Ever wondered what the lines and football do at the sportsbook? Have you ever wondered why numbers change so quickly and why they appear to be the same? We’ll answer these questions and many more in this guide. We will explain why lines and football move at the sportsbook, and what it means for you. You’ll also get some tips to help you make money from your new understanding.
The Goal of a Sportsbook
Understanding the workings behind the scenes is key to understanding why lines move. Sportsbooks are not charitable แทงบอล. These are businesses that offer betting on sports competitions and make a lot. This is probably something you already know. This is something that you may not have known: although the sportsbooks offer bets, they do not like to gamble. They want to ensure that every bet they offer will make them money.
How does this happen? The sportsbook wants to make sure they get the same amount of money for both sides of a contest. They can use the winning money to pay the winners if they have $10 total bets on Team A and $10 total for Team B. If Team A wins they will take $10 from Team B’s losers and pay the winners of Team A. They do the same as Team A, but reverse it if they win.
How does the sportsbook make its money? You may have noticed that each bet is taken a little less the sportsbook if you’ve ever placed one. This is called the house rake, or the “juice”. They do not pay the $10 full back to the winners. Instead, they take a small percentage of the profits as their profit for facilitating the bets.
Let’s take a look at a real wager to ensure you are clear before we proceed. This is a spread bet on a football game.
- Denver Broncos -6 (-110)
- Dallas Cowboys +6 (-110)
You will receive $9.09 back if you place $10 on the Denver Broncos. The sportsbook juice is $0.91 less than you’re getting back. Here’s what the accounting will look like if the sportsbook wins $10 on the Broncos or $10 on the Cowboys.
- Spend $10 on the Broncos (Casino offers $10).
- You can win $10 on the Cowboys (Casino offers $20).
Broncos win, and bettors are owed $10 for their original wager and $9.09 for their profit.
The Casino pays $19.09 back to the Broncos’ bettors (Casino gives $0.91).
This bet has brought in $0.91 for the casino.
As you can see, regardless of who wins, the sportsbook will make a profit. They’re not in the gambling business. They could have each game have exactly the same amount of money placed on both sides, and still make a small profit. The goal of the sportsbook’s is to have the exact same amount of money on each side of every bet.
How does this happen? They shift the lines and football to encourage or discourage the action they want. Let’s take you through each step.
- The initial line.
- Reacting to bets.
1. The Initial Line
The first thing a sportsbook must do is to set the initial line. This is how it should look. Imagine Floyd Mayweather and Justin Bieber going on a boxing match. If your intelligence is higher than 10, then Floyd Mayweather, one of the most decorated boxers ever, will be destroying Justin Bieber. Who would you choose to bet on if the sportsbook allowed you to place a bet on this fight? You and all others would place bets on Floyd Mayweather. He would win, and all of the money would flow in to the sportsbook.
This would make it impossible for the sportsbook to continue their business. What do they do? To discourage Mayweather from taking action, they set the first payout football. They will set the football/line for you to receive a lot of money if Bieber is victorious and very little if Mayweather is victorious.
They might, for example, set the starting point at this:
- Bieber (+9500)
- Mayweather (-9000).
This means that you could win $100 if you placed $100 on each one of these “fighters”.
You could make $9,500 if you bet $100 on Bieber!
You would make $1.11 if you placed $100 on Mayweather.
The sportsbook will do their best to accurately predict what is likely to happen.
They will attempt to get the same result if they place a point spread wager setting the spread line as close to the actual outcome as possible. Let’s say the Browns play the Patriots. According to the sportsbook, the Patriots will win 8 points. They would place the line as follows:
- Browns +8 (0-110)
- Patriots -8 (-110)
The correct pick will be paid the same as the correct pick but the teams must cover the spread. To win your bet, the Patriots must win at least 8 points and the Browns must lose less than 8.
2. Reacting to the Bets
If the line is correctly set the เว็บแทงบอล and all bettors agree to it, both sides will receive the same amount of money. If everyone agrees that the Patriots should win 8, half the bettors will likely bet on the Browns, and the other half will bet on the Patriots. It doesn’t always work out like this. The sportsbook may not always be right with their lines. It’s difficult to predict the public’s bets. The sportsbook will often lose money if they bet too heavily on one side of the bet.
The book will adjust the football line or the football to attempt to get more action. Let’s take a look at some of the scenarios that we have used in our previous examples. Let’s suppose that Bieber is found out to have secretly taken steroids and boxing lessons. They believe he has a better chance than they originally thought. Many people place bets on Bieber to back their view, but not many on Mayweather.
The sportsbook must try to increase the number of people who bet on Mayweather, and less on Bieber to correct this problem. They adjust the payouts to do this. They alter the football to make a bet against Bieber pay less than it did before and one on Mayweather pay more than before. These are the original football and the profits you would make on a $100 wager.
- Bieber (+9500) = $9,500
- Mayweather (-9000), = $1.11
The sportsbook alters the football to discourage and encourage action when necessary:
- Bieber (+5000)
- Mayweather (-4500).
A $100 bet against Bieber will net you $8,000 in profit. A $100 bet against Mayweather will net you $2.22. This is to encourage people to bet more on the opposite side of the bet in order to even things out. The sportsbook will adjust the football until it does. They will adjust the football to make sure things are balanced if it does not change too much.