I won a dime at 6.5 over -135 at Cantor -- three dimes split among two friends and I -- but it's not payable yet. That's a misconception among novice bettors. It used to happen all the time when I worked at a sportsbook. Bettors would show up at the counter to cash an over ticket if a game went over the total in the third quarter, or when a season win over/under went over in week 13. The bets are not payable until the end of the game, or end of the season. Only then do you post the result in the computer is the result payable. Something extremely rare could happen to cancel the remainder of the season. At that point all bets would be refunded.
The 6.5 was simply a bad number. It should have been 8, where it ended up. I posted before last season ended that the 2013 Dolphin season win number would be 8 over or 8.5 under. When there's a 6.5 out there, it means they made a considerable mistake, not me. I've been doing this long enough that I'm not going to be off by a game and a half on a team I follow.
Las Vegas sportsbooks make tons of mistakes. That's why I moved there in summer 1984, after I saw the Stardust make an unbelievable gaffe on a women's basketball NCAA tournament spread. I realized the reputation was all a myth. Sure enough, there were dependable mistakes all year long. You could literally game plan around them, taking chances on other areas because you knew a gift handout was around the corner. I could give tons of examples but to save time I'll limit to two. Every season several sportsbooks would forget that college basketball totals are not divided equally by half. In a 140 total the first half should be 65 and the second half 75. But after months of not booking the sport invariably somebody would screw up to start the season. They would start using the first half numbers 5 points too high and the halftime totals 5 points too low. It was difficult not to laugh while you made the wagers. The MGM was notorious for screwing this up. It might last only a week but by that time you'd won a dozen or more net units and sometimes considerably more than that. You could play 5 point middles off numbers at joints that knew what they were doing. Some years all the middles fell and it was like early holidays.
The other example I'll mention is adjusted series prices on the NBA and NHL playoffs. This was a specialty at Harrahs. Let's say after game one the home team is -240 favorite to win the series. But game two is underway. The competent joints pull the action on the -240 prop. Harrahs annually would leave it on the board. You could follow the action and take advantage of the result of the second game. I still have a difficult time believing they screwed this up year after year. Let's say the road underdog took a 10 point lead with a minute remaining in game two. I could go to the window and play into the old series price, knowing that it would change dramatically based on the result of game two. I could take +200 on the road team and once the price were adjusted everywhere else, the series might be pick-em. This went on throughout the playoffs. Not merely after game one. They'd leave the numbers up after game 2, 3, 4, you name it. Only a few of us knew about it. One ticket writer at Harrahs realized what we were doing but his attitude was if his bosses were so stupid they deserved to be burned. That ticket writer would tell us what the limit was that required supervisor approval, so we could put in multiple tickets that didn't require approval, and therefore no attention.
Anyway, it was a field day. My systems are good but lots of the profit came from dependable errors. I always have to laugh at what I read on sports message boards, that the sportsbooks are all knowing and infallible. You had to know the tendency of each book and do your legwork, but if so there were always bonuses to be had. The only reason it was sliced severely is so many casinos now have satellite books. A few outfits run more than half the town. When every joint had its own independent book, the opportunity for error was immense.
Actually, I'm not sure we should be talking about this Dolphin prop. I wasn't going to bump the preseason thread. Undoubtedly there are bettors who have the later numbers like 7.5 or 8 and they still need some wins.
