This past weekend's action from a bookmaker's point-of-view

[BangTheBook]

This past weekend's action from a bookmaker's point-of-view
By Jimmy Mason, Director of Sportsbook Operations

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The NBA playoffs saw a couple of big upsets help the house have a decent weekend. While people generally know that baseball is not kind to the books, many are surprised to find that the NBA playoffs typically are no walk in the park either! This time of year any winning weekend is a good weekend for the house!>>

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Saturday started off right for the house as the Rockets knocked off the ‘Mavs’ 98-86. We opened ffice:smarttags" />lace w:st="on">Dallaslace> at -4 ½ and had them as high as -6 ½ before moving back to -6 at tip-off. Keep in mind that a two point move in the playoffs is much stronger than a two point move in the regular season. Middles are common place in the playoffs so you don’t see as much line fluctuation. When all was said and done this was our biggest winner for of the weekend.>>

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Sunday started off the other way as the Miami Heat cost us a lot of money. After opening at -8 ½ and moving up to -9, our line managers held off moving any higher on this one as big favorites in the playoffs are notorious for not covering. We hung tough at 9 ½ getting some much needed buyback just before game time, but we still took a licking as the Heat pounded the Nets 116-98.>>

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The next big decision we had was the Nuggets/Spurs game. If you guessed that we made out like bandits after the rusty Spurs were beaten outright 93-87 on their own floor you were right! Once again we saw a full two point move on an NBA playoff game! The Spurs opened at -7 and closed at -9. This was the second biggest winner of the weekend for us.>>

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The last NBA game of the night was a classic ‘bail-out’ game for the players. We had players coming out of the woodwork to bet the Phoenix Suns at -9, -9 ½ and -10! This was another game that we really did not want to move the line on since the spread was so high, but with the type of one way action we were taking we didn’t have much choice. In retrospect we could have moved the line to -15 and been buried on the high scoring Suns, Final score 114-103 and we narrowly lose the biggest game of the weekend.>>

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That’s all until next week, when we’ll recap again………. >>

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Jimmy Mason>>