Reverse line movement is a cool term in sports betting where advanced bettors monitor line motion and attempt to grab an anomaly in which a sportsbook is shifting the line in the opposite direction of that which makes sense.
Bettors will study the lines and the way they move around to detect these rare occasions, and then bet them to try and take advantage. But why do bettors inspect lines so closely, and what’s the real value of finding scenarios where the line moves contradict what logic would dictate?
It all sounds a bit fuzzy. Let’s have a deep dive into what inverse line motion is all about.
Do Sportsbooks Set Reverse Line Functions?
In very general terms, the way the sportsbook makes their gain is they attempt to get even sums of money on every side of a match and take their commission or”juice”, as it’s known. Let’s take a look Example line packers patriots
Let’s say there is $55,000 worth of stakes on New England and $55,000 worth of stakes on Green Bay. That means that regardless of whoever covers the spread, sportsbooks will cover $50,000 in winnings however maintain $55,000. This means they’ll make a $5,000.
That’s the ideal situation for oddsmakers. As most bookmakers will tell you, that rarely happens.
Why Does the Line Move?
As you can imagine, it’s quite tricky to reach a perfect 50/50 split on a game. As a result, sportsbooks must transfer the lines to correct for demand and supply.
Think about it like a stock price: if demand for a stock is high and people are purchasing, the cost moves up. If people don’t want to hold that inventory anymore and they start dumping it, the cost goes down.
A similar concept is in play the betting lines since the oddsmakers have to adjust to the action. Let’s reuse our example Example line packers patriots
This time, let’s say there is $110,000 worth of stakes on New England and $0 on Green Bay.
As you can see, the sportsbooks will have a massive liability with this game and they’ll surely need Green Bay to acquire lest they end up in serious trouble. To avoid such significant financial liability, they will move the line. If nobody is betting Green Bay in +2.5, they’ll transfer them to +3, +3.5, and so on till bettors see enough value about the Packers and start betting on them.
This line motion is crucial to a sportsbook’s survival. The challenge is that they don’t always move it as a consequence of this, therefore that’s where things get tricky.
The Way Sharps and Squares Influence Line Movement
If all stakes were equivalent, the sportsbooks would correct the lines in a way that we have described above. The challenge is that money generally is not evenly distributed. That is where things get interesting.
Bettors are usually put in two classes: squares (or people ) and sharps. Squares are bettors who are amateur and typically lose. Sharps are professional bettors who triumph for a living.
Since sportsbooks know exactly how great sharps are, they will typically anticipate them on their own predictions. How they will tangibly demonstrate this hope them is to adjust the betting line based on who they’re gambling on and not necessarily on where the general money is on a match.
By way of instance, let us say that 60 percent of the cash is on New England and only 40 percent is on Green Bay. However, respected bettor Billy Walters places a bet on New England. The sportsbooks can subsequently decide to either keep the point where it is (even though they’d need more money on Green Bay) or even move the line from New England’s favor. They understand that sharps win in the long run, so trusting them is a good strategy.
That is another reason sportsbooks may move online. That’s important to know as we move into reverse line movement.
What’s Reverse Line Movement?
That’s quite a long setup for reverse line movement, but it’s important to understand all of the different reasons that a lineup goes before diving to the particularities of reverse line motion.
What inverse line movement actually refers to is when bettors view a lot of action on one side, but in lieu of the sportsbooks moving the line at the clear direction (to create the other hand more attractive and promote stakes to balance things out), they are in fact moving the line in the contrary direction.
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