Handicapping/LVSC Reading List Please

[GFootsXtreme]

So how exactly are the opening football lines set? what factors are included? how does public perception weigh in?

I'm interested in a book or some articles about this, any ideas?

[The Judge]

Here is an article to get you started:


Why Lines Open Exactly Where They Do
by Ted Sevransky

Lines open where they do for a reason, not by chance. Sportsbooks are designed to make a profit, not to provide a service. The reason so many new offshore books have opened over the past few years (several hundred, at least) is because they are making money for their owners. More people lose at sportsbetting than win; that is why offshores offer sign-up bonuses and other promotions to entice new clients.

Much of the research that Bookmakers use to formulate an opening line comes from a single company - Las Vegas Sports Consultants, Roxy Roxborough's former outfit (he's retired now). What LVSC does is analyze all the factors that go into a particular game. They begin with power ratings, a computerized assessment of both teams' relative talent. They factor in home field advantage and possible weather conditions. LVSC then considers the actual matchups between positions - how do the defensive backs match up against the wide receivers or the offensive line vs. the defensive line. Next they will examine the situational factors - how the teams will respond coming off various types of wins or losses, look-ahead situations or revenge games, or any other motivational (i.e. not number-crunching) factors. Lastly, they access how the bettors have responded to the teams in previous games - which side is likely to take money, and how much of a differential do they expect. In short, they handicap the games as well or better than most mortals can -- just to come up with this opening number.

Each book then takes LVSC's analysis and opening numbers and adjusts it to their particular clientele. Some books cater mostly to large "wiseguy" players. Others take most of their money in $20 or $50 chunks from the general public. Still others take money from bookies laying off unequal action around the country or from particular regions. And many take bets from all of the above. This is why there is some variation (rarely more than a point) between the virgin numbers from different sportsbooks.

In all sports EXCEPT the NFL, virgin lines are set to beat the wiseguys, not the public. It takes one hundred $100 bettors to equal the influence of a single maximum limit bet. So the "square" bettor (meaning the average Joe Schmo) really doesn't have that much influence over where an opening line is set - the books have bigger fish to fry. Professional football is the public's domain. There are enough small bettors to offset the big $$ that comes in from the syndicates and wiseguys. This is because there are relatively few games AND one heck of a lot of bettors.

Every line opens at a particular number for a reason. This fact cannot be emphasized enough!! There are no accidents and few mistakes (although mistakes occasionally do occur). Our job as handicappers is to figure out why the lines opened where they did, and what it means for that particular matchup.

One theory I have developed for analyzing virgin lines I call the " ½ point off key number theory" (nice name, huh). THEORY - When the line opens at 1/2 point off of a key, the house is trying to subtly influence a position among bettors. Key numbers in football include: 1, 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21 etc, etc. These numbers are "key" because the scoring systems of touchdowns and field goals means that the final score will have a margin of victory by one of these scores more often than not. As a bettor, wouldn't you rather be taking 7 ½ points instead of 6 ½ , or laying 2 ½ instead of 3 ½ ? Of course you would. However, past evidence has shown rather clearly that the opposite is true. Teams that open at -7.5 cover far more often than teams that open at -6.5. Why? Because a team laying more than a touchdown is supposed to be laying more than a TD, and a team laying less than 7 is supposed to be laying less than 7. Remember: a line opens at -1 instead of pick 'em for a reason!!

In basketball, there are no key numbers like football, since the scoring comes only in 1's, 2's or 3's. But psychologically, people are still influenced by some key numbers: 4 ½ vs. 5 ½; 9 ½ vs. 10 ½, 14 ½ vs. 15 ½ etc. Again, I look towards the side that appears to have the worst of it - I would rather lay 10 ½ than 9 ½ . Totals work much the same way - I look to bet under a virgin total of 189.5 and over on a total of 190.5

This theory is just that: a theory, not a certainty. I use it to absolutely eliminate some sides, and to reconsider others. If there is a side that I like to begin with, and the number comes out in my favor, it is then that much closer to being a play. An opening line ½ point off a key number is a valuable tool in the handicappers arsenal, but it no single factor makes a particular side an automatic play.

