Tennis betting before the match: scoring, formats and tours
Tennis is played one against one in singles or two against two in doubles, on a rectangular court divided across the middle by a net and, under the ITF Rules of Tennis, 23.77 m long. The server puts the ball into play; the receiver, across the net, stands ready to return it. The scoring allows no draw, so every match has a winner.
Points, games and sets
A standard game is scored in calls, with the server's score called first:
Situation in the game | Call |
|---|---|
No point won | Love |
First, second and third point | 15, 30, 40 |
Fourth point | Game |
Three points each | Deuce |
Next point after Deuce | Advantage |
A player on Advantage who wins the following point takes the game; otherwise it is Deuce again. Six games win a set, provided the margin is two. At six games all, the method announced before the event decides: a tie-break set brings in a tie-break game, with points numbered 0, 1, 2, 3 onwards, which the first to seven points with a two-point lead wins along with the set; an advantage set has no tie-break and runs on until one side leads by two games.
Best of three or best of five: whose rule is it?
Under the ITF Rules of Tennis a match lasts either the best of three sets, won with two, or the best of five, won with three. Each rulebook makes its own choice:
ATP: every singles match on the ATP Tour and ATP Challenger Tour, the final too, goes to the best of three tie-break sets.
WTA: singles at all WTA events, qualifying included, are played as the best of three tie-break sets.
Grand Slams: at the four majors (Australian Open, Roland-Garros, Wimbledon, US Open), men's main-draw singles are the best of five sets; other matches are the best of three unless an individual Grand Slam decides otherwise.
These four majors also share a final-set rule, announced by the Grand Slam Board on 16 March 2022: once the final set reaches six games each, a 10-point tie-break is played, and it goes to the first side reaching 10 points with at least two to spare. Trialled from Roland-Garros 2022, it remains in the 2026 Grand Slam Rule Book.
Tours, categories and tournaments in the line
Official men's professional tennis has five categories of events. The ATP governs the ATP Tour, which takes in the ATP Finals, the United Cup and the Masters 1000, 500 and 250 tournaments, and the separate ATP Challenger Tour; the Grand Slams, the Davis Cup and the men's World Tennis Tour are the other three. The WTA Tour is built on WTA 1000, 500 and 250 tournaments, and WTA 125 events have a calendar of their own.
World Tennis is the new name of the International Tennis Federation (ITF): its member national associations approved it in October 2025, and the change was made public on 25 June 2026. Besides the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup, it oversees a professional circuit, the World Tennis Tour, and a junior one, the World Tennis Tour Juniors.
Tennis tournaments enter the line in the week they are played, for example:
matches of the Shanghai Masters, an ATP Masters 1000 on hard courts founded in 2009;
the WTA 1000 in Wuhan, played on outdoor hard courts;
Rovereto's WTA 125 draw, an indoor hard-court event in Italy.
Shanghai and Wuhan are annual tournaments, so each new edition brings their matches back to the line.
Algerian tennis: national teams, Inès Ibbou, junior events
In the 2026 Davis Cup, Algeria's men competed in Group IV Africa, staged in June on clay at the Nairobi Club in Kenya. They won all three of their Pool A ties and then saw off Angola 2-0 in the promotion play-off. The event's format sends the winners of these play-offs up to Africa Group III the following year.
Algerian player Inès Ibbou contested the singles final at the ITF pro-circuit event in Oran in May 2022. In June 2024 she took one of the singles points when Algeria defeated Togo 2-0 in Rwanda, a result that moved the women's team up into the Billie Jean King Cup's Africa Group III for the 2025 season.
The World Tennis calendar shows no professional World Tennis Tour events in Algeria from 2023 to 2026; the last ones took place in Oran in May 2022. In 2026 Algiers hosted six World Tennis Tour Juniors events on outdoor clay, graded J30, J60 and J100.
When a player retires during a match
Under section 10.24 of the site's betting rules, when a player retires or is disqualified and the match stops, a match-winner bet remains valid only if the opening set was played to its end; if it was not, the bet is settled at odds of 1. Every other outcome is voided at the same odds of 1, unless it had already been decided unconditionally by the time play stopped. The player who retired or was disqualified is counted as the loser.
Pre-match and live tennis on 1xBet
1xBet takes tennis bets before a match (Line) and during play (Live). A pre-match card shows two outcomes, W1 and W2, as tennis has no draw, then Handicap 1 and Handicap 2 with lines in games, individual totals IT1 and IT2, and a Total, each with Over and Under. For handicaps and totals, the site rules count a tie-break as one game.
Matches already under way are gathered under tennis matches in progress.
Upcoming fixtures in other sports are listed in the pre-match menu of every sport.