Vickers infuriates many at Martinsville

Autoracing Betting Lines

10/31/2011 - Martinsville, VA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Brian Vickers became driver enemy number one after Sunday's 500-lap slugfest at Martinsville Speedway. If Vickers did one thing right during the day, he left the racetrack quickly and quietly.

In a race that featured a season-high 18 cautions, Vickers was involved in five of them, including three that occurred during the first 100 laps. Jamie McMurray and Chase driver Matt Kenseth would've loved to have at it with Vickers after the dust had settled at NASCAR's shortest track. Jimmie Johnson might have wanted a word with him as well.

Vickers started the ruckus on lap 28 when he was involved in a crash with Regan Smith and Dave Blaney. He then tangled with Juan Pablo Montoya before bumping into Jamie McMurray and putting him into the outside wall. McMurray tried to retaliate against Vickers but made contact with the wall again.

"I saw [Vickers] get inside of me, and I tried to block, and I couldn't get down far enough," McMurray said. "When we got down in there, it seemed like he let off the brake a little early and sent me for a ride. It's just one of those really frustrating tracks, and it brings out the bad in people."

After banging each other's doors several times in the late going, Kenseth had enough of Vickers when he turned him around, forcing the 15th caution. Kenseth was involved in a multi-car wreck shortly after when he locked his brakes and spun around. He took out title contender Kyle Busch, as well as Joey Logano and Montoya.

"He just kept hitting me in the door," Kenseth said. "We're at Martinsville, and I gave him the bottom. Obviously, I'm not gonna roll over and let him go with 40 [laps] to go or whatever it was, and he just kept driving in harder and harder, and he slammed me in the door at least five times and just ran me up in the marbles, and I was just tired of it, so I spun him out."

Kenseth suffered a broken track bar during the multi-car wreck and spent several laps in the garage for repairs.

While Johnson was holding a comfortable lead with less than 10 laps to go, Vickers attempted to get even with Kenseth but failed in his efforts, as he spun around. The final caution setup a three-lap shootout to the finish. After the restart, Tony Stewart passed Johnson and then held him off at the finish. Stewart has won three of the first seven Chase races. He's also moved to within eight points of leader Carl Edwards.

"I certainly understand that if you're unfairly wrecked, regardless of who that person is, there's a chance retaliation is going to happen," Johnson said following his second-place finish. "After a fourth, fifth time with the same car in the crash, you start thinking about maybe you're the problem. Something is going on. You're having a bad day. You need to stop crashing for whatever reason."

Johnson certainly needed the win to help keep his slim title hopes alive. The five-time defending Sprint Cup Series champion is 43 points behind Edwards with just three races to go.

"I don't agree with the way things were handled at the end," Johnson noted. "Tony Stewart is sitting in victory lane smiling, and he's real happy it turned out that way."

Vickers, a non-Chase driver, finished 30th in his banged up No.83 Red Bull Toyota. He had no comment after the race. Vickers' future in Sprint Cup is in doubt right now, as Red Bull is pulling out of the sport at season's end.

Kenseth's 31st-place finish at Martinsville put him 36 points behind Edwards. He entered this race 14 points in back of his Roush Fenway Racing teammate.

Vickers wasn't the only culprit in the Martinsville demolition derby. Marcos Ambrose and Montoya clashed, while Kurt Busch got turned around by Paul Menard. Busch also had encounters with Jeff Burton and Ryan Newman.

Martinsville was indeed the latest chapter in NASCAR's "boys, have at it."

"It seemed like guys were ticked off at one another, driving over their heads," said third-place finisher Jeff Gordon, who bounced back after being involved in a six-car accident during the opening laps. "We saw that for a big majority of the race. Obviously, the 83 had that throughout the whole race. But I think it was just one of those crazy days. I don't know. You can't always explain it. Usually Martinsville does contribute towards that."

Stewart seemed to be the only one who wasn't caught up in the commotion at Martinsville, which was probably a good thing.

"I think they ought to get a portable boxing ring," he said. "As soon as they get done with the victory celebration, set the boxing ring on the frontstretch and give the fans a real show they paid for. If you want to boost the attendance at Martinsville, have a boxing match with each of the guys that had a beef with each other."

Ding, ding, ding!

Round eight in the Chase bout is Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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