Gophers open as 8 point underdogs against Auburn.

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Plato said:
Vegas and the other gambling sites make their money from their cut of each bet. THEY DO NOT CARE WHO WINS. They point and then move the spread to get as close to a 50/50 split on moneys bet as they can.
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Good note: I was just going to ask about how Vegas makes their money. I thought it was something like how you explained it. Thanks.
 

I love all of this talk about the southern team in the bowl game, etc.

Sagarin has it at 8.5.

That’s where these lines always start. All of the noise of, “this team won’t care about the bowl game” or “there is bias towards SEC talent” evens out over time. Half of the time those are right, half of the time they aren’t. But the line pretty much starts there just as it did when the Penn State, Iowa, and Wisconsin threads surprised us.
 

Plato said:
Vegas and the other gambling sites make their money from their cut of each bet. THEY DO NOT CARE WHO WINS. They point and then move the spread to get as close to a 50/50 split on moneys bet as they can.
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I think that game opened low for the Gophers because they thought Morgan may be out. I think it went from 12 to 16.
 

Plato said:
Vegas and the other gambling sites make their money from their cut of each bet. THEY DO NOT CARE WHO WINS. They point and then move the spread to get as close to a 50/50 split on moneys bet as they can.
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Correct. Vegas decides the spread based on what they think people think the game is going to be, not on what they (Vegas) thinks the game is going to be.
 

MplsGopher said:
Correct. Vegas decides the spread based on what they think people think the game is going to be, not on what they (Vegas) thinks the game is going to be.
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They have an algorithm that is basically the same as Sagarin or anyone out there like his.

They start it there 95% of the time maybe moving it a point or two for injuries or maybe to trick the public in certain cases.

Just watch KenPom (basketgall) or Sagarin’s lines and compare them to what Vegas opens with and have your mind blown.
 


Whoa haha not sure where I got five losses. But still even with three losses they’re not a whisker away from being number one even if they were close ones. They won 3 close ones vs bama, Oregon and ole miss too.
 

We aren't a whisker away from being the #1 team. Our offense is too inconsistent with our true freshman QB and underwhelming offensive line. On defense our secondary is average at best.
We are a solid team but not an elite one
 

Remember....we were 14 point dogs to Washington State three years ago.
 

I'm for the Gophers all the way, but I find this matchup trepidatious.
 



highwayman said:
I love it because all the “realists” jump ship as fast as they can type. This has been a horrible season for them.
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Great point. So unreasonable for some to think Auburn may be a bit much for our gophers. :rolleyes:
 


The bookies cut is oftencalled "vig" for vigorish a Yiddish word. It is also known as juice.
The initial spread is usuallyset very closely to Sagarin's numbers.
The most glaring exception was the MN/PSU game that Sagarin had PSU-10 to 13-14. The actual point spread was much less about -5. The bookies must have though that -14 would have sent all the money to the MN side.
This was a case where Sagarin missed the actual score by a significant amount as he did in the LSU/Ga game.
I bet the under there at 54.5thinking GA has not much offense but a great defense and it would be a low total scoring game. I won the bet but not by much after LSU launched an air attack.
 

Plato said:
The bookies cut is oftencalled "vig" for vigorish a Yiddish word. It is also known as juice.
The initial spread is usuallyset very closely to Sagarin's numbers.
The most glaring exception was the MN/PSU game that Sagarin had PSU-10 to 13-14. The actual point spread was much less about -5. The bookies must have though that -14 would have sent all the money to the MN side.
This was a case where Sagarin missed the actual score by a significant amount as he did in the LSU/Ga game.
I bet the under there at 54.5thinking GA has not much offense but a great defense and it would be a low total scoring game. I won the bet but not by much after LSU launched an air attack.
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Well there you go, the Vegas algorithm is off because you won 2 bets where you thought it was wrong.
 




RickDornsby said:
Well there you go, the Vegas algorithm is off because you won 2 bets where you thought it was wrong.
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Not true, I bet on PSU and lost. Sagarin does not predict the certain future. He only deals in probabilities like the quantum world. No one claims to predict the future of any game.
 



