Question of the Day - 23 August 2022

[Editor's Note: We're highly fortunate, when it comes to questions like this, to have the sports book director at South Point as one of our experts. As many of you know by now, Chris Andrews has been in the sports-betting business, on both sides of the counter, since he was in grade school. He's the author of two of our most popular books, Then One Day -- Forty Years of Bookmaking in Nevada and Then One Year -- History's Craziest Year as Seen by a Las Vegas Bookmaker. If you're at all interested in sports betting, both of these books are must-reads (and they're on sale, today only, $27 for the pair, which includes shipping). Chris has also penned a fantastic sports-betting-based novel, Adelphos Mou (Greek for My Brother). We read it in draft form and loved it; its publication is imminent and we'll let you know when it's available. The first part of this answer is an excerpt from Then One Year, then Chris elaborates a bit on the specific questions.) 

For the past two years, the South Point was the first to open numbers. We take $10,000 a rattle, so it’s no small thing. The biggest and sharpest players in town are lined up against us.

The way we come up with the opening numbers is as follows. Vinny Magliulo, Richie Baccellieri, and I are in my office at the sports book. We all have our power ratings and as soon as the matchups are announced, we come up with our lines.

We’re all not going to look at teams the exact same way, which is good. We keep different ratings, so we all have different numbers. That’s the only way to do it. I need various opinions, because it’s the three of us against the world. We’ve done well over the years. If it were just me, the world would be a huge favorite.

I look at all three sets and make the final decision on how we’ll open. From there, my crew handles the bookmaking. Then I jump in and see what kind of action we’ve gotten and make any necessary adjustments.

The actual process of making the numbers isn’t that hard. You simply subtract the underdog’s power rating from the favorite’s and, voila, there’s the number. If team A has a rating of 90 and they’re playing team B with a rating of 80 rating, team A will be a 10-point favorite. If team A is 76 and team B is 73, team A is a 3-point favorite. It’s nothing more than that.

Of course, you better have the right power rating to begin with or your number is going to be way off. And you’ll get your ass kicked. The hard part is making the power ratings. 

Chris left if off at that in the book, but he goes on here to answer the obvious question: What goes into making the power ratings?

Everyone has their own methodology for power ratings. I’m sure everyone keeps their own system proprietary. I know I do. I use a math-based methodology, but plenty of subjectivity goes into my final power rating. 

Every sport is a little different. In baseball, we put up an overnight line. We're first, so we have to get it up pretty quick. From there, we start booking bets right away at smaller limits and adjust quickly. It's the same thing with regular-season basketball. Come playoffs, we get a little more scientific. We use power ratings in basketball, but make some slight adjustments depending on how we think bets are going to come in.

Football is totally power ratings-based. It's hard to come up with a single algorithm for football, because of outside factors like turnovers, injuries, weather, and some dumb luck that can really skew a score. Nonetheless, some people can do it, but it has to be very sophisticated programming. We use our own numbers, but in this day and age, the number gets bet into quickly and they wind up equalized. But that’s how they start.