Big 'dogs help Books
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com
What looked to be an early NFL schedule of ugly games uglier turned out to be the prettiest gateway to success for Las Vegas sports books, who had their best Sunday of the season.
“What a bunch of ugly early pro games the bettors had to watch,“ said Station Casino’s sports book director Jason McCormick. “We had a hard time figuring out what was the most competitive game to broadcast sound throughout the book.”
That type of indecision wasn’t difficult for bettors. They knew who they liked, and didn’t like, and a few of the large early points-spreads enticed them to play the perceived better teams and it cost them dearly.
“The Dolphins, Rams and Cardinals killed a large portion of the parlays on the day in the early games,” said McCormick.
Those three teams alone had been a thorn in the side of the sports books all season with a combined 2-15-1 record against the spread. Some bettors have found it’s easier to just blindly bet against these teams than actually handicap because they have been so reliably bad. The Dolphins and Cardinals played very well against the Giants and Ravens respectively, almost getting the upset while covering, with the Rams winning outright as 13-point home underdogs to the Saints, 31-21.
Through eight weeks of the season last year, bettors were getting punished with the sports books winning large in all but one of the weeks. This year, the tables have been turned with the bad teams being really bad and a select few good teams being really good.
Even though the one of the bettor’s favorite teams to bet against, the Colts, still lost and didn’t cover to the Titans, just about everything tied to them had died with the other dregs playing well.
Once the afternoon games came along, the books didn’t see the type of large extended risk on the parlays like the previous seven weeks.
“We won with the Steelers in the late game and lost the other four games, but the loss wasn‘t like what we have seen the last few weeks because most of the liability from the early games had been eliminated making the risk minimal, said McCormick. “It was almost like the afternoon games started with a clean slate.“
“Those early games helped us not only with parlays, but wiped out the majority of our teaser risk as well,” said South Point sports book director Bert Osborne. “It seemed like every teaser on the day had the Saints and Ravens attached.”
“The late games were basically a wash for us. There was sharp money on Seattle, Cleveland and Washington, while the public won betting against those teams. We won with the Steelers and the public won with the Lions.”
In the NFL, we’re not supposed to see such a glaring disparity between teams like we do in college because they’re professionals. It’s not uncommon to see one or two really bad teams, but usually, the number is always solid and pulls them closer. This year, that hasn’t been the case. But it looks like week 8 might be the start of a turnaround for the books, who always need the bad teams to cover.
“The best about thing about the week, beyond finally having a good day, was that it was encouraging to see some of these bad teams play well on the road, and one of them (Rams) finally get a win,“ said Osborne. “Most of this season, it’s been pretty easy for the bettors just picking on five or six teams every week.”
“It was a glowing weekend for us overall between the college and pro games,” said McCormick. “We definitely needed a strong weekend to close out the month of October.”
The sports books were indeed due for a good day.
Shrewd Rood
Who would have thought the Cincinnati Bengals would be 5-2 after eight weeks? MGM Resorts sports book director Jay Rood might have. Rood posted the first NFL season win totals in Las Vegas with the Bengals being the team everyone picked on early going UNDER 8½ wins.
Bettors were licking their chops trying get as much as they could on the UNDER and laid any number all the way to down to 7. Why not? A bad head coach with a team of jurisprudence stories and a rookie starting quarterback, Andy Dalton. Seems like a good enough reason to think they’d do poorly, again, coming off a 4-12 season.
Rood said at the time that he was trying to drive handle and create some decisions for his sports books as being the reason to being the first up with the totals, but also liked the Bengals to improve upon their 2010 campaign.
A virgin number always creates the most interest and isn’t diluted by offshore or competing books where bettors just scalp prices with little handicapping involved. This was just straight forward handicapping with nothing else to go off but the bettors knowledge against the book’s line.
Between local radio shows and professional betting experts, Rood’s number on the Bengals was routinely criticized, as if their own personal opinion was the proper one. With nine games to go the Bengals have to win four games for Rood to scoop in all the chips. Three wins would still get the MGM most of the money as well with the first couple of wagers pushing the Bengals off of the initial total.
In the end, should these experts lose, they’ll still say they had the right side just like Phil Helmuth does when he loses a hand of poker. Either way, it’s refreshing to see a sports book offer something early before everyone else does with a stale market number and also having so many people actually betting it with their own opinions.
Wynn Book First Class
I have to hand it to Johnny Avello and the Wynn for running a first class race and sports book. Avello is the ultimate ambassador of his room, saying hello to new and old guests alike as a good host does for high rollers. Between his friendly staff, clean room, luxurious surroundings and upscale clientele inhabiting the book, I can’t think of a better place to play horses and watch games on a weekend than the Wynn.