Forte, Bears knock out Bulger, Rams

Football Betting Lines

11/23/2008 - St. Louis, MO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Matt Forte rushed for 132 yards with two touchdowns as the Chicago Bears hammered the St. Louis Rams, 27-3, at the Edward Jones Dome.

Kyle Orton managed the game well, completing 18-of-29 passes for 139 yards with a touchdown for Chicago (6-5), which snapped a brief two-game losing skid. The Bears, who have split their last six contests, are now tied with Minnesota for first place in the NFC North. The Vikings defeated Jacksonville on Sunday. Jason McKie had a TD catch, while Robbie Gould kicked a pair of field goals in the win.

Devin Hester had 115 all-purpose yards for the Bears and Tommie Harris had a pair of sacks to lead the defense.

Trent Green finished 16-of-30 for 219 yards with four interceptions in relief of Marc Bulger for the Rams (2-9), who have lost their last five. Bulger completed both of his passes for 11 yards before leaving early in the first quarter with a concussion after being sacked by Adewale Ogunleye, who also had a pair of sacks. Bulger is listed as day-to-day.

Torry Holt had four catches for 84 yards, and Josh Brown accounted for the Rams only points with a 43-yard field goal.

Chicago opened the scoring on its first drive of the contest, going 49 yards on four plays. Danieal Manning returned the kickoff 50 yards to the St. Louis 49, and Hester ripped off 20 yards on an end around to move it to the 29-yard line. After a short run by Forte and a 15-yard pass from Orton to Desmond Clark, Forte ran up the middle for a 13-yard score.

Jason McKie's seven-yard touchdown grab capped a seven-play, 63-yard drive to make it a 14-0 game with 1:44 remaining in the opening quarter.

Following a missed 40-yard field-goal by Brown on the first play of the second quarter, the Bears coughed up the ball when Forte fumbled on the Rams 40-yard- line. After St. Louis was unable to take advantage of the miscue, Forte, on the second play of the set, sprinted up the middle of the field for a 47-yard TD.

A 43-yard effort by Brown with 5:01 left in the half got the Rams on the board at 21-3. But Gould would nail a 43-yarder of his own to put the Bears up by 21 with 1:38 remaining in the half, an advantage they would take into the break.

In the third quarter, the Bears used a strong dose of the running game behind Forte and managed to tack on another field goal, this time a 38-yarder by Gould with 5:13 left in the period. They would hold a 27-3 lead after three quarters, which would be the final score after a scoreless fourth.

Game Notes

Chicago will play at Minnesota on November 30, while St. Louis will host Miami...The Bears improved to 49-34-3 all-time versus the Rams in the regular season...The Bears' Lovie Smith is 2-0 in his head coaching career against the Rams, for whom he served as defensive coordinator from 2001 through 2003...The Rams were without lead running back Steven Jackson, who is nursing a thigh injury, and left tackle Orlando Pace, who is out with a knee injury...Despite the loss, the Rams have won four of their last six against the Bears.

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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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