[The Judge]

Another article with some historical information:


Sports Betting: Past, Present and Future – Part 4
By Jeremy Martin

In the 1980s Roxy Roxborough emerged as a major force in the sports gambling world and he helped usher in the technological revolution. Roxborough brought legitimacy to the industry as he portrayed an image of the businessman, as opposed to the street corner Bookmaker type that had dominated sports betting for so long. While most other oddsmakers before him bet into their own lines, Roxy believed that practice was a conflict of interest and he stopped wagering completely when he started making the lines.

Roxborough, who learned the trade during his formative years in Vancouver, B.C., got his start at the Club Cal-Neva casino in Reno where he was hired because of his penchant for setting solid numbers on baseball 'totals' (the late Bill Dark from the Del Mar turf club was credited with inventing the totals concept in sports wagering). Roxborough soon gained a strong reputation throughout the industry and he eventually signed a lucrative contract with the Stardust in the early 1980s to set their opening line.

Las Vegas Sports Consultants, Inc.,which is what he called his odds and information service, eventually acquired 90 percent of the sportsbooks in Nevada as its clients. Roxborough took advantage of new technology that was available and used it to provide his customers with - not only lines - but also updated injury and weather information.

According to Roxy, before LVSC was founded, if a Bookmaker wanted to know what the weather was like in Cleveland they would have to call up a contact there and get the information via the telephone. "We became a clearinghouse for information by checking on injury rumors and getting weather reports," he says. "[Sports book] managers could call one place and get it all."

Before LVSC was founded, most oddsmakers kept their information in loose-leaf notebooks. They would copy thousands of box scores into these notebooks for future reference. Roxborough was the first one in the industry to use a computer and electronics for the storage and transmission of data. As a result of these technological advances, the sports books were able to increase their offerings to the public. Due in large part to Roxborough's new computer-generated power ratings, the betting rotation expanded significantly.

"When I first came to Las Vegas in the early 1970s, there weren't that many college football games that you could bet on each week - there were like 15-20," he remembers. "People didn't even book college basketball until after Jan. 2 [when the college bowl games were completed] and there were only 60 or 70 teams that appeared regularly [in the rotation]. The demand for the business to get bigger and the computerization allowed us to follow more teams and offer more reliable odds."

When Roxborough started LVSC in the early 1980s, it was a one-man show. By the time he sold the business in 1996, the company had grown to be worth millions of dollars and it employed a full staff of employees. LVSC is still around today and is still the source of the numbers for most of the sportsbooks in Nevada.

The proliferation of the sports schedule and the resulting increase in handle created the need for bigger and better sportsbooks. The Las Vegas Hilton 'SuperBook' opened in 1986 and the book at Caesars Palace was reinvented around the same time. The Mirage, designed by casino mogul Steve Wynn, opened in 1989 and was then considered the most extravagant hotel - and sports book - in Las Vegas. Vaccaro, who had previously helped open books at the Royal Inn and the Barbary Coast, was sought out by Wynn to help him develop and run the books at the Golden Nugget, located in downtown Las Vegas, and at the Mirage. Vaccaro is often considered the last of the old-school Bookmakers in Nevada as he took huge action and didn't turn away the professional bettors.

"We had the highest limits," Vaccaro says about his days at the Mirage before he left bookmaking in 1996 to pursue other interests. "I was never questioned about big wins or losses. [Wynn] knew that if the place was to be run properly, that you [couldn't] squirm when you lose. We never refused a bet." During his peak at the Mirage, Vaccaro says he was taking in 25 percent of the betting handle for the entire state.
Present and Future

Nevada sports books have been in a steady decline over the past decade. According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, revenues have dropped six out of the last seven years across the state. It is no secret that this can be attributed in part to the massive growth of the offshore industry.

But critics of Nevada sports betting - and Las Vegas in particular -- point to other factors as well. The consolidation of the casinos by corporations has created an atmosphere where there are only a handful of sports books releasing their own numbers while the rest are just satellite offices of their main book. This reduces the opportunity to shop around for numbers and increases the attractiveness of offshore books where a wide variety of point spreads are available on a wide array of sports.

