This past weekend's action from a bookmaker's point-of-view
By Jimmy Mason, Director of Sportsbook Operations, www.betcom.com
This weekend was slow by sportsbook standards with Saturday seeing most of the action. Yes, we were chopping it up pretty good on Saturday with the Giant-killer Rockies taking down Jason Schmidt to counteract the sting of the Phoenix Suns pounding the Kings, and the Red Sox downing the Devil Rays.
Then it started??The money started rolling in on the Denver Nuggets +3 1/2. Not a tsunami mind you, but slowly the Nuggets tickets were adding up. Like Chinese water torture the Nuggets money came trickling in, and it was beginning to give our ?bm?s quite the headache. Then the line started moving up from -3 ? up to -4 at other books according to our Don Best (Don Best is a service that allows us to monitor what lines all the other major sportsbooks are using.). What to do? We needed the Rockets for crying out loud! Our line managers decided to stay at -3 ?, but then one of a handful of ?sharps? we have laid the -3 ? points letting us know we were too low. This was a case of respecting the ?sharp? guy?s money more than general public?s money. Later we found out that the Nuggets had been a ?release? from one of the biggest handicapping services on the West Coast. That accounted for the high number of tickets on a seemingly meaningless underdog at the end of the NBA regular season. In the end the ?sharp? won his wager as Houston demolished the Nuggets 115-87 and we came away with a small profit for the weekend.
Until next weekend when we?ll look back again?..
Jimmy Mason
Get in on the action: www.betcom.com
By Jimmy Mason, Director of Sportsbook Operations, www.betcom.com
This weekend was slow by sportsbook standards with Saturday seeing most of the action. Yes, we were chopping it up pretty good on Saturday with the Giant-killer Rockies taking down Jason Schmidt to counteract the sting of the Phoenix Suns pounding the Kings, and the Red Sox downing the Devil Rays.
Then it started??The money started rolling in on the Denver Nuggets +3 1/2. Not a tsunami mind you, but slowly the Nuggets tickets were adding up. Like Chinese water torture the Nuggets money came trickling in, and it was beginning to give our ?bm?s quite the headache. Then the line started moving up from -3 ? up to -4 at other books according to our Don Best (Don Best is a service that allows us to monitor what lines all the other major sportsbooks are using.). What to do? We needed the Rockets for crying out loud! Our line managers decided to stay at -3 ?, but then one of a handful of ?sharps? we have laid the -3 ? points letting us know we were too low. This was a case of respecting the ?sharp? guy?s money more than general public?s money. Later we found out that the Nuggets had been a ?release? from one of the biggest handicapping services on the West Coast. That accounted for the high number of tickets on a seemingly meaningless underdog at the end of the NBA regular season. In the end the ?sharp? won his wager as Houston demolished the Nuggets 115-87 and we came away with a small profit for the weekend.
Until next weekend when we?ll look back again?..
Jimmy Mason
Get in on the action: www.betcom.com