Plato said:
Not true, I bet on PSU and lost. Sagarin does not predict the certain future. He only deals in probabilities like the quantum world. No one claims to predict the future of any game.
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And in fact since sagarin uses data not from this season sagarin picks are only marginally better than a casual football fan.

next year I’m going to pick every FBS game every week and see if I can beat the sagarin point spread
 

Some guy said:
And in fact since sagarin uses data not from this season sagarin picks are only marginally better than a casual football fan.

next year I’m going to pick every FBS game every week and see if I can beat the sagarin point spread
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Sagarin uses data from this season. Where did you get that story? It is ok for Sagarin not to rank YOUR team as high as you think they should be but he does not have a grudge against any team.
 

Plato said:
Sagarin uses data from this season. Where did you get that story? It is ok for Sagarin not to rank YOUR team as high as you think they should be but he does not have a grudge against any team.
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Sagarin has preseason ratings.
I assume they base it on last year in part. Or is it all recruiting rankings.

They phase it out over the course of the year.
I never claimed Sagarin has a bias against anyone.
I said when it comes to picking winners of future games straight up Sagarin isn’t statistically signifcantly better than a causal fan guessing.
 

Some guy said:
Sagarin has preseason ratings.
I assume they base it on last year in part. Or is it all recruiting rankings.

They phase it out over the course of the year.
I never claimed Sagarin has a bias against anyone.
I said when it comes to picking winners of future games straight up Sagarin isn’t statistically signifcantly better than a causal fan guessing.
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Sagarin (and there are other very similar ones out there) does a good job of getting 50/50 results. There will be 20-30 teams like the Gophers that take too long to move up the ranks and catch the right opening line but there will be 20-30 of the opposite. And like I said, it’s not directly Sagarin. Once we started looking good, I think we were pretty heavily getting better lines than Sagarin when we got into that B10 backup QB stretch of the schedule.

We had a weird season where we were slotted too low to start it and then didn’t light the world on fire. So a Gopher optimist probably cashed in big time on our first 6 or 7 Big 10 games. It also turned out that some of the backup QBs we faced probably allowed our offense to just avalanche the other team without much resistance.

But in the end, it was pretty close/good, right? Our last 4 games we covered by a decent amount against PSU, basically landed right on the closing line with Iowa/NW, and got beaten in the spread handily by WI. That seems like it got us just right by the end of the year. The only thing was the opening line for NW was a bit off due to the uncertainty of Morgan.
 

RickDornsby said:
Sagarin (and there are other very similar ones out there) does a good job of getting 50/50 results. There will be 20-30 teams like the Gophers that take too long to move up the ranks and catch the right opening line but there will be 20-30 of the opposite. And like I said, it’s not directly Sagarin. Once we started looking good, I think we were pretty heavily getting better lines than Sagarin when we got into that B10 backup QB stretch of the schedule.

We had a weird season where we were slotted too low to start it and then didn’t light the world on fire. So a Gopher optimist probably cashed in big time on our first 6 or 7 Big 10 games. It also turned out that some of the backup QBs we faced probably allowed our offense to just avalanche the other team without much resistance.

But in the end, it was pretty close/good, right? Our last 4 games we covered by a decent amount against PSU, basically landed right on the closing line with Iowa/NW, and got beaten in the spread handily by WI. That seems like it got us just right by the end of the year. The only thing was the opening line for NW was a bit off due to the uncertainty of Morgan.
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Good job getting the "backup QB" shot in not once, but twice. We can't get credit for beating those teams, it only happened because they were playing backups - never mind that we were the team who took out the starter on more than one occasion. Oh, and also ignore the fact that we played the entire season with a guy who insiders said would've been our backup to a healthy Annexstad.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Good job getting the "backup QB" shot in not once, but twice. We can't get credit for beating those teams, it only happened because they were playing backups - never mind that we were the team who took out the starter on more than one occasion. Oh, and also ignore the fact that we played the entire season with a guy who insiders said would've been our backup to a healthy Annexstad.
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Man I hope Tanner wouldn’t have been backup.

I wansnt taking a shot. Instead of winning 40-24 or 40-27 against Illinois it was 40-17. That type of stuff.
 

OldBob53 said:
They lost 3 games, not 5 and by a total of 21 points. And those losses are outweighed by impressive victories noted above.
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Yes, they lost three games: Georgia, Florida and LSU, but all reasonably close. They did beat Oregon and Alabama. They are a very good team and should be favored.
 
