11/01/2008 - Fort Worth, Texas (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Kyle Busch tied Sam Ard's 1983 record of 10 Nationwide Series victories in a season by winning Saturday's O'Reilly Challenge at the Texas Motor Speedway. The No.18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver led 174 of 200 laps, but held off a hard-charging Carl Edwards at the finish.
Edwards' second-place finish allowed him to move within 91 points of leader Clint Bowyer with just Phoenix and Homestead remaining on the schedule.
Mark Martin, Joey Logano and David Ragan completed the top-five. Bowyer finished sixth.
More details to follow.
<< Marseille tops St. Etienne to climb to second
Marseille, France (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Hatem Ben Arfa had a goal and two assists
as Marseille defeated St. Etienne 3-1 at the Stade Velodrome in France's Ligue
1 on Saturday.
Benoit Cheyrou and Taye Taiwo also scored for Marseille, which to
<< Georgia Tech QB Nesbitt leaves game
Atlanta, GA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Georgia Tech quarterback Josh Nesbitt left
Saturday's game against Florida State with an apparent right foot injury.
Nesbitt suffered the injury with 7:11 left in the third quarter, as the
signal-ca
<< Sabathia highlights free agency filings Saturday
New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - CC Sabathia was among 23 Major League
Baseball players to file for free agency on Saturday.
Sabathia, the 2007 American League Cy Young Award winner, will likely be the
top pitcher on the market t
<< Report: Culpepper, Lions agree to contract
Detroit, MI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Detroit Lions and free-agent quarterback
Daunte Culpepper have reportedly agreed to a two-year deal, which will be
officially signed Monday.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the former Oakland
Ajax tops Twente for fourth straight win >>
Enschede, Netherlands (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Siem De Jong scored late in the first
half and Rasmus Lindgren added the clincher in extra time as Ajax edged Twente,
2-0, on Saturday in the Dutch Eredivisie.
Ajax won its fourth straight and moved
'Bama preps for LSU with easy win >>
Tuscaloosa, AL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Mark Ingram ran for 113 yards and two
touchdowns, leading second-ranked Alabama to a 35-0 rout of Arkansas State at
Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Glen Coffee and Roy Upchurch also scored rushing touchdowns f
Atlanta recalls Pavelec from Chicago >>
Chicago, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The NHL's Atlanta Thrashers have recalled
goaltender Ondrej Pavelec from their American Hockey league affiliate, the
Chicago Wolves, it was announced on Saturday.
The 21-year-old netminder has allow
Xavi leads Barca over Malaga for 11th straight win >>
Malaga, Spain (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Xavi scored twice and Lionel Messi added one
to lead Barcelona to its 11th straight victory, 4-1 over Malaga at rain-soaked
Estadio La Rosaleda on Saturday in Spain's La Liga.
Barca opened league play with
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.”
To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.
Is there such a thing as a trap game in the NFL?
I once asked that question to Pete Korner, who at the time was office manager and a senior linesmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants.
Korner almost ripped my head off. There is no such thing as a trap game, he loudly berated me. It’s a myth. The numbers are made using power ratings, he said.
There are trap games, though. They just might not be what you think. The perception is of a good team, say Philadelphia, laying a small number against New Orleans.
Using the highly-respected power ranking from The Gold Sheet, you’d find the Eagles with a power rating of 4 and the Saints at 8. When you factor the game being played in New Orleans, you could see why the line opened so short at less than a field goal.
For some, this makes it enticing to take the Eagles. That’s not a real trap game, though.
A real trap game, says professional gambler Dave Malinsky, is thinking you’re getting value betting a bad team, which brings us to the Oakland Raiders-Denver Broncos matchup.
The Raiders are +15 in this long-standing division rivalry. Denver is on a short week having dispatched Baltimore Monday. However, the Raiders haven’t covered the spread their last 10 games.
Many bettors don’t trust the Raiders to give a full effort. Few think much of Art Shell and his Oakland’s coaching staff.
So oddsmakers have to do something to make Oakland attractive if they hope to get equal action.
Now Malinsky is a value shopper. But he won’t touch the Raiders even getting more than two touchdowns.
“I try to eliminate the undisciplined, unfocused teams because they’re the ones most likely to suffer the bad beats,” he said.
Near the top of Malinsky’s list of stay-away teams is the Miami Dolphins, who have yet to cover a spread this season.
“Whatever you think of Nick Saban, you have to look at the penalties and turnovers,” Malinsky said.
It’s easy to point out the Dolphins failed to get the money this past week against New England because Olindo Mare missed a field goal and had another field goal blocked. But even though the Dolphins outgained the Patriots, 283-213, they committed eight penalties.
Bad teams not only cost themselves victories, but pointspread covers as well. The Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers are two more examples.
The Cardinals couldn’t have been in a better position this past Sunday, up 14-0 at home against a mediocre Kansas City Chiefs squad. But they couldn’t hold it. The Packers got a push against St. Louis, but also could have won losing by three when Brett Favre fumbled at the St. Louis 11-yard line with 44 seconds left.
“The Packers were in a position to beat Philadelphia, too,” Malinsky said. “But they couldn’t even cover double digits.
“These teams just make mistakes and it costs you … they always will look good from a value standpoint. They really will. But that’s the trap.”
Houston and Tennessee rank among the six-worst teams. Malinsky wouldn’t be afraid to take either of these teams, however, if the price were high enough.
The Texans are bad, Malinsky said, but they have some discipline. The Titans showed they could not only come up with an outstanding game plan, but execute it as well, losing by one to the Colts on the road as an 18 ?-point underdog this past Sunday.
“Jeff Fisher is a worker,” Malinsky said of the Titans coach. “I’m not sure how hard Art Shell wants to work when he gets out of bed.”
Fisher, though, could be out as Tennessee coach after this season. Is he still worth backing in the right spot, with the right price, as a lame duck coach?
“It’s in his nature to keep working hard and not worry about any possible lame duck status,” Malinsky said. “He’s coaching for his resume.”
Note: Monday night game will be picked Monday. Lines used are from football betting lines.
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