After spending days poring over 100+ stories on Super Bowl prop bets, we hoped to come to some definitive conclusion on the subject which would justify a thousand-word, posthumous (stale) write-up.

Nope. No such luck.

So instead, here are two thoughts to keep in storage until the SB XLIV hype machine revs its engine in early 2010.

One: Prop bets are generally priced for suckers. The money-line gaps are 40¢, 60¢, 75¢ or more. (Witness the TV ratings prop: Which market yields greater ratings Arizona +300 or Pennsylvania -500. Is that $2 of vig?)

But around Groundhog’s Day, demand for money-backed NFL prognostications runs high, and supply dwindles quickly.  It’s a sellers’ market, and buyers who want to bet the over-under on the number of Anheuser-Busch beer commercials can’t afford to be choosy.

Maybe it’s a good lesson in accepting when it’s inevitable that you will force action, and to be prepared to minimize it. (Personally, we hit on one prop, and we proceeded to go out and squander it on another. And we’d be quick to take credit for calling the under on that wacky 1st-to-score-jersey-number prop at 38½. But we can’t claim to have spotted a guy demoted to the practice squad back in week 3 as likely first to break the plane. Frankly, not even Mrs. Russell had money on that one.)

Sidebar: Somebody knew something about someone. Early in the week, Gary Russell was listed at Pinnacle as +1916 to score the game’s first TD. By Saturday, Russell’s number had dropped to +1384. That’s more than all other players (moving down) combined. If this kind of move is indicative of the amount of money being wagered on a player, then Russell took in more money (or “sharper” money) then the all of the other listed players (20).  At some books, Russell wasn’t even listed individually.

Two: Tried to find where most of the crazy prop lines originate. Near as we can figure, the “normal” lines comes from the LVSC. Normal in this case refers to the common statistical breakdown bets:  Odds to score a TD; whether Tim Halfback gains more than 33.5 yards rushing from scrimmage; first quarter sides (ARZ +½), and so on…

Then there’s the more “exotic” lines: Madden’s food fetish, Michaels’ gambling innuendos, fade Matt Millen’s pick, TV ratings, commercials, cheerleaders, Jay Leno, thanking God —

Wait a minute:

Which team’s cheerleaders will be shown more often on camera?

Steelers: -175

Cardinals: +135

Who in hell issued these odds? (BoDog gets the initial credit for this one by our estimate.) Whoever set that cheerleader line should be fired because a) they set the cheerleaderless team¹ as 60% favorites, and b) they made it a 20¢ line — that’s like the cheapest on the board!

As the first week of Bowl Hype began, gimmick props were in short supply. Degenerates tapped their feet waiting for something other than the over-under for field goals, or whether the shortest touchdown would be longer than 1½ yards.

By Friday of that week, the BoDog press release began making the rounds. Blogs jumped on wholeheartedly. But the odds weren’t posted on BoDog that Friday. Or Saturday. Or Sunday. Or — well, we’re not actually sure when BoDog actually went live with these numbers, but we did see them by about the middle of the following week at certain questionable offshores.

Speaking of questionable offshores, this is a trend we’ve seen before. Books publicize odds well in advance of posting. In effect, their opening lines get vetted by the public before mistakes like the one above get offered to anyone sharper than a butter knife. And if a few blogs can quickly point out the gaping holes in your card, well imagine what the attention of Esquire can do.  BetUS bent the ear of Esquire to tout props that bordered on downright embarrassing. (Santonio Holmes was a +1500 to be MVP, but only +200 to be arrested leading up to or after the Super Bowl.)

Springsteen’s set list prognostication was laid to rest as early as Thursday when some paper mag called Rolling Stone advertised a line being offered by Sportsbook.com. That caused thousands to apparently sign up to the on-line sports book and begin pounding the crap out of one specific list.²

And finally, did anybody really cash on the Brenda Warner 3½ appearances during the game coverage? Really? You took the over?

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Quick: Which of the two Super Bowl teams is more likely to forgo a high-percentage chip-shot field goal, choosing instead to go for it on 4th and short?

Why, the chippy and smash-mouth Arizona Cardinals, of course…

(We’re kinda freaked out by the answer too.)

We were trying to convince ourselves that betting No (-185) on the prop “Will both teams score a field goal of 33+ yards” was a good deal. Already hampered by small sample sizes (2008 only), it’s a better idea to look at when (and why) the teams opted not to kick.

After the jump: Find out how the Steelers stunk it up on 4th down in 2008. Learn which kind of knife Todd Haley most enjoys driving into people’s hearts. And discover whether or not we talk ourselves into dropping a whole unit on this stupid prop once we discover Pinnacle’s offering it for -179.  (Hint: Oh yeah!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Two things to support:

1. People who write about gaming and gambling from a non-hyperbolic angle and aren’t conniving for your money.

2. People who write about gaming and gambling and don’t preface everything with some lame-ass disclaimer like, “Well, it’s not like I gamble, because that’s illegal — but IF I were in a Vegas casino…”

Will Brinson fits both of those categories. He writes for Fanhouse. And when it’s time to cover the gambling angle, Will is there without apology.

