I'm confused at this possible wager

Comments

• durito Senior Member

  December 2014 edited December 2014

  PeanutDaKidnapper wrote: »

  A local that goes through a pretty big outfit outline has this division wager bet available. I don't understand how two teams can be - money on this type of wager. Am I missing something?

  
  There is simply a lot of vig. Consider a normal wager where a book deals -120/-120, both teams clearly don't have > 50% chance of winning, the book is just putting a lot of vig into the line.
  
  Take out the vig from the above line and you get implied %'s of Seattle 50%, Arizona 42.5%, and SF 7.5% -- those probably aren't right (especially given other books have sea -200/+170) but with that much vig it doesn't matter, book is in a good spot.
• srn828 Member

  December 2014 edited December 2014

  For the most part, it is pretty much industry standard to have huge vig on all futures bets (Pinnacle and 5Dimes being the exceptions). The layman usually has no idea of the vig when there are multiple betting options and the "no" is not available (i.e. team not to win the division). General rule of thumb is that it is not worth the time to price these options. Even if you were able to find +EV, you would likely be limited as to how much you can get down on it, you will tie up funds for longer periods of time, and the +EV itself might be on a bigger dog, which might not be positive expected growth at the size you would like to wager. Of course, there can be exceptions, but 'tis why we call it a general rule of thumb...