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RickDornsby said:
Sagarin (and there are other very similar ones out there) does a good job of getting 50/50 results. There will be 20-30 teams like the Gophers that take too long to move up the ranks and catch the right opening line but there will be 20-30 of the opposite. And like I said, it’s not directly Sagarin. Once we started looking good, I think we were pretty heavily getting better lines than Sagarin when we got into that B10 backup QB stretch of the schedule.

We had a weird season where we were slotted too low to start it and then didn’t light the world on fire. So a Gopher optimist probably cashed in big time on our first 6 or 7 Big 10 games. It also turned out that some of the backup QBs we faced probably allowed our offense to just avalanche the other team without much resistance.

But in the end, it was pretty close/good, right? Our last 4 games we covered by a decent amount against PSU, basically landed right on the closing line with Iowa/NW, and got beaten in the spread handily by WI. That seems like it got us just right by the end of the year. The only thing was the opening line for NW was a bit off due to the uncertainty of Morgan.
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Nothing you say takes away from the fact that most casual fans could pick the winners of games straight up with a similar degree of accuracy as the almighty sagarin ratings
 

Some guy said:
Nothing you say takes away from the fact that most casual fans could pick the winners of games straight up with a similar degree of accuracy as the almighty sagarin ratings
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Pick spreads or winners of games?

I think the casual fan can pick Alabama to beat a bad Vanderbilt just as well as any rating. Spread is a different story.

Anyways, the point is that these spreads come from something similar to Sagarin. If you asked the casual fan what the spread would’ve been, any non-SEC homer would’ve told you it’s a pick-em maybe even Gophers favored because the Gophers are 10-2.
 

as noted, the Vegas point spread is set to generate bets. If Auburn was a 10-point favorite, bettors say "I think the Gophers can cover" and start putting $ on MN. In response, Vegas drops the spread to say, 8-points. Then, other betters say "I think Auburn will beat the spread" and their $ goes to Auburn. In the end, the only sure thing is that the bookies will come out ahead.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
as noted, the Vegas point spread is set to generate bets. If Auburn was a 10-point favorite, bettors say "I think the Gophers can cover" and start putting $ on MN. In response, Vegas drops the spread to say, 8-points. Then, other betters say "I think Auburn will beat the spread" and their $ goes to Auburn. In the end, the only sure thing is that the bookies will come out ahead.
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Yes, and to get bets generated, they use an algorithm that puts the line somewhere that will land at a number that lands at 50/50 in final results.

If it was a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled room saying, “well Minnesota only has 2 losses but fans will bet on the SEC teams, let’s put it here” they would go bankrupt from people using technology to bet. Therefore, they must also use an algorithm or get destroyed even if there will be stupid public bettors regardless.

If the lines were set by some old guy in a sweater vest that “knows football” trying to generate bets, one could take an algorithm and buy a private island in 10 years. Therefore, they must stay in front of the simple models.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
as noted, the Vegas point spread is set to generate bets. If Auburn was a 10-point favorite, bettors say "I think the Gophers can cover" and start putting $ on MN. In response, Vegas drops the spread to say, 8-points. Then, other betters say "I think Auburn will beat the spread" and their $ goes to Auburn. In the end, the only sure thing is that the bookies will come out ahead.
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Personally I don't fully buy into the theory that bet generation is really that much of a factor.

If it was I would expect folks could find a way to beat the system fairly often as Vegas sets wonky odds "to generate bets" that aren't reasonably predictive.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Personally I don't fully buy into the theory that bet generation is really that much of a factor.

If it was I would expect folks could find a way to beat the system fairly often as Vegas sets wonky odds "to generate bets" that aren't reasonably predictive.
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Bet generation is basically built into predictive models. There are so many games where a 4-4 team is favored over a 7-1 team and get money flowing. Or the “hot” team is an underdog to the “cold” team.

When Wisconsin was favored over us, how many dudes at a bachelor party in Vegas sprinted to the MGM sportsbook and said, “wow Minnesota is 10-1 and at home and Wisconsin looked like crap a few weeks ago against Illinois!” Wisconsin still got some action but Minnesota took 60% in spread and money line and lost both.
 

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