I'm sure most experienced handicappers will agree with me when I say that I don't generally find a big difference from game to game in the money line that is posted next to any particular spread line. That is, for a 3-point favourite you pretty much always see a money line of around -150 or -160 ... for a 7-point favourite you see a line close to -300, and so on.
What possible characteristics of a game could produce some variance in what the money line should be for a particular spread? One thing that pops to my mind right away is the total. I did a few studies that produce some interesting results.
The following data consists of all regular season games from 1995-2001, 7 seasons in total:
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For teams that were between -1.5 to -3.5-point favourites this is how often they won the game outright:
For games with totals of 36.5 or less: 78 out of 120 or 65.00%
For games of totals of 45.5 or more: 31 out of 51 or 60.78%
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For teams that were between -7.5 to 9.5-point favourites this is how often they won the game outright:
For games with totals of 36.5 or less: 23 out of 36 or 63.89%
For games of totals of 45.5 or more: 19 out of 21 or 90.48%
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The second category of games (involving heavy favourites) is particularly striking. Even with the fairly small sample of games, the difference seems clear: the higher the total posted for a game with a big favourite, the better chance the favourite has to win the game outright. This makes perfect sense because the more scoring there is in the game, the more chance the "cream has to rise to the top". What I mean by that is that the best chance a team has to prove it's better that its opponent is to score more points, and the more opprtunity there is for them to do that, the less chance the worse team has to get lucky and pull off an upset. This is why for example, a better team in any given sport has a better chance of winning a 7-game series than say, a 3-game series.
With respect to the smaller favourites, it looks like games with lower totals produce more outright winners than higher totals. Here the skill level difference between the 2 teams isn't enough to really produce the "cream rising to the top" effect, but it's possible that by betting the money line, the points that you get over to your side are much more valuable in a lower scoring game than a higher one, since points are more of at a premium. The more scoring there is in the game, the higher variance there should be in the final scoring margin and you will have less of a chance of that margin falling into the window that will make the difference between the ATS and ML bet.
These are all just theories and speculation of course. But the results themselves I think are very valuable to those with a more technical approach to their handicapping.
What possible characteristics of a game could produce some variance in what the money line should be for a particular spread? One thing that pops to my mind right away is the total. I did a few studies that produce some interesting results.
The following data consists of all regular season games from 1995-2001, 7 seasons in total:
-----
For teams that were between -1.5 to -3.5-point favourites this is how often they won the game outright:
For games with totals of 36.5 or less: 78 out of 120 or 65.00%
For games of totals of 45.5 or more: 31 out of 51 or 60.78%
-----
For teams that were between -7.5 to 9.5-point favourites this is how often they won the game outright:
For games with totals of 36.5 or less: 23 out of 36 or 63.89%
For games of totals of 45.5 or more: 19 out of 21 or 90.48%
-----
The second category of games (involving heavy favourites) is particularly striking. Even with the fairly small sample of games, the difference seems clear: the higher the total posted for a game with a big favourite, the better chance the favourite has to win the game outright. This makes perfect sense because the more scoring there is in the game, the more chance the "cream has to rise to the top". What I mean by that is that the best chance a team has to prove it's better that its opponent is to score more points, and the more opprtunity there is for them to do that, the less chance the worse team has to get lucky and pull off an upset. This is why for example, a better team in any given sport has a better chance of winning a 7-game series than say, a 3-game series.
With respect to the smaller favourites, it looks like games with lower totals produce more outright winners than higher totals. Here the skill level difference between the 2 teams isn't enough to really produce the "cream rising to the top" effect, but it's possible that by betting the money line, the points that you get over to your side are much more valuable in a lower scoring game than a higher one, since points are more of at a premium. The more scoring there is in the game, the higher variance there should be in the final scoring margin and you will have less of a chance of that margin falling into the window that will make the difference between the ATS and ML bet.
These are all just theories and speculation of course. But the results themselves I think are very valuable to those with a more technical approach to their handicapping.
