This Week in Auto Racing October 11 - October 13

Autoracing Betting Lines

10/09/2007 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - It's the fifth race of the 10-race "Chase for the Nextel Cup" and Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are threatening to make the championship their own private contest.

NASCAR

Nextel Cup

Bank of America 500 - Lowe's Motor Speedway - Concord, NC

For those who survived the mayhem of Dover and the Kansas Speedway and the "Big One" at Talladega with their championship hopes still in tact, it's on to the Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Of the 12 "Chase for the Nextel Cup" competitors, only three or possibly four still have a realistic chance at the championship.

Gordon leads the "Chase" just as he led the series for most of the season. Beginning in week five, Gordon was the points leader every week through race No.25. He has been either first or second in the standings for 28 of 30 weeks.

At Lowe's Gordon has a solid record. He owns four of his 80 career Nextel Cup wins on the Charlotte, NC track and 15 top-10s in 29 starts. That's a good record, but it pales next to the record of his teammate Johnson.

The No.48 Chevrolet driver has made 12 starts on the 1.5-mile oval named after his primary sponsor and has earned five wins and 11 top-10s. His average finish is an amazing 6.2. He swept the spring and fall events in both 2004 and 2005. Johnson is just nine points behind Gordon.

Clint Bowyer has also survived the past wild weeks with his championship dreams still alive. Bowyer has been consistent all season long and in the four "Chase" races has continued that streak. His worst finish is a 12th at Dover and he collected the first win of his Nextel Cup career in the "Chase" opener at the New Hampshire International Speedway. Still, an 11th-place finish at Talladega left him 63 points behind the leader.

Two-time Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart is hanging on to his championship hopes by a thread. For Stewart, a 39th-place finish at Kansas may be the race that kills his title. He stands 154 points behind Gordon on the fringe of competitiveness.

But Stewart can still dream of a title because in 2006 Johnson showed him how it could be done. Johnson fell 156 points back before storming to victory. But putting together five consecutive top-two finishes like Johnson did in 2006 does not happen very often.

In 2005, Stewart put an eight-race streak together which included five wins and six top-two finishes. This year he won three out of four races from mid-July to mid-August so he is certainly capable of making a run like that.

Behind Stewart, Harvick sits fifth in the championship, but a distant 202 points behind. On top of that, the Richard Childress Racing driver has not been on top of his game since early in the year when he won at Daytona and the Nextel All-Star Challenge.

In fact, the RCR camp is struggling to figure out why four of their engines, including Harvick's, came apart at Talladega. Harvick managed to limp his No.29 Chevy to the checkered flag on seven cylinders, but three RCR-powered cars failed - Jeff Burton, Martin Truex Jr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Kasey Kahne, who disappeared in 2007, won last year's Bank of America 500 beating Johnson to the checkered flag by 1.624 seconds. The No.9 Gillett Evernham Motorsports driver has yet to visit Victory Lane in 2007 after winning a series-high six times in 2006. He also had 19 top-10s last year versus just six in 2007. This would be a good time for Kahne to set a tone for the remainder of the season and show that he will be back in 2008.

Unfortunately this is the Lowe's Motor Speedway and it is "owned" by Johnson and the No.48 team. Don't be surprised if he makes another trip to Victory Lane.

Busch

Dollar General 300 - Lowe's Motor Speedway - Concord, NC

The Busch championship has been over for weeks, it just hasn't been made official yet. Carl Edwards built a huge lead early on and will cruise to his first title any day now. The No.60 Roush Racing Ford driver owns a 696-point lead over David Reutimann with five races left on the schedule.

If he leaves this week's race with a 644-point margin, he only has to start the final four events to win the title. If he builds his lead to 780 points, he can take the rest of the season off and still win the championship.

Veteran Jason Keller will attempt to break one of the series' longtime records this Friday night. If he qualifies for the Dollar General 300, he'll become the all-time leader in starts at 418. He is currently tied with Busch Series legend Tommy Houston, who will drive the pace car. Over Keller's 16-year career he has accumulated 10 wins, 11 poles and 161 top-10s.

