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A little over a month ago I wrote about the impressive rate at which home teams were winning - 58 percent over the first two months of the season. This was not unprecedented over a smaller sample, but varied enough from the usual average of about 54 percent that it was worth looking into. There were various theories as to why this was happening, but none that were particularly convincing.
At that point in the year, the Covers money standings showed that home teams were raking in the cash, averaging a mark of +169, while road teams were registering significantly in the red at an average of -274. This didn’t seem like a trend that could be taken advantage of going forward - plenty of people had noticed how much the home teams were winning, and the linesmakers certainly weren’t oblivious to that fact themselves.
Interestingly, the oddsmakers have in fact adjusted their lines, but only slightly. In April, the average home line (at Pinnacle, via the Wagerline numbers, which are further discussed here) was -123, meaning that home teams would have to win over 55.1 percent of the time for betting on all home teams to be a profitable strategy. They did and, obviously, it was.
In June, though, it was a different story. The average home line rose to -125. If home teams had kept winning at such an astronomical rate, this wouldn’t have been enough; the all-home strategy only needs them to win more than 55.5 percent of the time to work with that line. However, the trend did not continue. Home teams went 214-190 in July, which is a rate of 53.0 percent. If you’d bet exclusively on home teams, you would’ve gotten destroyed.
That’s not to say you should’ve gone the opposite way and focused on betting on road teams - that would’ve only made you a slight profit at Pinnacle, and in the black at a book with higher juice. Tthe lesson here is that there are no quick fixes. You can’t just see that the home teams are winning and have been profitable so far, so you’re going to start betting on them more often. The fact that they’ve been winning recently doesn’t mean they’ll be winning in the future. And if it’s part of a large trend, the oddsmakers aren’t stupid; they’ll adjust, and the inefficiency will be no longer.
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