How the Betting Public Can Affect Results
The results of sporting events cannot be known in advance unless you have a crystal ball. The betting public generally provides an accurate assessment of the respective probabilities of the results. Odds become more accurate from the betting public shaping a bookmaker’s opening line and exposing it to public appraisal.
The value of the line is a market perception applied to the psychology of the bettor.
Very sharp bettors will have their own ideas about opening lines and when they differ with the bookmakers. Sharps bet quickly and re-shape the markets. High precision individuals are best at separating built in fluff (hype) from the reality of probable results. As markets odds become more apparent, more people voice their sports betting prediction by placing bets. The market generally moves to its most efficient position. The more bets made, the more accurate the average odds fall in to place.
The betting of high precision individuals has limited participants and their decisions are not made without consensus. When other less sophisticated bettors jump in and there is a total absence of sharps to counter balance the market, amateur bettors are in control. The bettors that control the movement of a market are generally bettors from a wide spectrum of knowledge and experience. There is often a specific time difference that groups place their bets.
The importance of understanding behavioral nuances and how they can affect rational risk assessment is becoming more important. As already mentioned, sharp players tend to act quickly on the opening line, while public money places bets closest to game times. This reflects on the behavior angle and how the betting public thinks which team they are more familiar to them. They tend to bet on which team they recall winning more often or the most common is which team is everyone else betting on !
These lazy judgments normally result in more money on the favorite, pushing the market away from its most efficient position. This is an example of how the betting decision of the public crowds can be replaced by following the herd mentality. Betting on the favorite and the over total is the most recognized betting pattern in the public betting mind-set.
The books know it but sometimes their shaded line does not matter if the public bettors are on target.
Public money may distort rather than reverse a market, but this kind of collectively poor reasoning is successful sometimes when the collective consensus is correct. It was evident in Super Bowl 51 last year between the Patriots and Falcons.The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year but the odds are controlled by the betting public more than other betting events.
The betting public did affect the game results by their almost perfect betting balance between the Patriots and the Falcon. Sportsbooks reported the “perfect storm” of total wages on the big game. The opening line two weeks before game time was the Patriots at -3 and did not move for two weeks as the public betting was evenly divided on each team.
The public perception was an even 50/50 split with no line adjustment which was highly unusual for any game. Not even the biggest whale bettors could make an impact on the line with their 5, 6 and even 7 figure bets. They could not move the line because of the enormous amount of public betting —- the Super Bowl always sets betting records worldwide and especially in Vegas.
The public tug-of-war between the favorite and dog was a standoff which indicated a very close game with overtime a possibility. The final result was overtime with the Patriots winning by 6 points instead of the usual 3 point winning margin when team play overtime. The game had wildly different half-times but the final result was what the public predicted and their most common bet cashed out —- the favorite and over bet in a most historic game that had a “twilight zone” effect.
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