Some say that the government has over regulated the industry and that cash transaction reports requiring big players to identify themselves have scared off many of the larger bettors. Others say that sports book managers are in constant fear of their jobs and that, as a result, they are not willing to take any risk - as opposed to the old-style bookmakers in Las Vegas who took any bet and relied on the strength of their numbers.

While the Stardust had the distinction of setting the 'opening line' for several decades, many offshore books release their numbers even earlier on the Internet. The rest of the offshore industry - and even some Las Vegas bookmakers - often follow the lead of these offshore books when setting their initial numbers after they have been flattened out by the professional bettors.

"At that time we catered to our players and we didn't fear players," says Rosenthal of his time as a bookmaker in Las Vegas. "We welcomed them. We were very conscious of customer service. Today, it is the reverse. It's not only a shame, it borders on being counterproductive to the state and the individual properties. I think the offshore industry, in 2004, is closing in on any industry in the world. The demand, the interest - speaking of the public - from a global standpoint is skyrocketing and will only get bigger."

Scucci is one who disagrees with the assessment that Las Vegas will continue to decline. In fact, he says that his profit margin has increased at the Stardust since the offshore books have become popular. He points to the record $81.2 million that was bet statewide on the 2004 Super Bowl as proof that Las Vegas is still a force in the industry (Nevada books won a record $12.4 million on the big game).

"There's no doubt that [the offshore industry] took a big portion of our business," he says. "However, a lot of that business was the very shrewd, very sharp action. So, in terms of handle, yes. It took a lot of our handle away. But did it take a lot of our [profit] away? Probably not. We have had more people in the book than ever and we are writing more tickets than ever.

"The people who say Vegas won't take a bet are the ones that want to cherry pick a particular game where they have some advantage over a soft line. Go ask the guys at the Mirage how many $100,000 bets they take or at Caesars where they take $300,000."

"The reason Las Vegas is still doing great is that gambling is social and people would rather do it with other people," adds Roxborough. "When you walk into a sports book you know that if there are 25 people in there that you have something in common with all 25 of those people, even though they are strangers."
The sports book is one of the only gambling venues in a hotel where the casino actually has a chance to lose money over the course of a year, although the 11/10 vig usually ensures a small profit margin. But the casinos have lost big in the past. Rosenthal points to Super Bowl XIII, which had Pittsburgh was favored over Dallas, the defending champions of the NFL. Due to heavy action on both sides, the line on the game went as low as -3 ½ and as high as -4 ½. Pittsburgh won the game by four points and the Stardust lost $1 million by getting 'middled' on the game. A big loss in the Super Bowl can have disastrous effects on a book's football season and, thus, its overall profits for the year.

Although it is possible for sports bettors to win over an extended period of time, only a small portion of the population can actually achieve this feat. Banker, who some say has regularly earned a six-figure annual income in Las Vegas at the expense of the sports books, issues some words of warning for anybody interested in attempting to bet sports professionally: "You have a better shot at becoming a rock star or a movie star than being a successful sports bettor."

Despite the government's attempts to stifle sports betting, all signs point to its continued growth. Gambling is legal in almost every state in some form; whether it's casinos, horse racing, OTBs or government-run lotteries. As gambling interest and growth in general increase everywhere most feel that sports betting will follow suit. As a recreational activity that has been around since long before our country was founded, it doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. "The people have spoken," concludes Scucci. "They like it. They want sports betting. That's not going to change”

[The Judge]

More info on ex-Starbook Sports Manager, Bob Scuui who left in June to be director of relationship marketing for the Borgata Hotel Casino in Atlantic City.


