Sports Betting

Sports betting are illegal throughout most of the United States, common throughout much of Europe, and an everyday part of the gambling industry in Nevada. It's difficult to figure out how much money is bet on sports in the United States since the majority of it is done illegally, but experts estimate a "handle" of more than $200 billion annually.

Simply placing a bet can be a confusing affair -- sports books have their own lingo, and the systems vary. Figuring out how to bet well enough to make some money is another matter entirely. How are the odds determined? Who sets the line? What percentage of the time do you need to win to break even?

Sports Betting Basics

Different sports have different systems for oddsmaking and betting. There are even different systems for the same sport, depending on what kind of game the bettor wants to play. But to understand any of these systems, you first have to understand the jargon.

Action - Action is simply betting activity. Phrases such as "I want in on the action" or "Show me where the action is" come from this term. Since betting on sports is illegal in many places, you can't always look up your local bookie in the phone book.

Handicap - In sports betting, "to handicap" is to give one team a points advantage in order to level the betting field.

Handle - The handle is the total amount of money wagered on bets. Super Bowl betting generates the biggest handle of the year for most bookies.

Sportsbook - An establishment that takes bets, also known as a book. An individual who takes bets is a bookie.
Juice - This is the percentage of all bets taken by the bookie as profit. The juice is also known as the vig, short for vigorish. Sometimes bookies take a straight percentage of the handle, but more often the vig is figured into the odds.

The spread - The point spread is used in high-scoring sports like football and basketball. It is basically a handicap used to make all games competitive in the eyes of bettors. The spread gives one team an advantage of a few points. Standard notation for the point spread shows the favored team first, followed by a negative number (the actual spread). The home team is shown in capital letters. So if Buffalo was playing against Green Bay in Green Bay, and they were favored to win by seven points.

The money line - In sports like baseball, scoring isn't high enough to use a point spread. The money line is used instead. the dime line, because ten cents separate the favorite from the underdog. Most bookies offer a dime line, although it can increase to a 20 cent line or greater if one team is heavily favored.

If the money line seems confusing, think of it as a simple pricing system. You want to win a certain amount of money on your bet. Chances are greater that the favored team will win the game, so it costs more to bet on the favorite to win that amount than it costs to bet on the underdog.

Pick'em - Sometimes money line games will be listed as "pick" or "pick'em." This means that the teams are considered equal, and the line on both teams is -1.10. Betting on either team requires $1.10 per $1 in potential winnings.

Pools, cards, and parlays - A parlay is just a combination bet. Instead of making five separate bets on five different games, the bettor places a single parlay bet, hoping he or she can predict the outcome of all five games. If any one of the games is a loser, the entire parlay is a loser. The payout is better for parlays, because the odds of successfully picking multiple winners are much tougher to beat. Most people are familiar with parlays through office betting pools or football cards. If you've ever paid $5 to select your winners from a list of that week's football games (sometimes using the spread, sometimes using the straight scores) in hopes of winning the weekly prize, then you have made an informal parlay bet. Office pools don't usually involve actual bookies beyond the person who organizes the pool, and no one takes juice from the pool. All the money is distributed to the winner or winners.

Oddsmaker vs. Bookie

What's the difference between an oddsmaker and a bookie? A bookie's job is purely mechanical. He gets the line from Vegas or another source, offers bets at those odds, then collects money from the losers, pays out to the winners and keeps the vig. Oddsmakers don't actually take bets -- they study the games and set the lines. Bookies often adjust the spreads for their games, so they do a little oddsmaking, and oddsmakers work for casinos, which operate sports books that take bets.

The point spread for a football game or the money line for a baseball game are both referred to as "the line." The line is simply the odds for that particular game, translated into whatever system is used. When a big Las Vegas casino issues the first line on a game, it is known as the "opening line." Offshore sports books often issue a line before Vegas does, but the Vegas line is usually considered the most trustworthy.

Setting the line is a matter of intense research, carefully cultivated contacts, years of experience and plain old intuition. An oddsmaker's reputation is based on his accuracy, and he has many variables to consider when determining the odds:

• The teams' performances this season, in prior seasons, in last week's game, and against each other
• The playing surface
• Home field advantage
• The weather forecast
• Injuries, especially those of star players
• Team morale
• Events in the personal lives of the players

Oddsmakers don't try to predict the outcome of the game when setting point spreads. If a team is favored by seven points, that doesn't mean that the oddsmaker necessarily thinks it will win by seven points. The oddsmaker's goal when setting the line is to keep an equal number of bets on both sides of the game. The betting public's perception of the game can be as important as the actual comparison of the two teams.

