As the
Spurs and Nets get set to battle for the NBA Championship, I thought
this would be a great time to recap the NBA action so far this season.
This playoff season has been a pretty good one for books but there
have been a few strange trends that I will share with you. With no NBA
games for a few days I had time to crunch some of the numbers.
Hopefully you can benefit a little from what you read here.
Let us
start with some of the trends you can add up yourself. I’ll save you a
little work here. There have been 82 games played in the playoffs so
far. Of those games:
· Home teams are 51-31 straight up (not counting the spread)
· Home teams are 41-38-3 ATS (against the spread)
· Home dogs are 7-8-2 ATS
· Favorites are 42-37-3
· Home teams and favorites are 3-0 ATS in Game 7s
· The Over is 48-33-1
Now for
a trend that is a little more difficult to analyze yourself, the
betting patterns. In 26 of the games we had what we would consider to
be a moderate or large “decision” (where the action is not balanced
between the two teams and we risk big losses, but also stand to win
big) with the pointspread. The House came out ahead with an
unremarkable 13-12-1 record ATS, but did win 6 of the 8 decisions we
considered large. What was interesting was that of the 26 teams
bettors played heavily, 22 were the road team and 14 were a road
favorite. The last fact is really amazing when you consider there were
only 17 road favorites in the whole playoffs so far. It was an even
split on those games but they did produce the two largest wins of the
playoffs for the book with Minnesota pounding the Lakers in Game #2 of
their opening round series and the Pistons beating the 76ers in Game
#2 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Road favorite betting also
produced the largest win for the bettors when the Spurs beat the
Nowitzki-less Mavericks in Game #4 of the Western Conference Finals.
This a pretty common trend with retail bettors, as you may recall from
a previous column I did on home dogs in football. This doesn’t mean
the bettors are right or wrong, but those of you that like to bet the
opposite sides may want to take note if the Spurs are a favorite in
the games played in New Jersey.
Another
common betting trend is playing the Over and bettors have certainly
done so in these playoffs. Even more importantly, they have definitely
done well by doing so. The decisions on the totals are seldom in the
same size range as the large pointspread decisions, but there have
been several in the moderate range with players coming out ahead on
most of them. In fact, we are in the hole on totals for the playoffs.
This is different from each of the last two seasons where totals were
the best line type for books. Books have taken note and have been
adjusting totals up, resulting in the Under cashing in 4 of the last 5
games.
Since I
have touched on the subject, here is a quick summary of the financial
results so far. Pointspreads have been good for the House. Several key
games have gone the House’s way but more importantly, from our
perspective, is that only a handful of games have landed on the
number. It seemed like every other game was landing on the spread each
of the last two seasons and as a result we barely made money in 2001
and lost a little last year. When games are not landing on or near the
closing spreads, the house really benefits, as bought-points do not
come into play and teasers cash a little less. Moneylines have been
very, very good for us and this is again opposite of the last two
years where bettors piled up big money on the Lakers moneyline every
night and rode them all the way to the bank. First half and half time
betting have been pretty unremarkable, in terms of results, with the
book just barely earning the vig on both. Parlays have been really
good and teasers have been great with lots of lop-sided wins. Overall
handle is up over double from last season and nearly 6 times what we
booked in 2001. Part of the reason for the increase may be our recent
move to a true dime line as we have had a real rush of baseball
bettors in the last two months.
I will
save the NHL recap for the next column and I will also be doing a
little research on baseball’s Interleague play, which starts this
week. Enjoy the finals. I hope it is a little closer than the last few
have been.
I
always welcome comments, questions and suggestions via email at
rob@bodog.com
Rob Gillespie
President
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