On Sports Betting: In Las Vegas, It Pays to Have the Right Number
By Daniel Behringer
LVSportsBiz.com
In Las Vegas, it’s all about the number.
And we saw no better evidence of that than in one of the college football bowl games on New Year’s Eve. Oregon had opened at -2.5, a number that briefly went to -3. It stayed there until the day before the kickoff of the unheralded RedBox Bowl between the Ducks and the Michigan State Spartans.
Then it fell to -2. Then -1. Then briefly “pick.” Then the line flipped and Oregon was suddenly +1.
When Oregon won an uninspired defensive slugfest, 7-6, the final line moves turned winners into losers. And losers into winners.
Happens every day in Las Vegas.
By New Year’s Day, however, the back-and-forth line moves in the match-up between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Texas Longhorns turned out to be immaterial. Georgia, who many felt rightly belonged in the College Football Playoff, opened at -10.5, went to as high as -13, then fell to -11.5 before closing again at -13.
But it was clearly the not the day for ‘Dawgs bettors as an inspired Longhorns team scored first and led all the way en route to a 28-21 victory. Longhorns bettors who cashed money line bets as rich as +375 kicked off the new year in spectacular fashion.
Vegas Golden Knights bettors who were willing to lay -260 in the New Year’s Day home game with the Los Angeles Kings also got to celebrate as the Knights blanked the Kings, 2-0. Obviously, there was better value on the puck line.
Another interesting number came into play on Wednesday in the NBA as the Oklahoma Thunder invaded Staples Center to play the always-in-the-spotlight Los Angeles Lakers. We liked the favorite here, but the Thunder were -5, trailing at halftime and down by eight points at the end of three quarters. At that point, we would have offered an attractive discount to anyone who wanted to buy our ticket.
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But the Thunder prevailed 29-18 in the fourth quarter for a 107-100 victory and a cover that made our ticket good. In case you follow NBA totals, the final score never seriously threatened the total of 229.5.
And in one of the marquee college basketball matchups on the same day, Kansas defeated Oklahoma, 70-63. The Jayhawks didn’t cover the -8.5 side for the game but easily covered the first-half line as they bolted out to a 40-25 lead in the first 20 minutes.
The marquee match-up in the NBA on Thursday was clearly Houston Rockets at the Golden State Warriors. As someone recently observed, the Warriors are looking mortal this year and the Rockets at +8.5 was a tempting proposition. But based on chatter on sports talk radio and our gut instinct, we invested in the total going over 226.5. The over got there with several minutes left in the fourth-quarter, then went to overtime before Houston sunk Golden State, 135-134, in a highly entertaining game that lived up to its hype.
By Friday, if you were looking for a winning team to ride, you didn’t have to look far. The Vegas Golden Knights had won four straight going into their road game with the Anaheim Ducks. The price was -140 on the VGK side.
The question might be, what is a fair price for a popular team riding the crest of a winning strike and -140 was probably a fair price. But it rewarded Knights bettors again as the Las Vegas team beat the Ducks, 3-2. (If you’re looking for an in-game wagering angle, The Associated Press reports the Knights are 16-0-2 when leading after two periods.)
The Knights extended their win streak to six on Sunday with a 3-2 win over the New Jersey Devils. If you were willing to lay 2-1, you cashed another ticket. But if you took a shot on the puck line at +125, well, that’s the way the puck bounces.
But as we said at the outset, it’s all about the number. The wild-card games in the NFL brought that point home again on Saturday when the Seattle Seahawks traveled to Arlington, Texas, to play the Dallas Cowboys. The line was Dallas -2 for most of the day, then swung to Dallas -2.5. And when the Seahawks scored late and tacked on an improbable two-point conversion, the final score landed at 24-22. A nice payday for ‘hawks bettors at +2.5, but a gut-wrenching disappointment for Cowboys gamblers.
More games this week starting with the College Football Championship Game between Alabama and Clemson on Jan. 7. The Crimson Tide were still -5.5 at this writing, and the total had ticked down to 58. And the divisional round of NFL plays goes this weekend.
Plan on betting? Make sure you get the right number.
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