Do bookie's lose money?

Say that Texas is playing Oklahoma  and Texas  is -4and I am booking bets and before game time I add up all the action I have on this game. I total it up and I have $8500 on  Texas and $3200 on Oklahoma. I can choose to "sit on" the whole amount and if Oklahoma wins I win $5350, but if Texas wins I lose $5300.

Before this game starts, I can choose to call another "book" and lay of some of the Texas money to him so as to protect myself from a big loss. It is up to the "book" to decide how much risk he is willing to take.

Yep, you can get beat even a great portion of some seasons, but  by the time the bowl games and the Super Bowl has been played, you are a winner.Some years are much more profitable than others, but in all my years, I never had a losing season. You just need to keep some money in reserve to get you through the weeks that the players blister you. In a marginal year, it will be the parlays that make you a winner. Guys seem to risk more on parlays and play more parlays when they get ahead. They rationalize that since they are playing with the "books money"they can risk more which leads to profit for the book. Parlays can be hit(you have a 1 in 6 chance of hitting a three teamer) but in the long run they are a "cash cow" for the book.

RantinRave,

If your action isn't balanced you should lay it off to another book.

BALANCER ACTION  That's the biggest myth in booking. The public is wrong a lot more than they are right. I did't want balanced action. I wanted to make "lots of money on ONE SIDED games. I DID. I lost money on som one sided games, but over a week or usually a weekend, I cleaned up on these games and parlays.

Think about it, there is no way you will ever get balanced action on games. I surely don't want to LAYOFF winning money.

[Quote: Originally Posted by gambler66] to Dj  destroyer.  You always have a juice that's how you make your $. [/Quote

That "juice bit" is a myth. Books make their "big money" on one sided games. There are at least 5- 10 or more onesided games a weekend in football. THERE IS NO WAY THAT A BOOK WILL BE JUICED OUT ON ALL GAMES. NO WAY IN HELL. I did it for 34 years and loved getting onesided games because I knew I was going to win the majority of those games.Like the SUPER BOWL, I had about 4 bets on GB and twenty plus bets on Pitt which was about a $5000 dollar difference. I won the game "big time". Raked in all those Pitt bets plus the juice.

I was not big enough to have a 50k difference, but maybe 5-7k difference. Never moved my lines. If players were betting one side only, I just left the line alone and sucked in that money. The majority of the time I won those games.

Right, BOOKIES DO NOT LOSE MONEY. Maybe a streak of two or three weeks or maybe some marginal weeks, but there will be some weeks where the players get "their heads ripped off" Bookies win, players lose. Some guys are better than others at picking winners. It's usually the player that plays a limited number of games each week. Give me a player that tries to play lots of games and i'll show you a loser.

You need to take PAR'S and ROBIN'S

Player needs 66% to break even in a ROBIN

Yep. the parlay was my very best friend when I booked. There is a one chance in six of hitting one. It can be done, but most guys play parlays loaded with the favorites. A guy will not do much dammage on a robin hitting one out of three. On a robin, a guy can hit one out of three but can't pssibly hit two out of three. He will either lose all three, win one, or win all three.