The madness of March has begun
I spent the past week in Las Vegas learning the finer points of sports betting. Still Twitter has unlimited knowledge when you know who to follow:
Just like trading the stock market emotions can cloud solid judgment. Even so, I threw down $20 on the Cougs to beat Drake tonight (yeah! they covered the spread!).
I’ve found that there is a big challenge to odds makers when odds and over/unders have to be made rapidly. This makes March madness the ideal time to expose the flaw in their odds making abilities.
Just like stock options, sports betting has it’s own lingo. Opening lines, closing lines, overs/unders, spreads, bad beats, and futures are all part of the vocab.
Closing lines are considered the most efficient representation of a team’s chances. The is the line right before tip-off. All of the possible information has made its’ way into bets, and sportsbooks have adjusted their lines to account for this. This means that opening lines are when odds makers are the most vulnerable. Since March madness comes fast and furious, odds makers are hamstrung by the nature of the game. They have to make snap decisions that are then pounded on by the sports betting public.
Above is a snapshot of the sportsbook at New York New York.
While every casino had a sportsbook, they aren't all created equal. I feel Caesars had the best sportsbook (though I did enjoy Planet Hollywood's, but wow were those drinks expensive). The Paris hotel would be a close second.
With March madness now upon us, this is where I would have put my funds to use:
Thursday games
WSU + 1.5 (I know it was the homer move but the Cougs were the higher seed and were giving up 1.5 points.)
KU-SAM under 153.5 (lost on this one)
TENN-SPU over 130.5 (winner!)
Friday games
SDSU-UAB over 139.5
FLA -1.5
HOU-LONG over 127.5
Saturday games
UNC -3.5
CREI -5.5
TENN -6.5
During the Pac12 tournament, I won on UCLA over Oregon State by 6.5 and the under on the Stanford/WSU game (143.5, actual 141) but lost on the WSU/Colorado semi-final (took WSU +2.5).
I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the games and keeping track of my progress. Feel free to throw in your ideas in the comment section below.