Highlights

• • Book implied probability for Story (83%) looks too high versus career records
• • At our 30% estimate, Bass at 4.05 has positive EV (≈+0.215)

Pros

• + Underdog price (4.05) is sufficiently large to produce positive EV at modest true-win estimates
• + Both players have similar surface experience, reducing surface-driven downside to the pick

Cons

• - Story’s superior record indicates real quality gap; Bass still the inferior player historically
• - Limited matchup/H2H detail and small-sample noise increase variance — result is higher variance than favorites

Details

We compare the market prices to our matchup read. The book gives James Story a heavy favorite price (1.20 → implied 83.3%). From the provided career records Story is 31-23 (57.4% career win rate) while Finn Bass is 10-19 (34.5% career win rate). Both players have played similar surfaces (Grass/Carpet/Hard) in their records, so there is no clear surface edge in the Research. The bookmaker price implies Story is far stronger than raw records justify; we consider variance, small-sample noise for Bass, and the chance that Story’s win rate overstates dominance. Adjusting conservatively from the raw win rates and accounting for matchup uncertainty, we estimate Bass’s true chance to win around 30%. At decimal 4.05 that implies positive expected value (EV = 0.30*4.05 - 1 = +0.215). The favorite at 1.20 only offers negative EV under any realistic win probability below ~83%, so we recommend taking the away underdog only if 4.05 is available.

Key factors

• • Career win rates: Story 31-23 (57.4%) vs Bass 10-19 (34.5%)
• • Both have experience on similar surfaces (Grass/Carpet/Hard) in the provided records
• • Market over-prices the favorite (implied 83%); conservative estimated win chance for Bass ~30% yields positive EV