[Ian]

I've always been under the assumption that "bad lines" are obvious mistakes like when a book lists a 3 point favorite as a 3 point dog. When I see something like this I usually inform the book of the mistake, and I never bet it. I've also been under the assumption that when a book has a line that's a point off from the consensus that it's an opinion, and I will sometimes bet these.

Yesterday I made two bets on what I thought were book opinions. They were both moneyline tennis bets, and according to the calculator in the think tank they were off by the equivalent of getting a 2 1/2 point NFL dog as a 3 1/2 point dog, or 10% in win percentage. Both bets were cancelled by the book, but only after the lines on my sides got significantly bet down at all books.

To me it seemed like the book was using the fact that they had the best price as a pretext for cancelling bets on the sharp side. That said, I've never been sure on just how off a line has to be for it to be worthy of cancellation. Where should the line be drawn? Were my bets valid?

EDIT: I tried to add a poll, but I ran out of time. All responses appreciated.

[matthew919]

I don't bet tennis, but it sounds like those bets were arb-able with any widely available line at the time, and by a very wide margin. That's a pretty good indicator in my eyes that a line is bad, rather than an opinion.

[Maniac]

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer here - every book has their own rules by which they are supposed to follow (though in many cases it doesnt necessarily mean that they do!)

If the lines are the wrong way round so a team is +3 instead of -3 then that would be an understandable reason to void, or if there was a fat fingered mistake such as a team being 45/1 instead of 5/1 then that is dumb that it wasn't noticed, but can be voided as a bad line.

Where it gets tricky is when it comes to "stale lines" as opposed to "bad lines" - and this seems to be where a lot of books grey the lines here. Some books seem to use a stale line as an excuse to void a bet claiming it was a bad line, when in actual fact the line was a good line previously, but they had missed the steam or otherwise not updated their price when the market adjusted.

For me a stale line is fair game, though if you do bet them often then you should expect your limits to be cut at the majority of books. Some books seem to count these as bad lines though, and it can be a tricky one. For instance Miami @ San Antonio a few weeks ago, SA were around -1.5 until Miami pulled their big 3 and SA went out to around -9.5 favourites. In this situation, if you can find a book with -1.5 on SA still then this would be betting into a stale line, and the bet should stand as far as I am concerned.

Now, technically the market price was -9.5 now so in theory some books may have voided bets claiming the -1.5 was a bad line compared to the market price of -9.5. I didn't actually hear of anyone voiding this, and as it happened Miami won outright anyway so all bets on the stale -1.5 were losers anyway, but it wouldnt surprise me if some books had voided trying to claim it was a bad line.

Going back to your specific query, without knowing what prices you bet into and what the market price was on them then its very difficult to give you a definite answer either way - what was it you bet on ?

[Ian]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Going back to your specific query, without knowing what prices you bet into and what the market price was on them then its very difficult to give you a definite answer either way - what was it you bet on ?

I'll try to be concise about this.

I recently heard a podcast that Justin7/Elihu did where he said that many early round matches in small time ATP & WTA tournaments were fixed. I've been looking for spots where there's big line movement on nothing tennis matches, and over a very small sample size all the suspicious games I saw were won by the heavily bet side. I didn't actually see the lines move in this case (I don't sit around staring at SBR odds all day), but considering A) the size of the difference in lines and B) the books involved, it was my guess that the lines had moved because of steam.

It turns out that both bets lost, but in both cases the lines were absolutely hammered. I don't have the exact lines in front of me because all evidence of the bets I made were completely wiped out by the site, but on one of them I got a +180ish dog at +280ish. Here's the fun part. My bets stood for a several hours. I went out and got back home just before the match started. My bets were now cancelled and my +280ish dog was now +100! It obviously wasn't fixed, but that's some insane line movement for a match in the 2nd round of a tourney on the lowest rung of the ATP tour between two guys nobody's ever heard of.

[JoeyBagels]

There is no strict definition but in my experience most of the books I've dealt with take it to mean "let me steal your money because I can".

[Bdolan33]

"bad line" cancellations galore at DSI the past few days. They just had an alternate line for Brooklyn -2 1/2 for +110 up for an hour, then just deleted the wager, and changed it to -160.

[dice]

There is no strict definition but in my experience most of the books I've dealt with take it to mean "let me steal your money because I can".

[nelly0]

It's too bad there's no strict regulations on what the books can and can't do, bc it adds to the negative perception of sports betting as being "shady business".