---
title: "Win the First Set, Win the Match? 12,640 Settled Polymarket Tennis Matches"
canonical: "https://0xinsider.com/research/tennis-first-set-winner-polymarket"
datePublished: "2026-09-13"
dateModified: "2026-09-13"
description: "The first-set winner won 80.7% of 12,640 settled Polymarket tennis matches: 83.1% on the ITF tour, 81.1% in the WTA, 74.3% in best-of-five men's Grand Slam matches. Third sets and deciders, with charts."
---

# Win the First Set, Win the Match? 12,640 Settled Polymarket Tennis Matches

Last updated: 2026-09-13
Canonical: https://0xinsider.com/research/tennis-first-set-winner-polymarket

Polymarket lists set markets for about half the tennis singles matches it settles, so what the first set says about the match is a count. In 12,640 settled singles matches since November 9, 2025, the player who won the first set won the match 80.7% of the time, to within 0.69 of a point. Best of five is more forgiving: 74.3%. A best-of-three match went to a third set 36.9% of the time, and when the first two sets were split, the player who won the second set took the decider 53.9% of the time.

## A tennis match on Polymarket is a match market and set markets

Polymarket lists each tennis match as an event. The match market is titled with the tournament and both players, "US Open ATP: Frances Tiafoe vs Ben Shelton", and pays $1 on the player who advances. Around it sit the set markets: "Set 1 Winner", "Set 2 Winner", a set handicap, Total Sets, Total Games and games totals for single sets.

The rules decide what a retirement does. The match market settles on the player who advances, including by retirement, default or disqualification, and a walkover settles 50-50. A set winner market settles only on a completed set, and settles 50-50 if that set is not finished. Total Sets settles on any result already decided when play stopped.

Because the match and each set settle to a result, what the first set says about the match is a count. This study pairs every settled first-set market with its match market, splits the result by tour and by format, follows the first two sets to the match result, and counts how often a match went the distance.

## 12,640 settled matches with a first-set market

The count covers every Polymarket singles match with a settled match market and a settled first-set market, from the first on November 9, 2025 to September 13, 2026: 12,640 matches. Set markets name players by surname and match markets by full name, so a set result maps to a match result when the full name ends with the surname. Doubles and matches between two players with the same last name are left out, and so is any market that settled 50-50.

Tour is the series Polymarket files the match under, and each is broader than its name. ATP here means tour events and their qualifying rounds, junior boys' matches at the Grand Slams, and smaller events such as Seville and Genoa. WTA includes qualifying and junior girls, and ITF is the ITF World Tennis Tour for men and women.

Format comes from the markets. A match counts as best of five when Polymarket lists a market only a best-of-five match can have: a Set 4 or Set 5 winner market, a -2.5 set handicap, a Total Sets line of 3.5 or 4.5, or a match games total of 30 or more. That flags 522 matches, 489 of them from the four Grand Slam men's main draws. A tournament title would not do the job: Polymarket files Australian Open qualifying, which is best of three, under the same title as the men's main draw. Every rate carries a plain binomial half-width.

## The first-set winner won 80.7% of matches

The player who won the first set went on to win 80.7% of the 12,640 matches, with a half-width of 0.69 points. The rate holds from quarter to quarter: 81.9% over 3,092 matches in the first quarter of 2026, 80.3% in the second and 80.3% in the third. The last weeks of 2025 hold 29 matches.

Four matches in five is the average across every kind of first set, and the average hides the matchup. A favorite who wins the first set has done what the price expected. An underdog who wins it still has to beat the favorite again. This study has no prices to split those cases, so read 80.7% as the base rate a live price starts from, not the price itself.

## The first set by tour and format

Across the best-of-three tours the rate moves by about three points. The first-set winner won 83.1% of 2,235 ITF matches, 81.1% of 3,844 WTA matches and 80.0% of 6,039 best-of-three ATP matches. The WTA and ATP intervals overlap, so this data shows no difference between women's and men's best-of-three tennis. The ITF rate sits about three points above the ATP rate, a gap wider than both half-widths together.

Best of five is the exception. In 522 best-of-five matches the first-set winner won 74.3% of the time, with a half-width of 3.75 points. A player who drops the first set in a best-of-three match has two sets left and needs both; in best of five they have four left and need three. That extra room shows up as about six more points of comebacks. All ATP matches together come to 79.6%.

## 36.9% of best-of-three matches went to a third set

Polymarket's Total Sets Over/Under 2.5 settles Over when a best-of-three match needs a third set. Of the 12,087 settled on best-of-three singles matches, 36.9% went Over, with a half-width of 0.86 points: 38.1% in the ATP, 36.5% in the WTA and 35.2% on the ITF tour. The ITF's lower third-set rate goes with its higher first-set rate.

In best of five, 55.1% of 501 settled Over 3.5 markets went to a fourth set and 29.1% of 258 Over 4.5 markets to a fifth.

The set markets and the Total Sets market agree. On the 2,437 best-of-three matches that had both, a split of the first two sets matched an Over every time, and a player winning both matched an Under every time. Two kinds of market, settled separately, tell the same story about the same matches.

## After a split, the second-set winner has the edge

2,880 best-of-three matches had both a Set 1 and a Set 2 market settled. In 60.1% of them one player won both sets and, as the format requires, the match. The other 1,148 went to a deciding set.

