Nishikori: "Nowadays, winning money from betting is much harder than successfully investing"

An honest conversation with a top international tipster.

Nishikori is a professional bettor with around 12,000 followers on his account on the X platform (formerly Twitter). Nearly every year, he posts positive returns from his bets on ATP tournaments. He also writes for Pinnacle's blog and runs his own website.

In an interview with Legalbet, Nishikori spoke about how he started his career as a tipster, his working methods, and even value betting on Eurovision.

From the first bets to his own website

-Nishikori is just your nickname, right? Or is there some connection to your real name?

-No connection at all, it's just a nickname.

-Can you remember your first interaction with a bookmaker? 

-I don't remember what my first bet was, but I do remember how I got into the world of betting but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was with a friend who told me he had just bet on Karlovic, a very tall guy with a great serve, at odds of more than 3 on Betfair. He had to explain to me what “odds” were. I thought my friend was crazy. That was the beginning. I was in the mid twenties I think.

-At what moment did you realize that you can make money from betting?

-When I started betting, I had good and bad streaks, but it wasn’t long before I started making money with some regularity. I would analyze matches and spot odds that didn’t make sense. A player competing in Europe one day and in Canada the next, with no time to adapt and tired from the travel, yet offered at extraordinarily high odds.

-Tell us about your first strategies. How did you begin to restore the bank, how did you determine your budget?

-At first, I didn’t have a clear strategy, nor did I have a budget. I've always been someone rather unorganized. I would analyze all the circumstances surrounding a match and bet based on my instinct (which I still do now, although with a foundation and some statistics I didn't have before). I didn’t have a fixed bankroll, so when I started working and making money, I would bet according to how much I had in the bank. I remember that the amounts were relatively high considering how much money I had. It went well for me, but it's something I obviously don’t recommend doing

-How have your strategies changed from year to year?

-In reality, I don’t have a specific strategy. I can only say that I’ve specialized in underdogs (which is not a strategy by itself), as they've always worked better for me than favorites. Most of my bets are on the most liquid Tennis market, money line in ATP tournaments, not challengers or ITFs. 

-At what moment did you decide to create your website tennisedge.io and sell paid predictions? And how long did it take to start making money from it? How many people work on your site? Or do you do everything by yourself?

-I have been tipping in the betting platform Pyckio for many years. I created my own website tennisedge.io only a few months ago, in February of 2024. The sole objective of this website is to collect emails to send out a daily tennis newsletter called Tennis Edge Daily, where I send thousands of tennis bettors a daily email with insights on tennis betting. I started making money since I launched it. I send the tips via Telegram through Sublaunch, which manages the entire process. This platform was created by a guy called Julien, and through it, any tipster can sell their services. 

Cutting, Red Flags, and Professional Hacks

-You've probably encountered the reduction of maximums, the blocking of accounts, tell us a little about this. Is there any bookie that have not paid you money? We'll tell about everyone!

-To be honest, NO. I never had these problems. On a few occasions, I placed bets with some soft bookies in the countries where I lived, but those accounts didn’t last long. I have always bet in Betfair Exchange and Pinnacle, initially separately and, for the past few years, through a broker.

-I worked for a bookmaker and from their point of view I understand why they ban winning players. At the same time, it's strange not to let people play. Do you think there is a compromise?

-Look, if bookies ban winning players, they should warn you in their terms&conditions that if you win, they can ban you. But they don’t. If they do it, winning players have to accept it,although we obviously don’t like that. If they warn you; it's like a right of admission. 

But they don’t. And when they ban players, they come up with crappy excuses that we all know are false.

Betting is already a game where one side has the advantage, okay. But what can’t happen is that the bookmakers don’t make things clear and don’t openly state that they ban winning players. They’re committing fraud, but the gambling regulators are in cahoots with them and don’t protect the players. They are a mafia

-Can you tell us about your career statistics? The whole distance. And also the number of plus and minus years?

-My overall ROI is around +6% over the course of nine years, or 4,920 bets. As I mentioned before, I only bet on top-level tennis. I've had just two losing years (2021 and 2022), and this year will also end up positive, by the way.

-How is the percentage of your income from the bets you place and the sale of predictions distributed? Do you always bet what you predict?

-I've always placed my bets before recommending them. If I don't have enough confidence to bet on something myself, I’m certainly not going to recommend it. I can’t give you a specific percentage, but the majority of my earnings come from betting rather than selling picks. Selling predictions helps me offset the losses from my bets during rough patches 

-You said somewhere that your choice can be influenced by many factors. For example, Djokovic's play could be affected by problems within the Professional Players' Council. Tell us some of the strangest factors that influenced your choice?

