Highlights

• • Market implies 91.7% for home despite 1-5 recent record on hard for Melnic
• • At our 35% estimate for the away, EV at 7.0 is +1.45 (145% ROI on a 1-unit stake)

Pros

• + Large discrepancy between market odds and recent form data for Melnic
• + Substantial theoretical EV at widely available odds (7.0)

Cons

• - Very limited publicly available data on both players (especially Udit Kamboj), increasing variance
• - Small-sample nature of Melnic's record could be misleading if opponent quality differs

Details

Market prices currently make Vladislav Melnic an overwhelming favorite at 1.09 (implied win probability ~91.7%) while Udit Kamboj is priced at 7.0 (implied ~14.3%). The only available performance data (V. Melnic) shows a very poor recent record on hard courts (1-5 across six matches, recent straight losses), which contradicts the market's extreme confidence. Given Melnic's short career sample and clearly poor recent form, the market appears to be substantially overrating him. Conservatively estimating Udit Kamboj's true win probability at 35% (0.35) versus the market's 14.3% implies strong value on the away side at 7.0 decimals. We therefore recommend backing the away player because the expected return at current odds is strongly positive relative to our probability estimate. Key uncertainties are the small sample size for Melnic and the lack of published data on Kamboj, which increases volatility, but even conservative adjustments still leave clear value on the underdog at 7.0.

Key factors

• • Market-implied probability (home 91.7%) is far higher than Melnic's recent results support
• • Melnic's recent hard-court form: 1-5 in six matches with consecutive losses
• • Small sample sizes and lack of public data on Udit Kamboj increase uncertainty but magnify value when market is this skewed