Question for the veterans re: line movement

[Everydaysbsat]

Is there any way to review line movements or trends to discern whether a line's movement is the result of the book trying to attract more money to a team as opposed to volume or sharp money moving the line? Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks for the great forum!

[terpkeg]

Here are some thoughts.

Need to know the sport and the book. Early line movement on sports that don't get a ton of action could be sharp line movement or could simply be the result of the book auto moving lines on any max bet on low limits, ex/ would be MMA at 5Dimes, so not necessarily sharp.

If your talking CFB/NFL, early line movement right after open is going to be sharp money. Sometimes you won't even see this movement as it won't register on sbrodds. Probably a better line service will have true openers.

You can always compare line from book to book to see if you think sharper books are shading a side in an attempt to attract action one way. People seem to subscribe to the Pinny lean theory. Just throw that in the search function. Not sure what kind of results you would get following that though.

No point in thinking about all this though if you cannot get over the number one mental hurdle that plauges us gamblers. I sum it up as:

Always down too much, never up enough.

If your down a dollar its too much, if you are up a million it not enough. Money management is a constant struggle even after 10+ years.

[suicidekings]

On a 50/50 game, where the books have put out a true line, they're going to optimize their position by trying to entice action on the side they have less exposure on. However, if they've slanted the line to one side to adjust for a very public team getting excessive action versus a less popular team, or they have a legitimate lean on the game, the movement on the opening line may not follow a predictable trend. There are always other factors to the line outside of the basic stats.

Either way, the amount and direction a line moves is a function of how sharp the line was at the opener and who the teams are in the game, so unless you're able to accurately price the game on your own while accounting for both the basic math and the more subjective factors, the chances of you correctly interpreting the line movement with any simplistic approach is pretty low. There's just no simple answer to your question.