Originally Posted by
indio
According to oddsportal, Pinnacle is offering Clemson -7.5 at -120 (54.55% market probability) and Clemson -9.5 at -104 (50.98% market probability). A difference of 3.57%, which mirrors how many Div1a CFB games landed on 8 or 9 this year (3.45%).
Once again, the difference between 54.55% and 50.98% is HUGE. As a poker player, I can tell you that that exact win % amount playing $100 heads up matches for 1 years worth of hard work (1,000 matches a month with high rake of 4.76% and no rakeback) is the difference between making a $60,000 profit and losing $36,000.
The fact that you cavalierly shrug off "17 cents" (which is an inaccurate perception anyway) as almost nothing is a microcosm of why square gamblers lose and why they have no concept of markets, margins, or any of the basic standards of them.
Just to reiterate, nothing of what I say means I disagree with your initial complaint. In a competitive market of various pricings and market moves, a bookmaker offering a price that's not an "obvious" bad line (like having the wrong team favored or missing a digit) entices the player to wager there and possibly miss the chance to bet his desired price somewhere else, or cost him in other ways, and while the bookmaker does have the right to declare it a bad line long before the game starts (so it's not a freeroll of the player, which is a different animal), that same bookmaker really should not be so quick to make that declaration on a market which has bounced around between 7.5 and 9.5 at many outlets, as it's poor customer service if that happens frequently. Considering there are only a few college football games this weekend, and they're going to have large volume and fan interest, somebody who's job it is to have prices listed on the software should never be asleep at the wheel so to speak, in any decent shop.