A good week for the books
By Micah Roberts
The Las Vegas sportsbooks got off to a great start with College Football last weekend that saw a few major upsets along with several sharp moves not getting there.
“It was a great combination of public and sharp money on the games last week despite not having any real marquee matchups, said Coast Resorts Director of Race and Sports Bob Scucci, between the straight bets, parlays, and teasers on the day, the book did pretty well.”
Scucci said his books got some action on Washington plus the points, but the majority of parlay plays were on USC. And how could you blame them? Only a week earlier a Freshman USC QB went to Columbus and won, why would anyone think any differently against a team like Washington that went 0-12 last season?
“Our biggest decision of the day against both the public and sharp players was BYU,” Scucci said. “We opened that game -7.5 and closed at -9. It was pretty one sided, and when the results were posted, the game had wiped out a lot of the days’ overall risk on parlay’s and teasers that were tied to other games. When another public game came in with Texas not covering, it really made for a great day.”
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One of the Scucci’s other big games was Florida not covering the -30 point spread against Tennessee, a team that wasn’t finding many supporters amid all the Lane Kiffin hype.
And then Sunday came, where money line dogs reigned supreme with nine coming through, depending when you bet the game.
“There’s a misconception sometimes about how the book did,” said Las Vegas Hilton SuperBook Executive Director of Race and Sports Jay Kornegay. “I had players coming to me saying how great a day the books must of did because of teams like the Bengals and Texans upsetting a big favorite, but that’s not always the case.”
Generally, the public will always play the favorites and if there is a good mix of favorites and dogs winning, that is the best scenario for the books. On Sunday it was over-weighted with the dogs where 10 of the 15 favorites didn’t cover.
“The general public didn’t do very well,” said Kornegay, “but the sharp players on the moves did well.”
Games that went the sharps way were the Raiders, Jets, Bengals, Saints, Ravens, and Bears. In just about every one of those cases, the moves came on game day. Some of the late moves that didn’t get there for the sharps were the losers of the Bucs and Panthers.
“Our biggest liability on the day with the Public was the Patriots and Titans,” Scucci said. “It seemed like once those games posted it took away a huge chunk of risk linked to other games.”
The move of the day was the Eagles going from a -2.5 opening favorite to pick on Friday when it was probable Donovan McNabb wouldn’t start, but he still wasn’t listed as out.
“We were working hard through Saturday to get confirmation on the status of McNabb,” said Kornegay. “And once the news was confirmed we moved accordingly.”
“We were one of the first to go straight to Saints -3 on Saturday night,” said Scucci who used to run the famous Stardust book back in the good old days. “I still had the game in a circle taking limited action, so I bumped it up just to get a read if I could find any takers and no one wanted any Eagles at plus 3, so I knew that was where it should be.”
Some books other than the Hilton and Coast went systematically through the moves and the sharps came strong Sunday morning with the send being to take the Saints laying 1.5 to 2.5 and got there quite easily.
On a broad account of books from across Las Vegas, the majority had small wins or losses on straight bets fueled by the sharp action, while off the board parlays, teasers, and parlay cards went very well for the house.
As for the upcoming week of games, Scucci says he’s very curious to see how the public’s perception is of Patriots with a short line at home this week laying 4 to the Falcons.
“The Patriots are a team that could easily be 0-2 right now and haven’t played well in either of those games, at least by the standards they’ve set for themselves.”
In the process, Scucci has raised the odds of the Patriots from 3/1 up to 6/1.
VegasInsider.com