-Absolutely, all information matters. Even more so, the information that is overlooked or not properly valued by the market. In the end, information flows into the market sooner or later. You can take advantage by betting before the market reacts (though the problem is that liquidity is usually low when you bet very early) or by interpreting the information differently. Although it’s not easy, I think there’s more room for the latter, at least in my case.

Ultimately, you have to try to think differently and avoid following consensus opinions, because if you do, you're done. As for something more or less strange, if I see a player on social media at the beach the week before a tournament, it raises a red flag for me. Sure, I know the player could be training hard while in the Bahamas—it’s possible—but generally, things like that make me doubt the player’s intentions, form, or focus.

-Tell us a little bit about your technique? You see the odds for a tennis game, what are the first three factors that pop up in your mind? 

-I gather as much information as possible about a match—player form and recent results, type of tournament, surface, weather, tournament-specific statistics, and specific player news, mainly. What is important, I do this without looking at the odds

With this info, I form an idea in my head of which player I would bet on and at what minimum price. Then I check the market odds. If there’s a significant difference, I place a bet. 

-Red flags in betting. When do you understand: I definitely won’t bet on this game?

-Years ago, I would have told you that when there was a strong pre-match movement in the odds favoring a player, you had to be careful—there could be match-fixing involved. But things have changed over the past few years; I don’t see what I used to see before.

Nowadays, I don't bet on many matches simply because I don't see value in any player. I'm not saying there isn't any value, just that I'm not able to spot it.

Playing for fun, long-term strategies, and exclusives

-Do you ever bet just for fun? Were there any moments when you thought: there is little logic in this bet, but I just want to make it?

-Years ago, there was an emotional aspect, a sense of fun when I placed bets, in addition to the money. But for a long time now, that's no longer the case. I only bet to make money, not for fun

-Do you often place outrights or specials? Do you bet on anything different from tennis? 

-No, I’ve only done it sporadically. Additionally, in this market, the bookmaker's margin is very high. I bet on football occasionally, although much less than on tennis

-How do you feel about betting on unusual events? Like Oscars, Eurovision, player’s transfers? Have you ever bet on this?

-Yes, I’ve done it in Politics in the past or Eurovision. I can remember when Ukraine won it some few years ago. I didn’t understand why the Ukraine odds where so high, knowing that many people were to going to vote for Ukraine, irrespective of the quality of the song. The market reacted very late

-Can you tell us about a game that you are proud of predicting? There may have been some completely wrong odds. Or some high odds that went through?

-I can’t name any specific ones right now, I cannot remember. But the bets I'm most proud of are those where the closing odds are much lower than the odds at which I placed my bet.

How started writing for Pinnacle and why  didn’t take a job at a bookmaker.

-Tell us about your collaboration with Pinnacle. How did they find you? What did they propose to do?

-From time to time I write some articles for their betting education blog. I could say that someone from Pinnacle contacted me a while ago asking if I wanted to collaborate with them. But that’s not how it went; I was the one who wrote to them with an article to see if they wanted to publish it. I’m one of their writers for the blog, but honestly, I haven’t written anything in a long time. Hopefully, I’ll write another article for them soon.

-Have you ever thought about getting a job as an analyst at a bookmaker? It seems to me that half of the bookmakers on the planet would hire you without an interview

-Thanks for the compliment. I’ve had some opportunities, but the issue is that the salaries they can offer, compared to what I earn on my own, are too low to make it worthwhile for me. I would only accept jobs that allow me to continue with my usual activities and whose compensation is significant enough.

-How do you spend the money you earn from your activities? Do you have a hobby?

-I enjoy running (a very inexpensive hobby), playing tennis and football, and traveling.

-If betting didn't exist, what would you do?

-Investing

-What can you say to people who have negative perception of professional bettors?

-It has no sense, it’s just envy. This is like having a negative perception of professional investors. And in fact, it’s much harder to win money betting on sports than doing it investing. Betting is a zero-sum game and you have to fight against the margin of the bookies and the exchange, what is not the case in investing.

-The main betting question. In-Play or prematch?

-Mainly prematch, although sometimes I place in-play bets to protect my prematch position, especially against certain players who are very prone to messing up when they almost have the match won

-What is the strength of a professional bettor?

-Passion, hard work, the ability to analyze, think outside the box, and, of course, to remain calm during difficult times.