The books made out well over the weekend, but so did a number of SBR posters and anyone who followed their advice.
With the conference championship games on tap in college over the weekend, there were a number of games that featured good and relatively evenly-matched teams. As a result, most of the college games had solid two-way action, both public and sharp, which was good for the books overall. Houston/East Carolina and Louisiana Tech/San Jose St were the only losing games at BookMaker, both small. The biggest winner for BookMaker was Texas/Nebraska, with the public backing Texas as a big favorite and the sharps more split, but leaning towards Nebraska. Along the same lines, the public backed losing favorite Florida, while the sharps leaned towards Alabama, including SBR’s Justin7 in the SBR.tv Week 14 college preview video last week.
The NFL saw some interesting games and line movement, as well as a few games that probably featured soft lines. The best one might have been Washington as a big home dog to New Orleans. Washington reportedly took the most sharp action of any NFL side last weekend, and it was a line that was quickly spotted early in the week by well-respected SBR poster The Seer. Even though the Skins ultimately gave away the win, a cover was never in doubt.
The best game for the books was Oakland winning outright over Pittsburgh, burning a lot of public action, including one bettor at BookMaker who wagered $60,000 to win $5,000 on Pittsburgh at -1200. There was reportedly a lot of late sharp action on Oakland at BookMaker as well.
Dallas and the Giants was a controversial matchup, with heavy split sharp action. At BookMaker the sharp money leaned Dallas, while elsewhere Billy Walters was reportedly big on the Giants.
The line on Philly/Atlanta got bet down slightly by a bit of sharp money backing Atlanta, but Philly was very likely the right side. SBR poster SSLP, who has made a number of high-profile winning NFL picks recently, started a thread naming Philly as a great bet.
The New England/Miami game had some strange mid-week line movement based on rumors of injury to Tom Brady. BookMaker started getting hit with multiple $20,000 bets from sharp accounts on info that wasn’t yet public, driving both the total and the line down. But later on in the week both numbers crept back up again, resulting in sharp action on both sides of that game.
On Monday night, the public is strongly favoring Green Bay as a 3.5-point home fave over Baltimore. There was sharp action on Green Bay early in the week, but none that has come in late. The public is expected to continue backing the Packers heavily up to game time, and BookMaker anticipates needing a Baltimore cover to win on the game.