Books lose on Saturday
By Micah Roberts
The first two weeks of college football action had seen the public favorites negate what could have been winning days for Las Vegas sports books. Past history has shown that when there is an evenly mixed ratio of underdogs to favorites winning, the house does well. Even though the favorites went only 25-23, Saturday’s games followed the same trend of the previous two weeks with public teams like Wisconsin, Stanford, Oklahoma, USC and Miami piling up large parlay payouts that the books couldn’t counter with.
However, for at least one chain of books, they fared well on the day thanks to a little boxing match held at their property. The MGM Resorts properties were cringing with every college football final score they posted on Saturday night, but got good news with Floyd Mayweather’s controversial fourth-round knocked of Victor Ortiz at the MGM Grand.
Other sports books around town all fared well on the bout too, but a major chunk of the state’s action on the fight was taken within the MGM and their other properties like the Mirage, Mandalay Bay and Bellagio.
Mayweather had opened a large -900 favorite over Ortiz and the sports books couldn’t find anyone to lay it. From the time the line came out until the start of the first round, it was all Ortiz money, both small and large. Mayweather closed as a -500 favorite at the MGM and dipped to -475 at the South Point.
Usually in fights where there is a big favorite like this, the sharp money likes to wait until the last possible moment because they know the public will always be all over the underdog due to the high returns should they win; they like the bet a little to win a lot. When the Sharps feel the price is as low as it will go, then they come with the large bets.
Between the small money and large money both being on Ortiz, the day’s college football losses took a back seat to the big win.
The rest of the city didn’t have the fortune of having the match at their property like the MGM did, but still managed to ease the pain of the large college football losses at the end of the day.
The biggest blow was the three-team 6-to-1 parlay from the night games with USC (-16) beating Syracuse, Oklahoma (-3) winning at Florida State and Miami (-2½) dominating Ohio State. Those results were magnified even worse when Stanford came in with their impressive 37-10 win at Arizona.
Games that helped the sports books not lose as much began with Nebraska (-17) getting back doored by Washington to win 51-38. TCU (-29) had a rough start in their game against Louisiana-Monroe, eventually winning 38-17, but didn’t cover.
The big 40-20 UNLV win over Hawaii could have been a massive win for the sports books and it did kill all kinds of dangerous parlays, but Sharp money was all over the Rebels despite their horrendous efforts in their first two games. Hawaii dropped from a 20½-point favorite all the way to -17 by kickoff. The books avoided the public parlay wrath, but still eventually lost the game because of the overwhelming large money on straight bets with UNLV.
UNLV paid out as the biggest moneyline underdog winner of the day at 7-to-1 odds. Of the 23 underdogs that covered on the day, 12 of them won outright. Tulane’s 49-10 surprising 49-10 win at UAB paid out at 7-to-2 odds and Wyoming’s 28-27 win at Bowling Green gave 3-to-1 odds. However, there weren’t too many bettors that could say they had the foresight that actually had tickets on those games.