09/12/2008 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The morning-line odds have been released for Saturday's $500,000 Monmouth Stakes at Monmouth Park. Kentucky Derby and Preakness champ Big Brown is the 2-1 favorite in the 11 horse field, a significant difference from the 1-2 the colt was for the Haskell Invitational.
Big Brown will be taking on older thoroughbreds for the first time in the turf race at 1 1/8 miles. If all 11 go, Big Brown will face a wide variety of grass runners with whom he will have to deal.
The 7-2 second choice is Shakis, a two-time winner of the Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga. The eight-year-old is a veteran of 32 races with seven victories for $685,532. Since May of 2007 he has hit the board six times in nine starts. Trained by Kiaran McLaughlin, Shakis will break from post three, immediately to the inside of Big Brown. Local rider Joe Bravo will add his knowledge of the Monmouth turf course to Shakis' effort.
Lightly raced Proudinsky is the 4-1 third pick in the program. The five-year- old is coming off a sixth-place finish to Shakis as the 5-2 favorite in the Bernard Baruch. Leaving from post six, Ramon Dominguez will have the reins for owner Gary Tanaka and trainer Bobby Frankel. Proudinsky has just 12 career starts with four wins and $557, 807. This year he won the Mervin Muniz Jr. Memorial Handicap at the Fair Grounds, but was 11th in the Manhattan Handicap.
A horse that is cross-entered in the $250,000 PTHA President's Cup at Philly Park is Silver Tree. The eight-year-old is 6-1 for the Monmouth Stakes, but the 8-5 morning-line favorite for the Philly race, which is also 1 1/8 miles on the turf. If Silver Tree remains in the Monmouth, he will be running on familiar ground, having won the Oceanport Stakes at the Jersey Shore track. Trained by Bill Mott for Peter Vegso, Silver Tree has won 14 of 40 career starts with 10 seconds and four times as show. His lifetime earnings of better than $1.7 million is the second highest in the field to Big Brown's $3.3 million,
Several of the 11 entrants will be on or near the lead in the Monmouth Stakes. Possible pace-setters are Proudinsky, Hotstufanthensome, Kiss the Kid, Get Serious and Fagedaboudit Sal.
Big Brown will be using Saturday's race as his final prep before the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita on October 25. Trainer Rick Dutrow, Jr., with the ownership group, have decided that a turf race will best prepare the colt for Santa Anita's synthetic main track.
I doubt that Big Brown will go off at 2-1 when the gates open. He will likely be bet down to even-money or less. However, if all 11 start Shakis and Silver Tree will have to be included in the exotics, with Shakis singled for win. .
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Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.
“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.
“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).
Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.
Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.
The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.
Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game
Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.
Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.
Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”
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