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Making sense of Las Vegas' analysis of NFL teams
Posted: Thursday July 21, 2005 1:37PM; Updated: Thursday July 21, 2005 1:59PM
I don't want to turn this into a tout sheet, but I must say that at this time of year, when forecasts on the season are about to erupt in a positive frenzy, there is only one set of predictions I take seriously. Perhaps you know what I'm talking about because I wrote about it last year ... the list that predicts the seasonal records for each team, offering the gamblers a chance to go for the over or the under.
I take these things seriously because you can actually bet into them. Coin of the realm is at stake. And if you check these sheets carefully you can get a reading on how the smart people, the ones who set the prices, think the season's going to play out.
Let's take Dallas, for instance. Last year the Cowboys were the team the oddsmakers were the most wrong about. The over-under number for victories, as determined by the Imperial Palace in Vegas, was a rather presentable nine, keyed to the Boys' remarkable turnaround in 2003, when they rose to 10-6 and the playoffs. But the nine was just a number they threw out; it wasn't what they really thought would happen. That's determined by the odds they give on the likelihood of a team doing either better or worse than its number of victories.
They assumed everyone would feel the Cowboys would do better than nine wins, so they set a price of -160 on the over. You'd have had to lay 16-10 odds to bet that way, the worst odds against you on the board. But if you were one of the few who thought Dallas wouldn't reach nine, then you were welcomed with open arms. You'd bet into a +130, which means they were giving you 13-10 odds, that's how silly they regarded the proposition.
No other price on the board was as friendly to bettors, out of the 32 teams listed. In other words the smart guys felt it was a cinch that the Boys would do well. They were surer about Dallas than any other team. Kaboom! The Cowboys tanked and the unders cleaned up.
So let's check out Dallas this year. A totally different proposition. The over-under number is 8 1/2, on the line put out by Pinnacles, which I'm using because it's the most recent (the one I've got from the Imperial Palace was set on May 23 and it varies wildly from the Pinnacle's numbers).
Kind of ambitious for Dallas, huh? Well, they agree with you because if you want to bet the under you'll have to lay 119-to-100. A play on the over will give you 103-100 odds in your favor. As I said, I don't want to turn this into a tout sheet, but personally, I like the over, thanks to Drew Bledsoe, a lot of defense and a schedule that could be OK. I can hear the sneers out there. It's a sucker's play, to always take the odds. Seduced by the favorable numbers, etc.
Normally I'd agree with that philosophy, but look what happened last year. A freak season for sure. There were 12 plays you could have made that would have given you odds in your favor. If you'd have bet them all, you'd have won eight, including the five with the best price. I have never seen this. It's like eight of 12 longshots coming in.
Conversely, the oddsmakers' choices, the teams with the worst price against you, (Indy at 150-100 to go under 10 1/2 wins, Philly at 150-100 to go under 10 1/2, Dallas at 160-100 to go over nine, Miami at 150-100 to go over nine, Cincy at 150-100 to go over 7 1/2, Green Bay at 140-100 to go under 9 1/2 and Houston at 140-100 to go under 6 1/2) took the pipe. Only one of the seven, the Bengals, came through. Shocking! Stunning! So why not just make all the over-under plays that give you odds, and avoid the long prices against you? Not that easy.
In 2003, which was closer to a normal year, you'd have lost 12 of 16 plays with the odds in your favor. If you'd have played the 14 games in which you'd have had to give odds of 150-to-100 or more, you'd have won 11 of them, but paid a big vigorish on the few you lost.
Enough numbers. As I said, I don't want to make this a tout sheet, but when my West Coast informant, coach JT, provided me with the up-to-date odds, I asked him what his serious plays were.
"The under on Philly to win 11 1/2," he said, "at minus 130 (giving 13-10 odds). There's no way they're gonna beat the season over-under six straight years."
"There's an old saying in roulette," I said. "The wheel has no memory."
"You wanna ask me or tell me?" he said. OK, sorry. Proceed, please.
"Cardinals to win more than 7 1/2 is my biggest play," he said. "That's at minus 125. No way they're gonna lose to the 49ers twice this year. C'mon now. Give 'em those two and it's eight wins for them last year"
"Clancy Pendergast ... terrific defensive coach," I said, giving him a preview of what I'll probably be writing in this column in a few weeks. "But I'll give you two reasons why I don't like them. Kurt is one and Warner is the other."
"Dennis'll give him a quick hook if he screws up," Coach JT said. "Just watch. By the way, which one do you like best?"
