High Profile and the Obscure: We Love them Both
Joe Duffy (www.godspicks.com)
I have a colleague who insists on picking the “little guys”, that is small conferences in college because he feels the big league games involving celebrated teams “everyone knows about”.
That is true. And it is false.
Having schooling of the pros and cons of each is one of the many munitions that we use in keeping our wiseguy clients in lucrative betting. First of all, let us examine how smart money affects higher profile games and the more obscure differently.
World-class vested interest makers bet on every sport and know that they can make as much money betting on Louisiana-Monroe as on Miami-Florida. Recreational players like to bet on games that they will watch and be discussed at the water cooler on Monday. Furthermore, the hunch player and parlay card level investor makes selections on games in which they have some level of insight. In 98 percent of cases, it will be on a marquee game.
Asks any bookmaker, be they in Vegas, Costa Rica or Big Ernie driving around in his van with a cell phone on whether they will book more bets on Nebraska-Oklahoma or Eastern Michigan-Toledo. Even in the heart of MAC country, the big match-up will generate more interest. Of course the burning question is what does it mean to the gambler?
Smart money will move a line a lot more in a mid-major conference than it will on a MNF game because the potential to balance it out is much higher in marquee contests. When a sportsbook will take $190,000 in action on a MNF game, a $4,000 bet is easier to offset than in game between Idaho and North Texas, where they may only get $500 worth of action on the other side without moving the line.
But the biggest books don’t merely have an exact mathematical formula for changing a line. “I really don’t move off of the amount of money but will move off what I consider to be sharp money,” says Leo Shafto of MVP Sportsbook. Shafto is certainly one of the most aggressive in moving the line when it comes to combating topflight sports betting swashbucklers.
In the games in which sportsbooks are getting low volume, books can be much more dynamic in moving the line because in the supposed situation, there was not enough money already bet on the Idaho-North Texas game that the books risk of getting destroyed by the handicapping aristocrats is more than the risky venture of getting “middled”.
For those of you not familiar, “middling” is the line shoppers Holy Grail—betting opposite sides of both ends of line moves and hoping the final score falls in the middle. In other words betting a favorite at –4.5 and the dog in the same game at +5.5. All they risk is the juice, but if the favorite wins by five, they win with both sides.
On a MNF game though, over-adjusting to smart money runs the risk of getting “middled”. Here is an illustration using the above hypothetical. A sharp player lays down that $4,000 on Idaho at -11 points. MVP Sportsbook now has $4,725 of money bet on Idaho and $600 on North Texas. If they move the line to –13 to prevent clients from jumping on the smart money, they can only get “middled” to the tune of $4,725. If they don’t adjust the line, the amount of money a sportsbook can lose by letting others gravy train the inside dope is unlimited.
Conversely if $4,000 in sharp money came in on the Pittsburgh Steelers against Cleveland, and MVP Sportsbook has $29,700 on the Steelers –6, but just $20,000 on Cleveland +6, moving the line two points like in the North Texas example leaves them vulnerable to getting middled by up to $29,700. That is why only a huge injury would ever move an NFL line as aggressively as “sharpie” activity can move a small conference college line.
Bookmakers combat that by adding juice instead of points, which too many nonprofessional players disregard, but smart players know they can get the same line for standard vig.
Also the Internet in making the spread of information so much more widely available has also caused the patsy player to outsmart himself. In the above theoretical illustration, word spreads that North Texas will be without their second best pass rusher and premier cornerback against the high-octane offense of Idaho.
Joeybagofdonuts reads about this on some gambling posting board and oblivious to the fact that the opening line was –11 and is now –14, bets the Vandals anyway. If he wins, he fancies himself to be a wiseguy and will just outmaneuver himself soon enough by pressing his luck.
A shrewd handicapper puts the line move under a microscope. First of all, were the injuries taken into consideration with the opening line? In other words, were the key players considered “questionable” only to have their status downgraded or were these injuries that happened in practice long after the lines were posted?
Not that I will mention any names (me), but you bet it abets a bet to have great fellowship in the offshore and Vegas sportsbooks. My ingenious alliteration aside, it takes out the speculation in discerning the smart money/sucker money ratio that moves a line. Or is it the linesmakers being proactive and anticipating smart money coming in on one side?
The answer varies from game to game. Opportunists find out the accurate dope sheet. We can be such mercenaries sometimes.
The more noteworthy a game is, often the more valuable handicapping revelation is easily procured. But the more indistinct a game is, the more treasured little-known bulletins can be. Conversely the public often takes the bait thinking they have the privy skinny and still bets the wrong end of an over-adjusted and off kilter line.
Time after time, the easier to get hot poop is on the games, the tougher it is for the books to adjust. Likewise the tougher-to-acquire information is on games in which the books have more leeway to react.
Bookmakers stay in business because a lot more people misapply what comes down the pipeline than those of us who synthesize and incorporate the lowdown into its proper perspective.
Shafto in fact expressed his linesmaking philosophy that is immensely similar to what I have used to beat him and his colleagues. “Bookmaking is not a perfect science. It’s having the math work for you. As soon as you become foolish and take giant pointspread leaps, you will turn the math against you. “
Luckily different linesmakers have different philosophies. That helps us line shoppers.
Too often, the bourgeois bettor outfoxes himself. We send our gratitude for helping us inverse their knee-jerk betting. It’s a “cool jerk” as far as I am concerned.
“TV or not TV?” that is the question. We say the answer is both.
Joe Duffy is General Manager of Freescoreboard.com, the premier handicapping hub on the Internet and also of 866-FREE-866, the top source for real-time toll-free recorded scores, odds, injuries, weather, news and notes, free picks and more. Duffy’s plays are part of the Dream Team at Godspicks.com. He is perhaps the most published and respected author on sports gambling theory and has been featured as a regular guest as the handicapping expert on the Rick Ballou Show on Sporting News Radio.