Preparing for the Opening Lines

King Yao is the author of Weighing the Odds in Hold‘em Poker, and Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting. He uses his experience from making millions in financial derivative markets and translates it into gambling. Since he left his trading position in 2000, he has been playing poker and betting on sports. He travels to Las Vegas frequently, especially during football season.

Baseball season is just weeks away as this is being prepared. It’s hard to believe, but winter is nearly behind us, and spring is almost here. That means long, pleasant evenings, with at least some of them spent at your favorite ballpark. Before that time comes, there is opportunity, if you’re prepared for the early lines. That’s what will be discussed in this article in King Yao’s series.

Be Ready for Opening Lines

There are explanations of how lines open in earlier articles. A fresh line hung by an aggressive sportsbook reflects the opinions of only a few people. An early line is often not an efficient number. Line makers can make mistakes. If the market disagrees with the line makers’ opinion, then betting action will favor one team and lines will move. Closing lines often differ from opening lines. Most line movement comes early, as the sharp bettors make their bets and the sportsbooks adjust.

If you are ready to bet opening numbers, you will be able to take advantage of weak early lines before other sharp handicappers do. If you are slow, then the line may have adjusted to a more efficient number by the time you are ready to bet, and you will have missed an opportunity. Thus it is a good idea to handicap games as early as possible, preferably before the lines come out. If you have handicapped the lines before the sportsbooks put up theirs, you will be able to take advantage of their mistakes.

In sports that are played daily, such as Major League Baseball, aggressive sportsbooks put up lines the day before the event. These are called overnight lines. In the NFL, sportsbooks put up early lines on Sunday night, around the time of the weekly Sunday night football game. The limits on early lines are smaller than usual and smaller bets are more likely to move early lines. There are two reasons why sportsbooks do this: Squares don’t bet early lines; sharps do.

Sportsbooks are less comfortable with their early lines because they realize they may have made mistakes.

The people who are betting early lines are more knowledgeable about betting their sport. They are already thinking ahead to the next game, often betting tomorrow’s games before today’s games are played. They are more likely to be winning bettors than random people making bets five minutes before game time. Thus, sportsbooks are more careful taking these bets and give more respect to early action, especially if it comes from known sharp bettors.

This is part of an occasional series of articles.

Excerpted with permission from the e-book version of Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting by King Yao, edited for this format.