Bob Scucci, Race & Sportsbook Manager For The Stardust Sportsbook
By Jeremy Martin

Bob Scucci learned much of what he knows about the sports betting industry at one of the most unlikely places: the family dinner table. That's because both his mother and father worked in Las Vegas sportsbooks. After the family moved to Las Vegas from New Jersey when Bob was in high school, his father took a job at the old Rose Bowl sportsbook and his mother took a post at the Showboat sportsbook. Dinner table discussions were a lesson in Sports Betting 101. And Scucci has used that knowledge to get where he is today, managing the Race & Sportsbook at the Stardust. Because of the history behind the hotel/casino and the fact that the book sets the first Las Vegas line for football, his job is one of the most recognized and revered in the industry.

"My dad probably taught me the most, whether he knew it or not," said Scucci. "We would have conversations at the dinner table and it wouldn't even be like he was trying to teach me anything. It was just a normal discussion. And, over the course of those years, it just, by osmosis, sunk in. Some things are just second nature. You don't realize it until you are actually working in the industry that things kind of come naturally."

The Stardust Sportsbook is famous for setting the opening Las Vegas line for football. At 5:30 p.m. on Sundays during the NFL season Scucci, with help from consulting services, posts the first lines and lets the professional bettors take the first crack at them. The sportsbook holds a lottery for line placement in order to avoid a free-for-all to the window. Bettors are allowed to make five wagers before they have to move back to the end of the line. During the first couple hours of action, the line on an NFL game can move as many as two points. The lottery, however, has decreased in popularity over the last several years.

"In recent years it seems like people want to think about it a little bit before they rush to the counter," Scucci commented. "So there hasn't been as many people that want to join up in the lottery. They just prefer to wait until the numbers are up and then gradually pick their spots. For the first hour and a half, the numbers are bouncing around all over. If you are talking about 1 ½ points on every game and you are taking $10,000 a whack, it doesn't take long to have a $30-$40,000 decision on each game."

Since the Stardust sportsbook is a favorite of professional bettors in Las Vegas, Scucci is used to sweating it out. While the goal of most sportsbooks is to get 50 percent of the action on both sides of a game, it doesn't always work out that way. The Stardust has taken some big losses in the years that he has been there (Scucci served as the right-hand man for former manager Joe Lupo, who took a position as vice president of operations at the Borgata in Atlantic City, for six years before taking over last October). Putting out the first line can be a liability, said Scucci, because there are no other numbers out there to compare to his lines and because the pros are usually there to attack a bad number. When the Las Vegas sportsbook industry does well, the Stardust usually follows suit, but when the industry as a whole has a bad week, Scucci usually takes a harder hit. "Occasionally, but not often, when the industry does well we may not do as well at all because we take all the early hits that the other casinos don't take," he added. "But I feel we can draw enough off of it that it's worth the liability."

One of the most unique things about the Stardust sportsbook is its ability to draw an even mix of locals and tourists. Now that the south end of the Strip is the place to be in Las Vegas, Scucci's sportsbook is still keeping pace with the big boys in terms of handle. Tourists want to visit the Stardust because of its history and atmosphere and locals like the wide variety of parlay cards and the chance to take advantage of the opening numbers. "We probably have the highest percentage of locals of all the Strip properties," said Scucci.

Limits for NFL games are $10,000 for sides and $2,000 for totals and college football limits are $5,000 for sides and $1,000 for totals. Scucci's philosophy is not to set the lines by predicting the outcomes of games, but rather set the number according to the way he thinks the public will bet. And he always has to be concerned about the professional bettors, who are lurking around every corner at the Stardust.

"To make money in this business isn't just to give the bettors what they want, because that's not in our best interest," he said. "However, knowing which way they are going to bet is always a help. There are a lot of factors that go into making the numbers. The whole key is to not give away too much value to someone who is making a living betting on sports. We know which way the public is going to bet, predominantly. The public likes to bet favorites, they like to bet a lot of home favorites and they like to bet a lot of overs. There's a pattern that we know the public will bet on these games and a lot of times we just have to go into a game knowing that they are going to bet this way but we let them bet it because we feel like this 2 ½ (as an example) is the right number. So we let them lay the 2 ½. If they win they win and if we win then so be it. But we are not going to move it to 3 or 3 ½ just because we know the public is going to bet it because at that point the sharp guys are going to say 'at 3 ½, it's a buy.'"

