Blake Butterfield

In the previous section we learned that the numbers you see beside an NFL football game or college football game in the paper are hard to come up with for various reasons and that they have absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I want you to keep this in mind when you are searching for the most useful lines on the games you like. I will explain now why those numbers are not related to the game itself, what they actually stand for and how they are set to make a commission for the book.

When we see an NFL game on the board that says, PATRIOTS -6, BEARS +6, we read it as, “The Pats are ‘favored’ by six points over the Bears.” Perhaps if another word had been chosen here to represent the line, instead of ‘favored’, things would be easier understood.

If you were to read the line on the game as, “The Pats are ‘held over’ the Bears by six points,” then this whole explanation should make more sense.

The six points here are not, in fact, the number of points the BMs believe the Patriots are actually ‘favored’ to win by in the game. Those six points instead represent the number of points the BMs feel they need to give the Bears, added on to the final score of the game, in order for 50% of players to feel inclined to place their money on the Bears to then come out as winners in the game. Again, the BMs feel that, if they give the Bears six points after the final score is tallied, one half of all players on that game will think those six points will be enough to put the Bears on top and will place their bets on the Bears to win, taking the points.

If one half of the players take the Bears, that means the other 50% of players will be taking the Patriots. These players think that, even with six points added on to their final score, the Bears still would not have enough points to beat the Patriots. In other words, these players think the Pats will defeat the Bears by more than six points. When the action is split 50-50 between the two teams playing, the BM has done his job perfectly and the action is said to be balanced.

So, for the first few times reading a line in a paper now, try not to read the line as the amount of points one team is ‘favored’ by. Instead try thinking of the line as the amount of points the BM is holding over the game, ready to take those points away from the favorite or give them to the underdog, depending on which side you chose. If you think taking those points away from the favorite would give them a loss on the scoreboard, you should take the dog and the points they would be given. Conversely, if you think that, even with those points added onto their final score, the dog still would not have enough points to be declared the winner, you should take the favorite and lose those same points.

With balanced action, the house cannot lose, no matter who actually wins the game or what the final score is. The only way the house will not win on this game is if the Patriots win the game by exactly six points. If that happens, once you factor in the six points to be taken off the Pats for the spread (or the six points added on for the Bears), the game would end up tied. When this happens, it is called a push and everyone simply gets their money back. Assuming a different score, all the house has to do now is sit back and collect the vigorish or juice, from the action they have taken in. The vigorish is what is left over from what the book has taken in after the winnings are paid out. With spreads, this juice is usually set at 10% on 100 and is called a dime line, a 10-cent line, or a standard line.

The standard line is expressed in the form of what is called a money line and, if shown beside the point spread, would appear as: PATRIOTS -6 (-110), BEARS +6 (-110). When dealing with spreads in both football and basketball where you see no attached money line, you may safely assume standard odds, or a line of -110.

But what exactly does that -110 represent? The money line is the amount you must wager in order to collect $100 in winnings. To win $100 on the Patriots in the game above, you would have had to have bet $110 and had the Patriots win by more than 6 points. If you had taken the Bears in the game you would have had to have wagered $110 and had the Bears win or lose by less than six points in order to collect $100 in winnings.

You can see why the BMs try to balance the action when you notice that, whatever side wins the game, the book has still taken in the same amount of action. But for every $110 the book has collected on the losing side, it only pays out $100 of that to the winner. The $10 left over is the vigorish, the juice. It is what keeps books in business, their commission. This is the goal of the BM when setting the spread for a game. Period. It is unrelated to who they think will win the game or by how much. It is simply an attempt to divide the betting public in half.

In fact, it does not actually matter who we say pays the vigorish but it seems to be more easily understood when explained as if the loser pays it. It could instead be said that the loser pays the $110 wager amount back to the winner. In this case, the winner has paid $10 out of his $110 wager amount to the book for the service and is left with his $100 in winnings. Same, same, but different.

One more time, simply. Bettor A lays $110 on the Pats. Bettor B lays $110 on the Bears. The action is balanced and the BM has done a perfect job at anticipating public opinion; the book can’t lose and half of all bettors will win. The book has collected $110 + $110 = $220. Whatever side wins will get back their wager amount of $110 plus $100 for the win. The loser gets nothing of his $110 wager amount back. So the book has collected $220 and has to pay out of that $110 (wager amount) + $100 (winnings) = $210 to the winner. $220 (collected) - $210 (paid out) = $10 left over. That $10 is the vigorish and is kept by the book for services provided.

We now know what a point spread is: It is the number of points given to an underdog and taken away from a favorite that a BM believes will evenly divide the betting public. Point spreads add a lot of excitement to games not just for books and bettors but also for the players themselves who use it sometimes as extra motivation when they see that no one thinks they can actually win the game unless we give them some extra points.

Now that we know what BMs are striving to achieve when setting point spreads and how the numbers associated with the point spread work, we can move on to what happens when a BM sets a line that does not divide the betting public evenly. We will look into what BMs do with those spreads and their attached money lines in order to limit the possible damage, or exposure, to the house. In other words, we will unmask the mystery of moving lines and will discover how books balance offside NFL and college football action.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Football, Football Betting, Football Handicapping, Football Point Spreads, Football Predictions, NFL, NFL Point Spreads, NFL Predictions, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.