Ancelotti hoping for more of the same

Soccer Betting Lines

05/07/2010 - London, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Chelsea is just one win away from claiming its third Premiership title in six years, and with a home contest against bottom-half side Wigan on Sunday, the Blues will be firm favorites to get the win.

Chelsea is coming off of a 2-0 win over Liverpool at Anfield last time out, and manager Carlo Ancelotti is hoping that his players will approach this Sunday's match in the same way they prepared for the Reds.

"I saw my players focused during the week and they knew very well how important the game was," Ancelotti said of the Liverpool game. "This weekend is the same, to be champions we have to play as we played against Liverpool.

"We have to maintain the same confidence in our play, the same determination because nothing is decided. We have to pay a lot of attention because there are not other games, if you miss this game you do not have the possibility of recovery.

"We are in a very good situation, we wanted to arrive at the end of the season with more points but we can decide our destiny in our home at Stamford Bridge so this is a good thing."

Wigan may have just secured safety, but they have vowed to make things difficult for Chelsea, and they will be hoping for a repeat of their 3-1 win over the Blues at the DW Stadium in September.

In addition to their win over Ancelotti's men, the Latics have beaten Arsenal and Liverpool as well, and defender Mario Melchiot feels that his team is in a good position to pull off another upset.

"You look at the teams we've beaten like Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, and take all the stuff we've done. I think it's looking really good for us," said Melchiot, a former Chelsea defender.

"The Premier League has been very exciting this season. Everybody can beat each other and that's a situation that's developing all the time."

Manchester United enters the final day one point back of Chelsea, and they will be hoping that Wigan can take at least a draw away from Stamford Bridge, which would allow United to claim a fourth successive title with a win over Stoke City.

Arsenal can lock up third place with a win at home against Fulham, while Tottenham visits Burnley having already secured the fourth and final Champions League spot, allowing Spurs to make their first ever appearance in the competition.

Manchester City has to settle for a place in the Europa League after their 1-0 defeat to Tottenham in midweek, and the Citizens will finish up their season at West Ham, while sixth-placed Aston Villa hosts Blackburn.

Liverpool's disappointing campaign comes to an end at relegated Hull City, Bolton hosts Birmingham, Portsmouth visits Everton and Sunderland travels to Wolverhampton.

Wwwteleport Soccer Betting News

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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.”

To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.