This
week marks the start of my second football season as a part-time
columnist and the resumption of weekly publication (instead of my
cushy off-season schedule of one issue every 2 or 3 weeks). For those
of you that are new readers (and especially for new bettors) let me
provide a little introduction.
Do you
want to know why the pointspread moved from –7 to –8 on your
favorite team last week? Have you ever wondered what goes on behind
the scenes at a Sportsbook? If you’ve answered yes to either
question, then you’ve come to the right place. I will take you
behind the “front lines” to help you understand how the sportsbook
business operates. As the Operations Manager for BoDog Sportsbook
& Casino, I talk to book-makers, handicappers and players every
day, so I can shed some light on the mystery of what goes on behind
the numbers you see on your screen. Knowledge is king in this
business, so my hope is that by reading this column, you’ll be
better armed to make the right choices when it comes to picking the
right teams and the right sportsbooks.
As a
starting point for our weekly discussions, I want all players to
understand the basic business model of sportsbooks. As you all know,
when you place a straight wager on the pointspread of a football or
basketball game, you need to risk $110 to win $100. The $10 difference
between risk and payout is known as the juice, or the vigorish (or
just “vig” for short) and is the reason sportsbooks are in
business. Sportsbooks essentially act as a broker between you and
another player who wants to bet on the other team and collects the
small commission as compensation for brokering the deal and handling
the transfer of funds between the two of you. This is important to
understand, because it leads me to the biggest misconception in sports
wagering. The pointspread is not the handicapper’s predicted
margin-of-victory, but it is in fact the handicapper’s prediction of
what number will be required to split the wagering evenly on both
teams.
Now I
want to discuss in a little more detail how the pointspreads are
derived and what you need to know to take advantage of the numbers.
Linemakers
are divided into two groups, oddsmakers and bookmakers. Oddsmakers
deal in a theoretical world because they don’t actually take bets on
the lines that they publish. Oddsmakers make their money by selling
their lines to media outlets, sportsbooks, etc. These are the lines
you see in your local newspaper or hear on the radio. The lines
don’t change very much from day to day, because there are no direct
wagers placed on these lines, and as such, there are no line moves
required to try and balance action. On the other hand, bookmakers deal
very much in the real world, as they take bets on the lines they
publish. These lines then move as a result of wagering, because the
books seek to balance action in an effort to minimize risk and
maximize the vig (commission) collected. This fundamental difference
is one of the main reasons that the lines you see in your newspaper
are not always the same lines you get when you deal with a sportsbook.
It is worth mentioning that time is also a factor. The lines in your
paper were probably “accurate” (for lack of a better phrase) when
they were submitted to the editor, but in the amount of time that
passes from pre-production to when you read the paper, injuries,
weather and other factors can dramatically shift the spread.
Linemakers
use a variety of methods to calculate their idea of the pointspread. I
cannot say which methods are best, or who is the most accurate. If I
had this figured out, I would be sitting on a beach somewhere,
enjoying my millions won betting on sports. Some linemakers use
complicated computer programs that factor in recent performance,
injuries, player match-ups, etc. Others simply have a feel for the
games and produce a number out of thin air. However, most line makers
use power ratings or some derivation. Power ratings involve assigning
each team a numerical value based on performance and than comparing
the ratings to generate a pointspread. For example, one set of ratings
I saw last week had St. Louis rated 34 and San Francisco rated 30 so
the difference would result in a 4-point line (assuming a neutral
location) with the Rams as the favorite. The home team usually gets an
additional 3 or 3.5-point advantage so if the game was in San
Francisco the Rams might be a 1-point favorite. In St. Louis the Rams
might open as a 7-point favorite. You get the idea. There are no
standards for how to derive these ratings, and developing a good
method is the key to success as predicting actual outcomes with better
accuracy than the majority of the betting public is your key to
success.
A few
sportsbooks base all their lines on their own internal linemaking, but
the majority of books rely either solely on oddsmaking services or a
combination of external service and their own handicapping. I asked
Kent, BoDog’s top bookmaker, how he derives lines, and he explained
that his team handicaps the games themselves, compares these results
to the opening lines out of Vegas and then adjusts for the historical
action of BoDog’s player base before coming up with an opening
number for each game. From there, the numbers are moved only to
balance action or to account for special circumstances such as
weather, injuries or the like.
Now
that we know how lines are generated and where sportsbooks get them
from, lets discuss what you need to do to win. You have some
advantages over the sportsbooks that can compensate for the vig you
pay on a winning bet. The key advantage is that you do not have to
wager on every game, you can pick and choose your wagering
opportunities. The bookmaker puts up a number on hundreds of events
each and every week. In a typical NFL week, there are as many as 16
games for you to choose from and there are multiple betting
opportunities on each game. You may not have a good feel for every
game, but you most likely see several games where you are confident
that one team will cover with better than 52.4% probability (52.4% is
magic number to cover the vig on a standard football pointspread
wager). This is what handicappers refer to as an “overlay” or
“getting value”. For example, if you think Miami will win by 10
points and the pointspread is only 4.5, you have an overlay. The odds
appear to be in your favor and if you find enough of these situations,
you can make a profit betting on sports.
Next
week, I will take a look at wagering on preseason NFL games. I look
forward to a great football season and hope you find the columns
helpful.
I
always welcome comments, questions and suggestions via email at rob@bodog.com
Rob
Gillespie
Operations Manager
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