Week 2 Recap - SPORTSBOOK 101

Again, Week 2 was not a disaster...so definitely a moral victory! 12 of 16 underdogs covered, and even though my competition had far different picks than I did, we both ended up at 8-7-1 for the week. The day couldn't have started better for me, but got progressively worse and carried over into Monday Night. 2-3 in bets I actually made: San Fran +3 St. Louis (W), Atlanta +10.5 Jacksonville (W), Miami +4 Dallas (L), Seattle -3 Arizona (L), San Diego +3.5 New England (L). By some of the lines in Week 2, it appeared Vegas didn't know what they were doing. Jacksonville favored by double digits? Carolina by a TD over Houston? Washington getting a similar amount of points last night? 2 things here:
1. The first 2-4 weeks of the NFL season are pretty hard to set a line for since teams have not established how good they are. Example: Houston. Before the season, this was a 5 or 6 win team at most...now?? It's not out of the question that this team makes the playoffs.
2. The lines are merely the "market price" for action on a game. The line is set so a fairly similar amount of money comes in on both sides. If the action is skewed to one side, the line moves. Why did Jacksonville stay favored by 10.5? Because enough bettors were bringing in action for this price.

An important note about the above...bettors (by a decent margin) tend to bet on the favorite. For this reason, a lot of spreads are artificially higher than they should be AND in a normal year more underdogs beat the spread than favorites. The bottom line of this equation is that the casinos make a KILLING in weekends like Week 2. When the dogs come in, profits soar. 3 reasons for this:
1. 10% vig built in for all action
2. Underdogs (normally) cover more than favorites in a given year (and bettors tend to play favorites instead).
3. When the underdogs do come in like they do in Week 2, nearly everybody who plays a parlay or teaser card, loses. Parlay cards and prop bets are huge money makers for the books.

Now that we've established some of the doctrine in Sportsbook 101, it's time to move on to Week 3. The predictions will come out Friday, but looking at the schedule I couldn't help but noticing a lot of tough calls next week:

• San Diego -4.5 Green Bay....how good is Green Bay? Have they been underestimated? Are the Chargers over-rated?
• KC -3 Minnesota....seriously, 1 of these teams has to win?
• NE -16.5 Buffalo....my God that's a lot of points.
• Denver -3 Jacksonville...Wow, 2 teams that are completely overestimated.
• Oakland -3 Cleveland....Another game where it's unfortunate somebody will win.
• Chicago -3 Dallas....Another great Sunday Night game.
• New Orleans -4.5 Tennessee....you should already know who I'm taking! V-Y-M-V-P...OK maybe in a couple years.

This should be a tough, but interesting week.

Rich Kim

Senior Degenerate Gambler