The good news for tennis fans everywhere is, Anna Kournikova is retiring. I mean, sorry about her career ending and all, but then again, sorry about her career and all.

But the really good news is the Association of Tennis Professionals investigating match-fixing claims.

According to bookmakers at Betfair, the oxymoronic name for an Internet betting site, there was a suspicious amount of wagering action on a match between Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Fernando Vicente.

There is no suspicion that Kafelnikov and Vicente were actually involved, but that is beside the point. Hey, if they were involved, all the better.

You see, we are in favor of match-fixing in tennis, from the smallest satellite tournament in Minsk to Wimbledon itself. The more, the better.

And why, you ask. Well, let us explain, and at the typographical version of the top of our lungs.

IF YOU BET ON TENNIS, YOU SHOULD LOSE. YOU SHOULD LOSE BIG. YOU SHOULD FEEL LIKE A SUCKER WHEN YOU LOSE. IF YOU BET ON TENNIS, THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU THAT WOULD NOT BE RICHLY DESERVED.

To put it another way:

IF YOU BET ON TENNIS, YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO POSSESS MONEY.

There, I think we've made our position clear.

True, the notion that there is money to be made in the fixing of tennis matches is revolting enough. And don't even get us started on the idea of people thinking that betting on a Yevgeny Kafelnikov-Fernando Vicente match is a sensible use of one's disposable income.

But we tend to err on the side of libertarianism when it comes to this subject because we believe that anything that separates people who bet tennis matches from their financial ability to bet on tennis matches must be actively encouraged, if not made mandatory.

In other words, if you bet on one tennis match, even if it pits Serena Williams against Margaret Thatcher, you should be forced to continue betting until you have lost everything.

Because you would have committed the one wagering act that would encourage your sponsor at Gamblers Anonymous to abandon hope and simply beat you gray with a bag of auto parts.

We in the anthropology department at Columbia call this "thinning out the herd." It's considered a good thing, if you've got a really dim herd, and it doesn't get any dimmer than this.

I mean (and we're sorry for shouting again), YEVGENY KAFELNIKOV AND FERNANDO VICENTE, FOR GOD'S SAKE? GET YOURSELF TO A MEETING, SKIPPY. YOU'VE LOST YOUR VERY SOUL.

This violates our long stand against bothering with victimless crime, since the people who won their bets got money, and the ones who lost their bets deserve everything they get. And we assume here that there is no obscure French law that requires betting on tennis matches.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, and we draw the line here:

If you know you are about to do something stupid, you have the will and the means to resist, and you do it anyway, then the laws on consumer protection should not apply to you.

Besides, if you're betting on tennis, you also spent a fair amount of leisure time waiting for Anna Kournikova to become a legitimately decent professional, which makes you 0-for-2.

Now we're not going to make fun of Kournikova, except to say that she put the celebrity before the work. So she was a good celebrity but a bad player, well on her way to becoming known for nothing more just being herself.

Hey, that works. You are, after all, the one thing you can't lose, or have stolen from you.

But her retirement also removes one more reason to look at tennis and laugh. I mean, it might have been different if she'd ever shown evidence of actually working at the game, but she worked at what she thought was important, and that wasn't hitting the ball back and forth.

So good luck to her, and good luck to Kafelnikov and Vicente, too.

As for the people who bet their match, well, luck really isn't a part of the equation any longer. Now, it's simply a matter of good old frontier justice. And remember, well-deserved self-induced poverty isn't just a state of mind, it's a way of life.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com