The sportsbook also offers two contests in order to attract business. The public is invited to play the weekly free All-American Football Contest, in which $10,000 is awarded weekly, and the Stardust Invitational is an annual battle among 16 of the best handicappers in the nation who compete for a $10,000 prize in a head-to-head format. The weekly contest takes place live in the sportsbook and always gathers a good crowd.

According to Scucci, the Stardust is the only sportsbook in Las Vegas that gives bettors the information they need to beat the house. The sportsbook offers its patrons a handicapping library with wall-to-wall information about sports betting. In order to make betting easier for locals, Scucci has implemented Sportscall, a telephone betting system that differs from traditional phone accounts in that it is geared toward the average bettor instead of the high-limit player.

Since taking over in October, one of the most difficult aspects of his new job, said Scucci, is following in the footsteps of Lupo, who was one of the most respected and well-liked managers in the industry. This will be his first full football season without his former mentor.

"He was great to work for - he really knew his stuff," said Scucci. "When somebody is that well respected you have some big shoes to fill and you've got to rely on your own confidence in your abilities to hopefully do the job that he did. You realize that everything falls on your shoulders now. I kind of felt like the first March Madness without him it was noticeable. From years of working with him and having that symbiotic relationship where we would bounce ideas off each other, I found myself, at times, turning to ask his opinion and realizing he is not around anymore. A couple of times I have felt like giving him a call in New Jersey and asking him 'what do you think about this or that?'"

[GFootsXtreme]

Judge thank you for taking the time to post these, I will read them on my train ride home this evening and come back tomorrow with a few thoughts or questions if they come up. thanks again

[Kramer]

good read judge
especially
"the virgin lines in all sports except nfl are set to beat the wiseguys"

Proves that vegas/sportsbooks do gamble in a sense ...

[GFootsXtreme]

this was excellent reading thank you Judge. I learned a lot, most importantly to look at where a line opens and consider what it means, that will go a long way

kramer, do you post plays for any of the sports?

[desimunda]

who sets the line for offshore books?

is pinnacle the largest book there is?

if they are or whoever it is; are they the first ones to put out lines now or they still look to vegas or vice versa?

and what can this Large book do to balance the action other than moving lines?

who is it actually that we are donating our money to? is this bill gates hiding behind a microsoft cover story?

if not who has the balls to accept routine 6 figure bets?

a book like pinnacle seems to be making big money but how much?

has a book ever bought out a handicapper? or added him/her to their staff because he would clean house every week?

is offshore worse for the economy than outsourcing? or neither? or both?

[Romanowski]

desi imo BETCRIS open before Vegas

and those Vegas boys got their eyes glued to their Don Best screens

[desimunda]

Originally Posted by Romanowski

and those Vegas boys got their eyes glued to their Don Best screens

you are telling me that thing is not a scam?

[Romanowski]

pinnacle I dont think is the largest book in the world

actually what are the parameters for being the largest in your mind?

in any case Pinnacle is however the most efficient market, google it, in the offshore biz imo

[desimunda]

Originally Posted by Romanowski

actually what are the parameters for being the largest in your mind?

largest in terms of the DOLLAR.

[Romanowski]

Originally Posted by desimunda

largest in terms of the DOLLAR.

no but it get the most professional action from the US imo

Betfair and a few other euro only books are bigger and I believe sportingbet and bodog are bigger anyway

the business side of this business is totally off topic

[desimunda]

Originally Posted by Romanowski

no but it get the most professional action from the US imo

Betfair and a few other euro only books are bigger and I believe sportingbet and bodog are bigger anyway

the business side of this business is totally off topic

BODOG? are u sure..i thought this guy just started out a few years ago and was still trying to make it like the big boys....(ie betcris and the like..)

i am not familiar with the european books but ya i guess i can see them taking in more 'action' and i'm sure the laws help.

just checked out betfair they are more like a exchange i guess(if that is any different). mansion has to be up there too i'm sure...

and yes the buisness side of this buisness is much more interesting than any football game post some articles if u have any thanks!