Oh really? Then why do Sportsbooks spend millions of dollars on professional handicappers and pay tons of money for inside information that the public doesn't know about anyway? If the public is unaware of this inside info, then Vegas shouldn't really care about it either, right?
They have employees who set the lines so that they aren't out of whack to begin with. Spending millions for inside information is a fiment of your imagination.
And why bother with computer simulations and spending money on extremely advanced technology and algorithms to come up with a spread? Why not just pay someone 40k a year who researches historical trends, polls bettors, and can figure out exactly where to set the spread for equal betting? Because there is rarely equal betting, so why not just do that?
Again, the fact that they strive to do it correctly is not proof that they are silly enough to take a sure thing and turn it into a gamble.
The reason they don't do this is because sharp bettors would kill them with $5M bets and take all their money. Vegas foremost protects themselves by setting the correct line so it's a 50/50 proposition on who will actually cover... the adjustments are made to hedge bets and risks.
No. That is gambling. They are in the business of collecting as close to all of the 10% vig on the bets that they can.
Again, the fact that they work hard to get the initial line right doesn't mean they run their business based on guessing who will win, when they can simply collect 10% with no risk.
You act like they would give a team 5-6 points because they think that's where the betting will come in. That's crazy! As I said before, maybe 1-2 points. If the spread was giving a team a touchdown that was not calculated into the real probability equation, the books would go bankrupt.
This makes absolutely no sense. There is no probability equation in a sporting event. Once again, they don't try to predict a winner, that would be effetively making the house a gambler. They strive to get equal money on both sides.
Example. If they get 10,000,000 on Baltimore and 12,000,000 on the Patriots (yes I know it is simpistic but for brevity its the same effect) they are at risk of $2,000,000 but the collect $2,200,000 in vig. They want to drive the next 2,000,0000 to Bmore, so they are walking away with 2,400,000 no matter who wins, not to NE so they also have 4,000,000 (the difference) bet on the outcome.
Vegas likes to be somewhat balanced by sometimes adjusting the lines a few points to compensate for unbalanced bets, but in general, they begin with the number that accurately represents the most likely outcome of the game. You obviously don't know how it works.
Common sense defeats your argument.
