Hmmm, seems as if they were going to try and drive the betting that they would first need some sort of a prediction on the game no? C'mon amigo, they don't just pull a number out of their ass, of course they have to have an idea of how the game will finish before they attempt to inctice action. I think you need another mug of tea.
You can't possibly be this naive. Bookies make their money on the vigorish, amigo. Not by picking actual winners. A bad pick could wipe them out, so they seek balanced betting to insure that there are no huge payouts that they can't meet. If most of the bets all come in on one side they change the line to encourage betting on the other team. They will make easy money on the house cut on all betting and the payouts will even out. Not that I know anything about illegal betting.
I know a ton about it also and I know that while this is a long standing "belief" about the house wanting equal money on both sides it is widely over blown. The house would love nothing more than to have a ton of money on one side (the wrong side). My point is, if you don't think they factor in how they think the game will end then you are just out of your mind.
Of course. But houses that count on this go broke. Successful bookies play the vig. Betters are not stupid enough to pick the wrong side consistently and underdogs win regularly. Maybe, but the point you missed is that the point spread is designed to trend the betting in a favorable direction. Why do you think they use a point spread instead of just picking the winner?
I know LSU is a better team than South Carolina. I think LSU is better than Florida but you know how that works. Something tells me we will see Florida in the SEC championship game.
Red is correct. No book wants to be overexposed. One bad weekend and someone would be out of a job. And all books use basically the same line so there's no chance ALL of them would put themselves at risk. A simple example is if an oddsmaker thought LSU would beat USCe by 30 this weekend there's no way in hell he would ever set the line that way. There wouldn't be one bet on sc. they will set it between a balance of public perception and supposed wise guys. Actually they allow some so called experts to bet it before being released to adjust any numbers that are off.
Bookmaking 101 amigo, there just isn't enough volume on any 1 game for a book to perfectly balance action just to collect juice and call it a profit. I will give you an example and it may come and it may not and we will use this game for instance. It opened at 4 and quickly went to 3. 77% of that money is currently sitting on the Ole Ball Coaches side. It is still early and anyone who knows anything about betting knows the gametime line is where you usually find the best value for your dollar. If money continues to roll in on SC and that number doesn't move or in some cases it will go the other way, meaning it may move back to LSU -4 then you know for a fact that Vegas is betting heavily that LSU covers that number. Why else would they try to "entice" MORE people to play USC?
