Quote:
Originally Posted by albionmoonlight
I thought that books made their money on the vig. So that a book doesn't really care if a sharp is winning because they will always have someone on the other end of that bet losing and then they keep the vig.
I am assuming it is more complicated than that. What am I missing?
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In a perfect world you would be correct. Bookmakers set a number based on where they think they will get the most two way action. If they were to get equal exposure they would make money off the vig. It is obviously close enough most of the time they make money. Its been something like 50ish straight months vegas books have won.
The single biggest advantage a player has over the bookmakers is the bookmaker has to put a line on all the games, the bettor doesn't have to bet every game. Where the sharps come in to play is they look for bad lines then exploit them. It is actually a pretty common practice for offshore books to actually use a sharp player to set a line. What they will do is when a sharp player makes a bet, they reject it, then reset the line before allowing the bet. In addition to sharps identifying bad lines, they also tend to bet more, leaving a lot of exposure to one side for the book. If a sharp spots a bad line on a Pirates-Reds game and makes a 5K bet on it, there aren't nearly enough smaller bets the book can take to get 2 way exposure.
Does that make sense?