College Basketball: Shading and Online Bookie Management 101
When utilizing pay per head an online bookie has many tools at his or her disposal. One of the tools that could help put things in a bookies favor is shading college basketball lines. Shading college basketball lines is one of the best tools available to bookies.
What is shading?
Ever wonder why some sportsbooks have a line on one team that’s different, by close to a point, from another sportsbook? The sportsbook that has changed the line from the norm as decided to shade the game. See below for an example:
Sportsbook A
Duke +3
North Carolina -3
Sportsbook B
Duke +3.5
North Carolina -3.5
Why do bookies and sportsbooks shade?
The public tendency is to bet on favorites. In college basketball, this is especially true since the favorites are often times playing at home and are the known teams. College basketball is one of those sports where the public acts like lemmings. An example of this is how Kansas was the favorite to win the Final Four at the beginning of last season’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament even though the experts thought highly of Villanova and North Carolina.
Another great example of shading in college basketball is how 1 seeds are always over bet versus 16 seeds in the NCAA Tournament even though it’s been proven that 1 seeds have a tough time covering massive spreads versus 16 seeds. The public goes with the name team. The name team is almost always favored.
Another form of shading, one that gives the edge to bookies, is to leave the point spread as is while raising the amount of money required for an investment. So, for example, in the above North Carolina’s odds would stay at -3. But the juice required to bet on North Carolina to beat Duke by 3 might be -115 instead of -110.
Why pay per head to shade?
Shading is part art. It makes sense to work with an expert, a pay per head company, in order to shade college basketball games. The information on college hoops isn’t anywhere near as good as the information on college football, the NBA, or any other pro sport. Because of that, the public backs the favorite even more in college basketball games.
Shading is easily done when working with a per head company. Pay per head agents and online bookies should put the odds more in their favor on college basketball games by utilizing shading.
For more useful online bookie tips, see PayPerHead.com’s full sport betting library here.