"Taking the under on Seattle to win 8 1/2 and getting +105 in my favor," I said off the top of my head. I really don't know why. I just have a feeling their run is over.
One final word on this preseason over-under handicapping. I've gotten three different sets of numbers, and they're all different. If you happen to be in Vegas, collect a few of them and see if you can catch a middle, or in this case, see if you can get plus-odds on the same team to go under the number on one house's sheet and over it on another. Then you'll be in a win-win situation, which seems impossible in a hard-nosed place like Vegas. But Coach JT swears that such action is possible.
"They haven't definitely fixed the price on anything yet," he said. "Everything is in a state of flux. There could be some great middles out there."
I asked him why he didn't research the whole bunch of them himself and set up his plays accordingly.
"No more funds," he said.
Summer Reading
I'm on the summer book review circuit. Gave you a gnarly one last time, KC Joyner's Scientific Football. Now here's one for pure pleasure -- but you've got to like two things or it won't work. Western rodeos and Cowboy culture, which is the way the news release describes it. I could add a third one. Terrific photography.
The book is Cowboy Up by Arthur Frank, whose unbelievable camera work provides a look at this segment of life that you've never seen before. I don't want to give it away, so I'll cut this away from the herd at this point ... except to add that it costs $35 and you can get a copy by contacting the publisher, powerHouse Books, 212-604-9074 or email: info@powerHouseBooks.com.
Poker patter
I'm still waiting to read something coherent about the last days of the World Series of Poker. Instead, this is the kind of drivel we had to read, which I guess you could call a feature angle. Pat Hayden, a firefighter who hoped to cash in, was quoted in the New York Daily News: "It would be tough because $7.5 million is a lot of money."
Or how about this one, describing his ability to "enjoy the town. Vegas is great. You can't beat it. It's a fun place."
I'm tellin' ya, you learn something every time you pick up the paper. But what I didn't learn was why, in the crucial final hand that won the bloke from Down Under the $7.5 mil, he chose to stay in and even stand a raise with 7-3 as his hole cards? Somewhere someone should have asked him. It went against all logic, which probably was why he won. Or maybe he had to go to the bathroom or was getting sleepy, or something. But that's the thing ... when everything is geared to hype, you never get a logical question answered.
Making sense of Las Vegas' analysis of NFL teams
Posted: Thursday July 21, 2005 1:37PM; Updated: Thursday July 21, 2005 1:59PM
I don't want to turn this into a tout sheet, but I must say that at this time of year, when forecasts on the season are about to erupt in a positive frenzy, there is only one set of predictions I take seriously. Perhaps you know what I'm talking about because I wrote about it last year ... the list that predicts the seasonal records for each team, offering the gamblers a chance to go for the over or the under.
I take these things seriously because you can actually bet into them. Coin of the realm is at stake. And if you check these sheets carefully you can get a reading on how the smart people, the ones who set the prices, think the season's going to play out.
Let's take Dallas, for instance. Last year the Cowboys were the team the oddsmakers were the most wrong about. The over-under number for victories, as determined by the Imperial Palace in Vegas, was a rather presentable nine, keyed to the Boys' remarkable turnaround in 2003, when they rose to 10-6 and the playoffs. But the nine was just a number they threw out; it wasn't what they really thought would happen. That's determined by the odds they give on the likelihood of a team doing either better or worse than its number of victories.
They assumed everyone would feel the Cowboys would do better than nine wins, so they set a price of -160 on the over. You'd have had to lay 16-10 odds to bet that way, the worst odds against you on the board. But if you were one of the few who thought Dallas wouldn't reach nine, then you were welcomed with open arms. You'd bet into a +130, which means they were giving you 13-10 odds, that's how silly they regarded the proposition.
No other price on the board was as friendly to bettors, out of the 32 teams listed. In other words the smart guys felt it was a cinch that the Boys would do well. They were surer about Dallas than any other team. Kaboom! The Cowboys tanked and the unders cleaned up.
So let's check out Dallas this year. A totally different proposition. The over-under number is 8 1/2, on the line put out by Pinnacles, which I'm using because it's the most recent (the one I've got from the Imperial Palace was set on May 23 and it varies wildly from the Pinnacle's numbers).
Kind of ambitious for Dallas, huh? Well, they agree with you because if you want to bet the under you'll have to lay 119-to-100. A play on the over will give you 103-100 odds in your favor. As I said, I don't want to turn this into a tout sheet, but personally, I like the over, thanks to Drew Bledsoe, a lot of defense and a schedule that could be OK. I can hear the sneers out there. It's a sucker's play, to always take the odds. Seduced by the favorable numbers, etc.
