Originally Posted by
Justin7
Frank,
I have placed positions 56 different outcomes in Arena this year. Of those 56 bets, 6 had greater theoretical errors than what was seen today. None of those were voided. From a typical handicapper's perspective, the Arizona line was good, but not moreso than I would expect to see every week or two in small markets.
If you call this "shot taking", you have no clue what the bettor's perspective is, or how frequently lines are grossly off in Arena Football and other small markets. The "corrected line" of Arizona -11.5 was only marginally better (from both a theoretical modeling viewpoint, as well as actual line movement perspective) to Arizona -2. I could also cite how the two lines were almost equally bad from a perspective of the actual result, but a sample size of one would diminish that.
If a sportsbook wants to cite "obvious error" to void a bet, it had better be obvious from an objective point of view. In this case, the line looked like an decent weak line in Arena. Weak, yes, but no worse than I've seen many other times this year.
Subjectively, what were the books thinking? They didn't say "oops, this was a bad line" after one bet. Every book out there moved on action. Eventually 5dimes over-adjusted their line moving it 5 or 6 points. It was bet back.
Frank, you are arguing that a book should not have to use its brain, and get a free pass whenever it copies a weak line. If a book chooses not to do its own oddsmaking, it cannot argue that "a different book made an obvious error that we missed, so we want to void bets" when the whole market offered that line. You either win by your own merits, or risk loss by cheating off someone else's work.
This is the biggest pile of crap I have ever seen from a solid book. If you think betting a market line you think is off is "shot taking", you need to spend more time handicapping, and see what kind of junk is regularly offered.