Woodies, Fernandez, Zvereva enter Tennis HOF

Tennis Betting Lines

07/10/2010 - Newport, RI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Doubles greats Todd Woodbridge, Mark Woodforde, Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva headlined this year's class enshrined at the International Tennis Hall of Fame on Saturday.

The Australians Woodbridge and Woodforde, nicknamed "The Woodies," piled up a record 61 doubles titles on the ATP, including a whopping 11 major championships, which is second only to fellow Aussies John Newcombe and Tony Roche's record of 12. Woodbridge and Woodforde also enjoyed stays inside the Top-20 in singles.

The Woodies were the first tandem to corral five straight Wimbledon titles and are the only team in the Open Era to win at least one major title in six straight years.

In Olympic competition, the Woodies captured gold in 1996 and silver in 2000.

The 39-year-old Woodbridge holds the ATP record with 83 doubles titles in the Open Era and played on Davis Cup championship teams for Australia in 1999 and 2003.

The 44-year-old Woodforde captured 67 doubles titles and held down the No. 1 ranking for doubles for 84 weeks during his career. He played for a Davis Cup winner in 1999, along with Woodbridge.

The 46-year-old Puerto Rican native Fernandez and Belarusian Zvereva amassed 38 doubles titles together, including 14 Grand Slam wins. From 1992-93, they tallied six straight major titles at one point.

Beatriz "Gigi" Fernandez, a mother of twins, colleted 68 doubles titles on tour, including 17 majors, while the 39-year-old Zvereva piled up 18 major doubles championships. Fernandez captured Olympic doubles gold medals in 1992 and 1996 and was a two-time Fed Cup champion for the United States (1990, 1996).

Zvereva won 20 Grand Slam doubles titles overall, including a pair of mixed ones, and also reached the Top-10 as a singles star, including a career-high No. 5 spot in 1989.

Others inducted to the Tennis Hall on Saturday were men's and mixed doubles specialist Owen Davidson, of Australia, in the Master Player category; wheelchair tennis pioneer Brad Parks, of the United States, in the Contributor category; and the late Derek Hardwick, who entered via the Contributor category as the former chairman of the British Lawn Tennis Association.

The class of 2010 now gives the Tennis Hall of Fame 218 legends, representing 19 nations.

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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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