Vegas to bettors: Please quit taking the favorite and the over...

After further thought, the publicity on this will probably draw enough extra dumb money to make this profitable in the end. And hell, even the winners are probably depositing it back in the slots anyway.

 

Not sure I see what all the fuss is about. From the LA Times story:

There were 12 games that day. As a practical matter, you'd assume that the line has been set such that there's a 50% chance of a given team's beating the spread. In 12 Bernoulli trials with a "success" probability of 0.50, you'd observe 2 (or fewer) successes around 2% of the time. Put another way, you would expect to observe such a Sunday every three years or so.

Re: the over/under but, that number's entirely plausible. In a random sample of 12 iterations, you'd expect to see 7 (or more) "overs" around 38% of the time.

 

My old SE boss goes to Vegas twice a year and claims to come back a winner every trip save one.
He plays only sportsbook, though mostly baseball.

 

Doctorquant, all the games aren't bet evenly, though. If the Bills, Panthers or Bucs cover, not a big deal.

If the Pats or Packers cover, its a big deal. Those are public teams and bet much more heavily than other games.

If the favorite covers or the over hits on the Sunday night game, its a lot bigger deal than the Jags covering.

 

The key to Vegas is doing the research ahead of time, having a sound gambling plan, diversifying your bets a bit (but not too much) and usually it works out.

 

If it's like stealing, you should have every vacation through 2025 paid for. And your own Pleasure Paradise. Just sayin'.

 

Yeah, but now you're talking an even smaller sample size. I wouldn't be surprised to find Vegas not giving much of a shit re:, say, Jacksonville, but assuming that's true, an oh-fer is even more likely. Honestly, I think there's a bit of Br'er Rabbit to this story ... trying to get the saps to think that suddenly they (the saps) have gotten better at this.

 

Not disagreeing, doc.

If the books want money away from the Pats, open the line 2 points higher.

 

The NFL rules have left offenses with an advantage and I am not sure the over/under lines have kept up. So many large leads and so many prevent defenses and junk touchdown.

If only the Steelers and Cowboys had covered more, they'd really be struggling. I could only imagine if PIT and DAL would've covered their "win totals" (they did not).

I do think some trends can be exposed. It was obvious the Chiefs sucked by week 4 and that could be exploited by the spread. Same with broncos in other direction when looking at their schedule.

Also, I do know a guy from college who only plays games with MAC teams as he lives in Las Vegas. He spreads $50-$100 a bet around a dozen different casinos in LV. He says September is the best month to exploit the lines for most of the non-marquee teams but, once October hits, he is strictly MAC games.

 

Vegas knows more about every NFL team then you do. More than I do. More than almost anyone on the planet. Even Vegas can't know more about every college team, especially in mid-major conferences. This is where you can really clean up.

 

If the Colts end up playing the Seahawks in the Super Bowl......bookies all over Vegas will be jumping off of Hoover Dam.