In those deciders the player who had won the first set won the match 46.1% of the time, with a half-width of 2.88 points, so the player who won the second set won 53.9%. The whole interval sits below 50%. Winning the first set counts for a lot before the second set is played. Once the second set has gone the other way, the player who levelled the match is the slight favorite in the decider. This data does not say whether that is momentum or the better player taking over.

Best of five shows the same pattern on fewer matches. When the first two sets were split, the first-set winner won 38.5% of 104 matches. When one player won both, they went on to win 91.8% of 122 matches, so a comeback from two sets down happened 8.2% of the time.

## Where the best-of-five matches come from

Of the 522 best-of-five matches, 126 are from Wimbledon, 123 from Roland Garros, 122 from the Australian Open and 118 from the US Open, all men's main-draw matches. 17 are from the Next Gen ATP Finals, which plays best of five with short sets, and 14 are Wimbledon qualifying matches from June 25, 2026 that Polymarket listed with best-of-five markets.

Two are ATP Finals matches, a best-of-three event, that Polymarket listed with games totals of 36.5 and up, one of them also with a -2.5 set handicap. They stay in the best-of-five group because the rule reads the listing, and two matches out of 522 barely move its rate.

## What this study does not show

It has no prices. It does not say what a player was priced at after winning the first set, or whether that price was right, because the set markets on record settle at the same time as the match and carry no time for the end of the set. The live price after a first set depends on who won it, and this study counts results, not prices.

It does not split by player strength. The 80.7% mixes favorites who won the first set with underdogs who did, and the right number for any one match sits above or below it.

The samples are the matches Polymarket listed set markets for. 2,880 best-of-three matches had a Set 2 market, a smaller and possibly different set of matches than the 12,087 with a Total Sets market, and the third-set rate in that smaller group was higher. Tour labels come from Polymarket's series, which mix tiers, and doubles are left out.

## What it means for a tennis bettor

The first set is the single most informative event in a tennis match. Its winner goes on to win four times in five, a little more on the ITF tour and a lot less in best-of-five Grand Slam matches, where a lost first set leaves room to recover.

A third set is a little more than one match in three. A Total Sets Over 2.5 price starts from about 37 cents before the matchup moves it: two close players push it up, a mismatch pushes it down.

And a set-all match is close to a coin flip with a lean to the player who just won the second set. On average the first-set winner at one set all is a slight underdog; the average mixes favorites and underdogs, so the two players still matter more than the order of the sets.

## How to follow tennis on 0xinsider

The tennis board at 0xinsider.com/sports/tennis lists every match with the players' Polymarket prices, and live matches show the games of each set and the set score as they are played. Open a match for its event page: the Markets section lists the match's Polymarket markets by family, including the first-set winner, the set handicap, Total Sets and Total Games, each with its price change over the last hour and the last 24 hours, and a line showing where the money is by market family.

Most tennis money arrives during play. The timing study at 0xinsider.com/research/when-large-sports-bets-land found 73.0% of large tennis buys landing after the match started, and the cash-out study at 0xinsider.com/research/cashing-out-polymarket-sports found 87.7% of large tennis sells during the match. The whale alerts feed at 0xinsider.com/whale-alerts shows those trades as they fill, with the grade of each wallet, and the event page's Top holders tab lists who holds each player. The guide at 0xinsider.com/learn/how-to-bet-on-tennis-polymarket covers each tennis market and how to bet it.

## How to check it yourself

Every number on this page comes from one read-only run of a set of queries against the production database at 19:46 UTC on September 13, 2026. The query text and the raw output are public at github.com/0xinsider/research, under polymarket-sports-markets, in the files whose names carry the words tennis-sets.

The universe is every settled Polymarket tennis singles match with a match market and a first-set market, both settled to a player, where the two players' last names differ. The best-of-three and best-of-five splits use the format flag described above; query 7 in the file lists the tournaments behind it.

Expect the counts to grow; tennis settles every day. The overall first-set rate should hold within its half-width. The best-of-five rate will move most, since it grows only during the four Grand Slams.

## FAQ

### How often does the first set winner win the match in tennis?

In 12,640 settled Polymarket singles matches from November 9, 2025 to September 13, 2026, the player who won the first set won the match 80.7% of the time, with a binomial half-width of 0.69 points. It was 81.1% in the WTA, 80.0% in best-of-three ATP matches and 74.3% in best-of-five matches.

### How often does a tennis match go to three sets?

36.9% of 12,087 settled Polymarket Total Sets Over/Under 2.5 markets on best-of-three singles matches settled Over: 38.1% in the ATP, 36.5% in the WTA and 35.2% on the ITF tour.

### Who usually wins the deciding set after splitting the first two?

The player who won the second set. In 1,148 best-of-three Polymarket matches that went to a deciding set, the second-set winner won 53.9% of the time and the first-set winner 46.1%, with a half-width of 2.88 points.

### How often do players come back from two sets down?

In best-of-five Polymarket matches with both set markets settled, the player who won the first two sets won the match 91.8% of the time, so a comeback from two sets down happened 8.2% of the time, 10 of 122 matches. The sample is small.

### Is the first set more important in women's tennis?

Not in this data. The first-set winner won 81.1% of 3,844 WTA matches and 80.0% of 6,039 best-of-three ATP matches, and the two intervals overlap. The larger difference is format: 74.3% in best-of-five men's matches.