Houston's 15-year career included 24 wins, 18 poles and 198 top-10s. Houston was born in Hickory, NC and won nearly 150 NASCAR Late Model Sportsmen division races before the Busch Series was created. He is the uncle of Teresa Earnhardt.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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Super Bowl 2009 Betting

Super Bowl 2009 Betting propositions

Underdog bettors love the Super Bowl and, history suggests, the underdogs love them back. And the big dogs bite harder.

Even so, there is a warning in store for Super Bowl gamblers who must love dogs: The Arizona Cardinals Super Bowl betting lines might not be enough of a Cinderella to make it worth your while.

Although the Cardinals were widely panned as one of the worst division winners and least playoff-worthy teams in recent memory, their trip to Super Bowl XLIII Jan. 31 in Tampa against the Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl betting lines comes with a little more respect from the oddsmakers than you might imagine. They are a 7-point underdog at most sports books.

If you count yourself among those who covet the big dog in the big game, this isn’t exactly great news. You should have been hoping for more points. This is because the facts show that the bigger the dog, the better the bet in the Super Bowl.

Case in point: Over the past 13 seasons, double-figure underdogs in the Super Bowl are 4-0-1 ATS and have won the past three outright. In fact, the last double-digit chalk to do the deed for bettors was the 1995 San Francisco 49ers, who managed to beat the astounding 19-point spot afforded backers of the San Diego Chargers in the 49-26 romp in Super Bowl XXIX.

By contrast, 7-point favorites are 2-1-1 ATS in the same span, the last such contest resulting a cover grinded out by the Colts in their 29-17 win over the Bears two seasons ago in Super Bowl XLI.

In 2004, the Patriots failed to cover the number in their 32-29 triumph over the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl props while the Rams and Titans gave everyone a refund in 2000 after the Rams posted a 23-16 win as a seven-point favorite.

So while Arizona’s run has included impressive upsets as a 10-point road underdog to the Carolina Panthers and Sunday’s 32-25 win in the NFC championship game to the 4-point favored Philadelphia Eagles, their long-shot story lacks a bit of the David vs. Goliath storyline of past Super Bowl underdogs.

While the seven-point spread represents a significant gap in the perception of strength between the two teams, it is far from monumental. For example, last season the Giants were the wild-card afterthought turned road-warrior buzzsaw, with stunning wins over the Buccaneers, Cowboys and Packers to earn their place in the Super Bowl.

There, they played spoiler to New England’s bid to become the first 19-0 team in NFL history and cemented their place in sports betting lore with a 17-14 win as a 12.5-point underdog.

In other words, the Cardinals appear to have their work cut out for them as a mid-range underdog. But in homage to the spread beaters who have come before them, here is a brief look back at recent colossal upsets in the Super Bowl:

SB XLII -- 2008 -- New York Giants 17, New England Patriots 14 (Giants +12.5) – Eli Manning’s 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress in the final minute clinched the historic upset for the Giants, who used a masterful defensive plan to slow down Tom Brady and the previously undefeated New England Patriots.

XXXVI -- 2002 -- Patriots 20, Rams 17 (Patriots +14) – This was the coming out party for the aforementioned Brady, who went from obscure sixth-round draft pick to Super Bowl hero in one fell swoop. He led the game-winning drive in the final minute – eschewing analyst John Madden’s advice to take a knee and play for overtime – leading to Adam Vinatieri’s memorable 48-yard field goal that split the uprights as time expired.

XXXII 1998 Broncos 31, Packers 24 (Denver +12) – The first of John Elway’s two consecutive Super Bowl titles to put an end to his Hall of Fame career was an upset for the ages. The Broncos used the determination of Elway and a 157-yard, three-touchdown performance from Terrell Davis to turn back Brett Favre and the heavily favored Packers.

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