Big Ben strikes again in Detroit
Basketball Betting Lines
08/04/2010 -
Auburn Hills, MI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Detroit Pistons re-signed veteran
center Ben Wallace on Wednesday.
Per team policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Detroit Free
Press reported it is a two-year contract worth just under $4 million.
Wallace spent six seasons with Detroit from 2000-06 before leaving as a free
agent to sign with Chicago. He played just one full season with the Bulls
before being traded to Cleveland as part of a three-team deal with Seattle in
February 2008.
After staying in Cleveland for the 2008-09 campaign, Wallace returned to
Detroit last season and averaged 5.5 points, 8.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in 69
games.
Wallace was a dominant force during his first stint in Detroit, winning an NBA
title in the spring of 2004 and capturing the league's defensive player of the
year honors four times (2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006). He averaged 7.9 points and
12.8 rebounds as a member of the Pistons, and earned four All-Star Game nods
(2003-06) in that time.
The Virginia Union product, who will be 36 years old at the start of the
upcoming season, has averaged 6.2 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks in
972 games for Washington, Orlando, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland.
At 6-foot-9, he is the shortest player in league history to reach 2,000 career
blocks.
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East Rutherford, NJ (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Champion colt Lucky Chucky will start
from post two in Saturday's 85th running of the $1.5 million Hambletonian at
The Meadowlands. The one-mile trot is harness racing's premier event.
The Hambleto
<< Seattle's Montero named MLS Player of the Month
New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Fredy Montero was voted Major League Soccer's
Player of the Month for July, it was announced on Wednesday.
Montero has been on fire recently, registering a goal or an assist in eight
straight league matche
<< Alex Rodriguez hits home run No. 600
NEW YORK (AP) -Alex Rodriguez became the youngest player to hit 600 home runs Wednesday, reaching the milestone after a 12-game drought - and exactly three years to the day after his 500th homer - with a drive off Toronto's Shaun Marcum in the first
<< Syracuse in field for 2010 Legends Classic
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) -Syracuse, which was ranked No. 1 for one week last season, and fellow NCAA tournament teams Georgia Tech and UTEP will be host schools in the 2010 Legends Classic.Michigan will be the other team in the field guaranteed a berth
<< A-Rod hits No. 600
Bronx, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez
became the seventh player in Major League Baseball history to reach the 600-
home run plateau, achieving the milestone in the first inning of Wednesday's
game against th
Quality Road heads Whitney Invitational >>
Saratoga Springs, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Quality Road, trained by Todd
Pletcher, tops a field of six for Saturday's $750,000 Whitney Invitational
at Saratoga Race Course. The winner of the 1 1/8-mile Whitney gains automatic
entry i
Blues sign Dave Scatchard >>
St. Louis, MO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The St. Louis Blues have signed forward Dave
Scatchard.
Terms of the two-way contract were not released.
Scatchard spent last season with Nashville and its minor league affiliate in
Milwaukee. He regis
Chargers' third-round pick Butler to miss season >>
San Diego, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The San Diego Chargers announced linebacker
Donald Butler, a third-round selection in the 2010 draft, will miss the
upcoming season due to an Achilles injury suffered on Tuesday.
Butler starred at W
McGee takes Brook Lopez's spot at Team USA camp >>
Colorado Springs, CO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Brook Lopez, center for the New Jersey
Nets, withdrew from consideration for the 2010 USA Basketball World
Championship team due to a battle with mononucleosis.
JaVale McGee, center for the
Bills release Schobel >>
Pittsford, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Buffalo Bills have released veteran
linebacker Aaron Schobel.
The moves comes after the Bills announced Monday that Schobel was not in their
plans for the 2010 season, though did not outright
Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?
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. “
What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?
There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).
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).
How the Opening Line Is Made
The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.
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.
Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:
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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