Normally I'd agree with that philosophy, but look what happened last year. A freak season for sure. There were 12 plays you could have made that would have given you odds in your favor. If you'd have bet them all, you'd have won eight, including the five with the best price. I have never seen this. It's like eight of 12 longshots coming in.
Conversely, the oddsmakers' choices, the teams with the worst price against you, (Indy at 150-100 to go under 10 1/2 wins, Philly at 150-100 to go under 10 1/2, Dallas at 160-100 to go over nine, Miami at 150-100 to go over nine, Cincy at 150-100 to go over 7 1/2, Green Bay at 140-100 to go under 9 1/2 and Houston at 140-100 to go under 6 1/2) took the pipe. Only one of the seven, the Bengals, came through. Shocking! Stunning! So why not just make all the over-under plays that give you odds, and avoid the long prices against you? Not that easy.
In 2003, which was closer to a normal year, you'd have lost 12 of 16 plays with the odds in your favor. If you'd have played the 14 games in which you'd have had to give odds of 150-to-100 or more, you'd have won 11 of them, but paid a big vigorish on the few you lost.
Enough numbers. As I said, I don't want to make this a tout sheet, but when my West Coast informant, coach JT, provided me with the up-to-date odds, I asked him what his serious plays were.
"The under on Philly to win 11 1/2," he said, "at minus 130 (giving 13-10 odds). There's no way they're gonna beat the season over-under six straight years."
"There's an old saying in roulette," I said. "The wheel has no memory."
"You wanna ask me or tell me?" he said. OK, sorry. Proceed, please.
"Cardinals to win more than 7 1/2 is my biggest play," he said. "That's at minus 125. No way they're gonna lose to the 49ers twice this year. C'mon now. Give 'em those two and it's eight wins for them last year"
"Clancy Pendergast ... terrific defensive coach," I said, giving him a preview of what I'll probably be writing in this column in a few weeks. "But I'll give you two reasons why I don't like them. Kurt is one and Warner is the other."
"Dennis'll give him a quick hook if he screws up," Coach JT said. "Just watch. By the way, which one do you like best?"
"Taking the under on Seattle to win 8 1/2 and getting +105 in my favor," I said off the top of my head. I really don't know why. I just have a feeling their run is over.
One final word on this preseason over-under handicapping. I've gotten three different sets of numbers, and they're all different. If you happen to be in Vegas, collect a few of them and see if you can catch a middle, or in this case, see if you can get plus-odds on the same team to go under the number on one house's sheet and over it on another. Then you'll be in a win-win situation, which seems impossible in a hard-nosed place like Vegas. But Coach JT swears that such action is possible.
"They haven't definitely fixed the price on anything yet," he said. "Everything is in a state of flux. There could be some great middles out there."
I asked him why he didn't research the whole bunch of them himself and set up his plays accordingly.
"No more funds," he said.
Summer Reading
I'm on the summer book review circuit. Gave you a gnarly one last time, KC Joyner's Scientific Football. Now here's one for pure pleasure -- but you've got to like two things or it won't work. Western rodeos and Cowboy culture, which is the way the news release describes it. I could add a third one. Terrific photography.
The book is Cowboy Up by Arthur Frank, whose unbelievable camera work provides a look at this segment of life that you've never seen before. I don't want to give it away, so I'll cut this away from the herd at this point ... except to add that it costs $35 and you can get a copy by contacting the publisher, powerHouse Books, 212-604-9074 or email: info@powerHouseBooks.com.
Poker patter
I'm still waiting to read something coherent about the last days of the World Series of Poker. Instead, this is the kind of drivel we had to read, which I guess you could call a feature angle. Pat Hayden, a firefighter who hoped to cash in, was quoted in the New York Daily News: "It would be tough because $7.5 million is a lot of money."
Or how about this one, describing his ability to "enjoy the town. Vegas is great. You can't beat it. It's a fun place."
I'm tellin' ya, you learn something every time you pick up the paper. But what I didn't learn was why, in the crucial final hand that won the bloke from Down Under the $7.5 mil, he chose to stay in and even stand a raise with 7-3 as his hole cards? Somewhere someone should have asked him. It went against all logic, which probably was why he won. Or maybe he had to go to the bathroom or was getting sleepy, or something. But that's the thing ... when everything is geared to hype, you never get a logical question answered.