L O V E L I F E
Bluelighter
alasdairm said:
Football "handicapers" (aka, "bookmakers") couldn't give a rat's ass about what they think is a "fair" or "accurate" point spread.
Their goal, as entreprenuers, is to ask themselves:
"What line should I set, so that 50 percent of the money that will be wagered on this game is placed on each side?"
In other words, even if the best predictor of football games in the universe thought that Seattle would beat Washington by the exact twenty-one points they ended up winning by, it still would have been foolish if he had set the line in that game anywhere NEAR 21 - even though he turned out to be right on the money with his PREDICTION in this particular game, paradoxically, the bookie's job is to MINIMIZE risk, and the best way to do so is to predict NOT what the final result will be, but rather, to predict what line will attract approximately equal amounts of wagering on each side.
Because if a bookie can do this consistently, for every 110,000 he'll collect from the losers, he'll pay 100,000 to the winners, GUARANTEEING him (barring a push) a 10,000 net gain on that particular game.
Often, the bookies do a relatively good job at predicting the approximate final score (which, again, is NOT their function), but sometimes, as in the Jax-PITT game, in which the line moved from (+1 1/2) to (-2) in a mere four days, the bookies end up taking it on the chin BIG TIME.
