[Husker] Point spreads

[Bapi Gupta]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Mike Nolan wrote:

>> Yes, I can.  Point spreads -- people putting their money behind  their
>> projections.
>
> It isn't the people making the projections who are putting their money
> behind them, it is the people betting on those projections.
>
> Point spreads are designed to even out the money on both sides of the game,
> so that the sports book, the people setting the point spreads, has a
> guaranteed profit.

Mike, this is true *in theory*, but you would be surprised how often the 
sportsbook remains sided and essentially allows the majority of the 
money to be bet on one team.  Gamblers call taking a team that appears to 
be an easy bet (everyone is betting on them) a "trap".  It's uncanny how 
often the obvious bet will lose when Vegas is holding a 70/30% money lean 
against them.

You can look at sportsbook.com's stats online:

http://www.sportsbook.com/sportsbook/lines_bkc.html

If you look down to the NU-KU numbers now, you'll see:

  02/08 ET  Kansas    -5.0  -5.0  65% 89%
  19:30     Nebraska              35% 11%

This means that this particular sportsbook, which is, by and large, 
reflective of overall betting trends is taking 65% of its bets on Kansas 
tonight, as a 5 point favorite, and has not moved its line to even out the 
betting money.  (89% are betting on Kansas to win outright, and that's 
high too because the money line bet should be even as well).

This isn't to say that they don't always move as Mike suggests.  You can 
see that they've taken 84% of their bets on Boston College against Wake 
Forest and have moved BC from a 1 1/2 point favorite a 2 1/2 point 
favorite.

What is completely counter-intuitive is what occasionally happens when the 
money is on a team and the sportsbooks actually move *towards* that money, 
making the bet even more tempting (bettors often call this a "trap").  For 
example, you will, at times see games where say Nebraska is a 6 point 
favorite over Iowa State, and has 70% of the money bet as "Nebraska -6". 
Now instead of the book moving to say "Nebraska -7", occasionally they 
will move the other way, say to "Nebraska -5 1/2".

I have a friend, an LHS alum no less, who has been using sportsbook 
analysis as a primary betting strategy.  He simply follows the 
sportsbook's moves and bets against the bettors, essentially taking the 
position the house is taking.  It's hard to understand the rationale from 
a sports perspective, but it makes plenty of sense from an economics view.

> Thus point spreads represent not the likely point difference of the game
> but what point difference people are willing to put money on.
>
> Husker fans have been grumbling for years that Nebraska seldom covers the
> spread.  I wonder if Bapi knows of any research on the actual margin vs
> the point spread in either football or basketball?
> --
> Mike Nolan

Well, this kind of information is pretty readily available online at a 
place like covers.com or at my site bapi.net/football, for that matter.

http://www.covers.com/pageLoader/pageLoader.aspx?page=/data/ncf/teams/team55.html
http://www.bapi.net/football/viewschedule.phtml?team=nebraska

Nebraska was 6-5 ATS in 2005 and 4-7 in 2004, in football.  I could 
probably run a script to check Nebraska all-time, but it will have to wait 
a couple days.  I am overbooked for tonight.

Bapi