Why do oddsmakers try to keep the action even on both sides of a bet? A bookie's worst fear is being "sided." This happens when many bets come in on one side of a game. If that side turns out to be the winning side, the bookie will lose a lot of money. Ideally, half the bettors lose, and their money goes to pay off the other half, who won, with the bookie taking the vig.

Oddsmakers are so intent on keeping the action even that they actually move the line in response to betting patterns. If too many bets are coming in for the underdog, then that team might have been given too many points, so the line is moved. Bets made prior to the move are still counted at the old line. Some bettors will make additional bets after the line moves, on the opposite side of the game. This is known as middling. Sometimes a single well-known gambler can force oddsmakers to move the line. When one of these gamblers makes a bet, a lot of people pay attention and bet the same way, because he has a reputation for winning frequently. This can draw so much action to one side of the bet that the oddsmaker must move the line.

Often oddsmakers will move the line independently of the Vegas line in response to local betting patterns. Over time, they gain experience in setting the odds themselves. If they develop a reputation for setting accurate lines, they might be hired by one of the Las Vegas casinos, the only places that can legally hire oddsmakers in the United States.

Becoming an oddsmaker isn't easy -- there are no oddsmaker schools. Plenty of books describe handicapping and oddsmaking, but the only way to get an actual job as an oddsmaker is to have lots of experience. All oddsmakers used to be gamblers and/or bookies. Some of them learned the business from relatives, while others just hung out at old sawdust rooms and pool houses, learning everything they could about the game. They watch sports constantly, read dozens of newspapers, and have friends and contacts around the country to provide detailed information on every team and every game.

Some people oppose sports betting because it can have an effect on the games themselves. The number of scandals related to gambling in the 20th century alone numbers in the dozens.

Before point spreads, it was risky for a gambler to attempt to manipulate a game. He had to find a player who was willing to lose the game in return for a bribe. But although it was risky, manipulation happened often. In the early 1900s, gambling was a well-known, if not well-liked, part of professional baseball. Gamblers gathered in one section of the stands, placing bets on everything from the winner of the game to the outcome of the next pitch.

Point spreads lead to a more subtle kind of manipulation -- point shaving. College basketball is particularly susceptible to this practice. If a team is favored by eight points, gamblers don't have to bribe players to lose the entire game. They just have to convince them to win it by less than eight points.

Football has been the target of point shaving efforts as well. It has long been rumored that the final outcome of the 1958 NFL championship game was affected by substantial bets (as much as $1 million) that the owner of the Baltimore Colts had placed on his team. The Colts were favored by three or four points. In overtime, the team was in a position for an easy field goal, which would have won them the game by three points. Instead, they kept trying for a touchdown, which they eventually made, winning the championship and covering the spread. No real evidence was ever found that the owner actually influenced the plays called on the field.

One of the most famous betting scandals of recent decades involved former all-star baseball player and successful manager Pete Rose, who compiled a 412-373 won/loss record managing the Cincinnati Reds. In 1989, investigations revealed that he had made dozens of bets for up to $10,000 on baseball games, including betting on his own team. He was subsequently banned from baseball for life

Common question about sports betting is, "Can I make money betting on sports?" The answer is simple: NO. Some bettors get lucky in the short term, but over a long series of bets, the gambler will almost always lose money. The reason is the 11/10 vig, a built-in advantage that guarantees the bookie will make money. Every time you bet on a point spread game, you must bet $11 for every $10 in potential winnings. If you bet $110 and win, you win $100 (your total return is $210 -- your original bet plus the winnings). On average, you have to win 52.38 percent of the time just to break even. The famous gambler Lem Banker once referred to this as "the implacable reality of 11-to-10". It's difficult to win 52.38 percent of the time. If you bet steadily for several years, all you're likely to accomplish is sending your bookie's kids to college.

Professional gamblers seem to make a good living on sports betting, but there are very few of them. Most people can't earn six figures by watching football. If you consider the entire sports betting population as one statistical sample, it is inevitable that a few individuals will have better than expected success, just as a few people will have unexpectedly horrible luck. You don't usually hear about those gamblers.