Jed,
You couldnt be more wrong in your attitudes regarding line movement and placement. These are crucial tools in determining the value of plays and also when plays should be red flagged. I can tell that through your comments you are a very inexperienced gambler and that you havent spent much time around this. My guess is that you just recently got into gambling this football or basketball season and and basing your assumptions off the fact that the "sharp" money has been getting killed for about 6 months now. Let me explain to you just exactly why these numbers are important and how you can no use them to make more money instead of hoping you find oil to move the family to Beverly Hills.
There is a reason that Las Vegas seems to continue to make money and build large hotels. It isnt because they really like to lose often. The majority of the public loses money when they are gambling, and in turn this should be utilized by trying to avoid times in which you are on a heavily backed public team. Does it matter when the split is 55/45? No. It doesnt. In those sorts of games, the house is happy to collect the juice off the bets and continue on with their profits.
I want you to understand, the whole against the public thing might not be exactly what you think it is. My guess is that you think it might be something where you see that 65% of a team is on one-side and simply dont care. Thats all fine and dandy if the line continues to move in your direction. Lines move with the money that comes in on either one team or another. It doesnt move by the percentage of bets that are being placed.
So, if you are looking at a team getting 70% of the public bets and the line has either not moved or is moving in the opposite direction then there is something you want to look at. Why isnt that line moving? Well that coule be because of two different reasons. Either Vegas doesnt want money to start coming in on the other side or that larger bets are coming in on the other side.
For example, lets take a look at this game you are mentioning above that pits the Cleveland Cavaliers vs. the Chicago Bulls. As of early numbers, there are about 70% of the spread plays on the Cavaliers. That is a pretty large number, and for some reason the line has gone to four instead of moving towards 3. This should be a red flag for you. Why isnt the line going down to 3 if all the money came in on Cleveland when the line was 3.5?
After understanding this, one might be inclined to look at these two teams and try to find something else about why "vegas" is encouraging you to take the Bulls tonight. Maybe it has something to do with past performance. Maybe it is the way Cleveland bounces back on B2Bs. There needs to be something else involved to why the line is refusing to move towards the Cavliers when this Bulls team has not won 2 games in a row since the turn of the year.
Lets take a gander together....
Last time these two teams met was a little under a week ago and the injury situations were very similar to the way they are now. The Cavs were without Z, Boobie, and Pavlovic then too and the Bulls were playing without Thabo. The only thing that has changed is that the Bulls are playing without Tyrus Thomas tonight who had a very good game last time against this same Cavaliers team. He had an efficent 12 points and 7 rebounds. Now he is out and the line is still moving towards the Bulls. Strange....
The last time these two teams played the Bulls were getting 4.5 points while playing the game in Cleveland and are now laying 4 at home. This places the home-court advantage of the Bulls somewhere around 9 points? That doesnt make much sense either as they are 13-15 so far this season in the United Center. This is even making less sense....
Cleveland is 8-6 so far this season on B2Bs and one of the few teams that is able to say that they are over .500 ATS on 0 days rest. They seem to be a resiliant group when coming back on short rest so I cant imagine that being much of a reason to shade towards the Bulls.
Basically, we can break this game down as many ways as you want, but the facts are this line is wrong. This line should be closer to 2 and should be moving towards Cleveland with all the heavy action. For some reason it isnt. For some reason, Vegas wants you to put your money on the Cavs tonight. They are begging for it.
With all this information, I have found that the only plausable play in this game would be to take the Bulls tonight. However, we have a Super-Star on the Cavaliers and rule #1 in my gambling manifesto is that you NEVER lay points to a super-star. It just doesnt make sense.
he stinks
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