Menace, Anyone

“He explained to Aleksandrina Naydenova, a Bulgarian player struggling to break into the world’s top 200, that she could choose how severely she wanted to tank a set. He sent the texts in English: If she lost her first service game, she would make 1,000 euros, he wrote. If she lost the second one, she would make 1,200 euros. It didn’t matter if she won the match, only that she lost those games. Naydenova seemed willing. ‘Give me some time to confirm,’ she wrote. As Sargsyan waited, a Belgian police SWAT team was on its way to his parents’ house.” Kevin Sieff with an excellent and detailed looked at the man who built the biggest match-fixing ring in tennis. And it’s a sign of things to come that this had nothing to do with the big time tennis like the US Open going on this week. These were small tournaments with low prize money that sometimes took place on high school courts. People will bet on anything. WaPo (Gift Article): The Maestro: Game, Set, Fix.