Let’s say for arguments sake I’ve been an online sports gambler for 5 years (not trying to admit to anything nefarious on my blog) and for all 5 years I’ve wondered how in the hell casinos are always so accurate. You always hear that it’s because they hire geniuses out of MIT, Harvard, etc. to use advanced math to set the lines. But a couple weeks ago I discovered the truth, and from an unexpected source.
I was flipping through channels two weeks ago and came upon Back to the Future 2. I happened to turn it on just as they were talking about Biff Tannen’s empire which was built on sports gambling. It started at the horse track and it just grew from there; the guy even built himself a casino.
My theory is that this exact scenario happened in real life. Somehow, someone from the future returned to our timeline with complete knowledge of all future sports. But unlike Biff, they knew betting on sports and making millions upon millions individually would draw too much attention to themselves. Instead, they took a page out of the Tannen’s playbook and opened a casino, and set the lines. If the casino knows exactly what the final score is going to be, they can set lines that are enticing to people and even get them thinking they are walking into an easy win. In reality, they are just giving away their money. Take for example, what a casino could do if they knew in advance that two high scoring football teams were going to combine for a low scoring game – like the Pats vs Rams Super Bowl which ended in a very unspectacular final score of 13-3. The casino could set the line for this highly anticipated game at 44 which almost ensures the majority of betters take the over, think it’s a steal, and then happily collect their winnings before anyone knows what hit them.
Time travel is the only thing that makes sense! How else do you explain how close Vegas is on their lines on a weekly basis? Very rarely are they truly off the mark; most of the time they are completely dialed in on the final score, calling spreads of <2 points, and often landing within 0.5 of the predicted O/U.
In case you need more current evidence, yesterday Vegas had the line for Texas at -11 and for Oklahoma St at -3. You want to know what the final scores were? Texas won 27-16 (a push at exactly 11) and Oklahoma St won 24-21 (another push). Today, Vegas had the Steelers vs Titans Over/Under set at 51… Final Score: 27-24 Steelers.
So while the bad news is that we are destined to continue to be screwed by sports gambling for the foreseeable future, the good news is…. time travel is going to happen.