So, with Super Bowl props coming out, Will started the week with much the same enthusiasm as a derrickhand who makes isolation pay on a four-day weekend at a big-city brothel.

I freaking love the bet this Sportsbook is offering: “Will both teams make a 33-yard or longer field goal?” And, I, astutely, say, hells to the yes. We’re talking about, again, two defenses that are better than people think. Add in Jeff Reed — bleached blond hair or not — and Neil Rackers, and it seems pretty obvious that we should get at least one chip shot-plus from each team. And the real bonus? Yes it’s +145. It’s called free money, folks, and that’s why they pay me to write at you.

(You mean people get paid for doing this? Really?)

At first, we were all on board with this prop find. Moreover, the bet actually exists.

Jeff Reed's Pectorals Alone Could Kick for 33 or More, No?

So let’s take a look:

+145 means you win $1.45 for every $1.00 you bet.¹ This means the wager will be profitable if your pick is correct 40.82% of the time.

Jeff Reed (PIT) averaged 1.9 field goal attempts per game this season. In 12 of 18 games, 67%, he kicked an FG 33 yards or more.

Neil Rackers (ARZ) averaged 1.8 FGA per game in 2008. In 10 of 19 games, 53%, at least one of his kicks exceeded the 33 mark. So…

67% x 53% = 35%

Almost 6% less than that 40.82% needed to be profitable. Not especially good value…

How about looking at it from the defensive side:

Pittsburgh allowed a field goal of 33 or longer in half (50%) of their games this season. Arizona gave up the same in 11 of theirs (11/19=58%) .

50% x 58% = 29%

Worse…

We tend to think of kicks from the 16 as chip-shot field goals. (And they are, and have a high success rate.) So it’s not an issue of kicker accuracy; it seems to be more a lack of opportunity.

On the other hand, the “No” side of this bet is priced at -185. This translates to 64.91% accuracy to be profitable. So if the game will end without both teams kicking one for 33+ more than 35.19% (100% – 64.91%) of the time, “No” is profitable.

We’d pull the trigger on this now, but -185 are steep odds and we’ll need a closer look at these “opportunities” — something to look at in the next post.

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Found this at VegasInsider.com’s NFL odds page:

Serious Underlay?

Could it be? Had a nitrous oxide pipe burst in the LVSC offices?  Had Ken White & crew had lost their foolish minds — opening the Cards as one-point dogs!?!

Did you miss your chance to back up the truck on the Steelers as single-point chalk?  Yeah, same here. So we asked VI about it. Five-star customer rep Dan promptly explained:

Back just a couple of days before Christmas, the lines makers at Station sports book in Vegas — acting, in all likelihood, under the influence of Office Nog — thought it clever to post a Super Bowl line before Week 17 even kicked off.  They set it at AFC -1/NFC +1. And though that line went off the board before the next set of games, it was the first to use the Super Bowl’s rotation number, and so the computer interpreted that as LVSC’s opening line.¹

Since then, the Vegas Hilton, Station and the LVSC sporadically posted Super Bowl lines in between playoff games. The AFC is always the chalk, and they spot the NFC champ as many as 3½ points (just this past Sunday before the games).

In this week’s pre-week news cycle hype fest, blog entries and news wire stories have banged out copy about how Vegas already has a line for the Super Bowl! Only during the Super Bowl is the national press exonerated for making an opening point spread its own story. But this kind of January skite is still good PR. Without it, grandma wouldn’t know how to give points.

Bettors who do obsess over lines are aware of how promptly books set odds once the teams’ previous games are done. Or, in this case, well before that.

The opening line for the Superbowl really came out shortly after the wild-card weekend. Eight teams left standing meant 16 possible combinations of opponents. And speculation began there.² Take the LVSC power rating and adjust for the situation and come up with 16 different Super Bowl lines. Beyond lines makers and their most eager customers, very few people care about those other 15 hypothetical Super Bowl lines.³

Now when it did come time to set The Number, the lines makers couldn’t get them up fast enough.

At 10:00PM (EST), the Las Vegas Sports Consultants issued their opening line:

Again. Ten o’clock eastern time.

It’s a bit hazy, but we’re pretty certain that at 10:00PM (EST), it was late in the fourth quarter — somewhere in between the time Troy Polamalu picked Joe Flacco for six, and Willis McGahee’s eleventh-hour winning bid for Hit of the Year.

In other words, LVSC posted their line with 3:39 still on the game clock.⁴

Two minutes later (10:02PM, McGahee still napping), The Greek opened a -270 money line. Two minutes after that, Pinnacle posted -7 (+102). By the time the gun was fired on the AFC Championship at 10:18, the overwhelming majority of Vegas outlets were offering a number. Many off-shores would follow suit within seconds.

Does that matter? Not to Grandma.

She says her local has 6½. She wants to take the Cards, but is afraid of getting screwed by a touchdown. Now, her guy tells her he normally sells the half point at 20 cents coming off key numbers, but since she’s a senior, he’s willing to do it for 15. She also likes the over…

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