviously love playing and winning the Davis Cup. Which begs the question, why? And the reason is simple. Tennis players travel more than any other sportsmen and they do so alone with a coach who is more interested to make sure if the player has followed the checklist of things to be done than not letting a gangbang opportunity on tour slip by.

In the era of cheerleaders and late night victory parties, the poor tennis player has only Davis Cup matches to exercise his divine right for multiple penetrations.

Which begs another question to which I may never know the answer. Why, o why, with the kind of girlfriend Federer has, does he not play in the Davis Cup? 

Tennis is an individual sport and the challenge of playing tennis professionally is to handle poor form, bad line calls, crowd’s antagonism and Hawkeye alone on the court. 

What Davis cup brings to this equation is rigged courts, heavily skewed support, a coach who can easily be mistaken for a survivor series captain and when the home team wins (most likely, unless it sucks badly) the players can feel patriotic and display team spirit which is alien to the game itself. In reality, all they managed to do was waste people’s time and money playing five glorified exhibition matches that decides the winner according to who sucked less on a given day. Just like the test series in cricket that happens around the world. They are all rigged heavily in favour of the home team.

I don’t even understand how coaches in Davis cup matches sit on the side of the court and still be able to offer unsolicited advice to the players during a game. What can they possibly observe from the game sitting there?

That brings the focus to Rod-dick, who fresh off his customary double penetration from Federer and Ferrer announced that winning a Davis Cup was his dream. By teaming up with a ‘fellow Federer bitch’, James Blake, the dick/prick hopes to make heavy weather of favourable conditions to win this pointless cup and harbour delusions of being successors to the legend of Sampras and Agassi when they won it last in 95.

There should, however, be no doubt as to where my loyalties lie in the Davis cup final that starts this friday. Russian women are infinitely hotter and poorer that makes my chance to land a hot blonde girlfriend that much greater. Besides, Russian tennis players are way better than the ones that come out of the shithole called USA.

For all my antagonism towards Davis cup, I am for this recently blossoming travesty that calls itself the Hopman Cup. For one, it gives an inside view of who in the ATP is sleeping with in the WTA. Richard Gasquet probably with Tatiana Golovin, who is not a stunner by any definition but definitely way hotter than the disgusting Mirka that Federer flaunts around. Hopefully Gasquet will only get better from here.

The minimum support price for wheat, after the government’s disastrous management of wheat import, was raised to Rs 1000/quintal. Significantly, paddy’s MSP continues to be Rs 695.

If ever there was an opportunity for opposition parties to wrest the political initiative in the Cauvery delta region, this is it. For some reason, Ko. Si Mani and the lingering presence of Moopanar have managed to sway the delta districts — Tanjavur, Thiruvarur and Nagapattinam in favor of the DMK coalition in the past decade. Both parties being equally useful or useless in terms of the Cauvery Water Dispute has rendered that a secondary issue. Jaya, who once thought she could win over the brahmins and upper castes with some kudumi clad Rama Ramanathan and the dalits with MGR’s charm, has simply lost the region.

Now, an opportunity has presented itself. There is an obvious and huge disparity between the southern grain and wheat. One could easily argue that the difference exists because of faulty policy implementation by the Centre. And the state government can be accused of a) remaining silent, b) being a part of the coalition.

An issue with so much emotive potential and Jaya is nowhere to be heard. Add to this, the power situation and the recent spate of violence in the small towns — either, Jaya has lost it or is waiting for anti-incumbency and mortality to do their own thing.

Comes from Tommy Haas,  

If you ask Jim Courier, I mean, that guy has his tongue up his (Federer’s) ass  

right after he beat Federer in an exhibition match in Kooyong running up to the Australian Open in 2006. Would’ve been nice if he actually won that superb fourth round match a week following that remark. Instead the arrogant Swiss is now chasing what appears to be a Grand Slam record that may never be broken. Until Gasquet decides to, that is.

It’s never late Tommy. The girls can wait one year. It’s sick to watch someone with a bad taste for women winning everything.

It’s obvious that Gasquet possesses the most beautiful and reasonably effective backhand drive in tennis currently. But if there’s another shot that is more important than the drive to set up a point in a rally, it’s the slice.

The best exponent of the backhand slice is - not Federer, as commentators i.e., ass lickers, would like us to believe. It’s a relatively less known and a superb Feliciano Lopez. Why, because he cannot hit a backhand drive to save his ass - much like Federer of the early 2000’s. 

So while Federer improved his drive and perfected his slice, it is still miles away from Lopez who never bothered to improve his drive. 

Agassi, the only talented player to come out of US since McEnroe, admits on the Oprah show that tennis was only a platform for all this.

By this, he means some sort of charity school he runs somewhere. And I thought I knew all I had to know about Agassi even before I read some book on him just by watching him play. Seems like Oprah knew him better.

Sowmya writes,

Kids are going to grow up and hold a lot of things against you, why feed into that? Remember the times when your parents asked you to sing some song in front of the guests, but you wanted to go hide under the table? Now some of these mommy blogs are just that, but in front of the whole online world, where you don’t know anyone beyond the few people who comment on your blog.

I am thinking, this woman. Did she also not have a picture that showed her boobs off? Where is that?

PS: Here. With a naked baby as well. This woman explains religion.