Lots of great backetball - the NIT is in progress and round 1 of the NCAA tournament gets going tomorrow at 9:20 am (PST).
NPR has a nice primer for the The NCAA Tournament , with A-Z coverage of interesting people and facts. Starting with Adam Morrison, one of Gonzaga's stars. Adam is a philosopher and a diabetic, who checks his blood sugar level and if necessary, gives himself insulin shots during games.
CBS SportsLine.com is offering all games via live streaming video at March Madness on Demand. My guess is that feed is going to get bogged down and you'd be better off making time to watch your favorite team on TV and checking the scoring via the web for the rest of the games.
ROUND 1 THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2006 (PST)
9:20 a.m. Wich. St. vs. Seton Hall
9:25 a.m. Okla vs. Wis.-Mil.
9:40 a.m. B.C. vs. Pacific
11:40 a.m. Marquette vs. Ala.
11:40 a.m. Tenn. vs. Winthrop
11:45 a.m. Florida vs. South Ala.
12:00 p.m. Nevada vs. Montana
1:55 p.m. UCLA vs. Belmont
4:10 p.m. LSU vs. Iona
4:10 p.m. G. Wash. vs. NC-Wilm.
4:20 p.m. Gonzaga vs. Xavier
4:25 p.m. Illinois vs. Air Force
6:30 p.m. Duke vs. Southern U.
6:30 p.m. Syr. vs. Texas A&M
6:40 p.m. Indiana vs. San Diego St.
6:45 p.m. Washington vs. Utah St.
FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2006
9:15 a.m. Ohio St. vs. Davidson
9:25 a.m. Iowa vs. N'western St.
9:30 a.m. Arkansas vs. Bucknell
9:30 a.m. Arizona vs. Wisconsin
11:35 a.m. Georgetown vs. No. Iowa
11:45 a.m. W. Virginia vs. So. Ill.
11:50 a.m. Villanova vs. Monmouth
11:50 a.m. Memphis vs. Oral Roberts
4:10 p.m. Pittsburgh vs. Kent St.
4:10 p.m. Mich. St. vs. G. Mason
4:20 p.m. California vs. N.C. State
4:25 p.m. Connecticut vs. Albany
6:30 p.m. Kansas vs. Bradley
6:30 p.m. UNC vs. Murray St.
6:40 p.m. Texas vs. Penn
6:45 p.m. Kentucky vs. UAB
It's fun to fill out the brackets and see how many you can get right, but for those inclined to lose money betting on games the best source for point spreads is Covers.com. They have the point spreads, over/under and money lines being offered by the big online sportsbooks.
If you want to figure out what the point spread may be before the bookies set it - a good source is Jeff Sagarin. He's a MIT mathmatician, well known by major media and sports betting aficionados for his Sagarin Rankings for basketball, football and baseball.
If you aren't familiar with sports gambling it's pretty simple. The point spreads are given in terms of a number with the negative number indicating the favorite. For example if Villanova ends up being a 22 point favorite over Monmouth, the point spread will be given as Villanova -22.
This means Villanova has to beat Monmouth by 23 points for you to win your bet. If they win by 22 points it's a push and you get your bet back. If they win by 21 points or less - you lose bucko.
If you happen to go to a real sportsbook they have a big board with all the matchups. The point spread is given in terms of the first team shown in the matchup. It will be negative if the first team is a favorite or a positive number if the first team is an underdog.
Depending on where you place your bet you will need to pay the vigorish. This is one way (besides collecting on all the losing bets) that sportsbooks make money. The vigorish is somewhere between 3 and 10 percent, sometimes even more. Usually it's expressed in terms of a number like 110 meaning you bet 110 dollars to win 100 for the 10 percent vigorish example.
Sometimes you can bet the moneyline. This is just a pure odds bet, no point spread involved. You pick the winner. Sounds simple - the only problem is the bookmakers are way smarter than you are. Not to be insulting - but they have lots more information, mathmaticians and statistical knowledge than you will ever hope to. Even if you spend all your waking hours studying the statistics, odds, history, matchups etc. eventually, the longer you play...no matter how much you know about sports....you will lose your money. It's the same with any gambling games of chance. Poker is a different story. At least if you are playing with players with different skill levels. At the top it's a statistical game too and you will, if you play long enough, give your money to the house - for the right to sit at the table.
Back to sports betting - The money line is given as a number too. For example if a team is a 3 point favorite you might see the moneyline for the favorite as -142. This means if you bet 142 dollars, and if your team wins, you win 100 dollars (you get your 142 back plus 100 dollars more). Conversely the moneyline for the dog may be +132. This means if you bet 100 dollars you win 132 dollars.
You don't have to bet dollars. Some online sportsbooks allow you to bet pennies, which I would recommend you do for a few months or years, to see how you do before investing your nest egg. I think you will find, if you are very careful, that you will just about break even. If you are foolish you will lose all your money and if you are lucky you will make some money - but not for long. Eventually the odds and the vigorish catch up with you and the fact that the score of games is at some level random (no one really knows if a team will win by 3 or 4 points), but that makes all the difference in the world to the bettor if the spread is 3 points. What happens over time is the random nature takes over and you end up giving 110 bucks to the bookie for each loss and winning 100 bucks for each win. In a 50-50 deal you can see that means eventually you will lose all your money.
But maybe not. Maybe you can come up with a system. A scheme. A better mousetrap....or more likely get lucky one time.
Actually if you want to gamble - sports betting has some of the best odds of any Vegas style gaming. It's on the same level as craps. Any other Vegas game is pretty much a sucker bet..not to say they aren't a heck of a lot of fun.
Speaking of sucker bets, most books shade the point spread to over-favor the favorite. What this means is that statistically if Duke is expected to beat Southern U by 23 points, the bookies will put the spread at 24 points because they know that most bettors will go with the favorite. This just makes it a little harder for you to win your bet. Making a little from a lot of people, is what keeps all those lights on in Vegas and the owners of some off-shore betting entities very very rich men.
Calvin Ayres the owner of the popular online sportsbook Bodog.com does business and lives in Costa Rica. He was recently named one of the world's richest men with a net worth of over 1 billion dollars. You can read a bit about him in the Forbes.com article Catch Me If You Can.
To each their own. You can gradually give a 100 dollars to the state sponsored lottery and have many one in a million chance of winning big or put your 100 bucks down on one game and a 50-50 chance of winning (it's not 50-50 over time because of the vig). You actually have to win 52.5 percent of the time to make a profit with a 10 percent vigorish. To illustrate this, imagine if you made 100 $1 bets and won 53 of them. You would win $53 and lose $47. So you're up $6. But on top of the $47, you lose another $4.70 (the 10% vig) and net $1.30.
My recommendation....forget about the point spreads, enjoy the games for the athletic and human story of people - players and fans enjoying themselves. Some people like the sports page, or sports stories in general because you can see so many human interest stories in sports - controversy, scandal, over-achieving, heroes, villians..etc.
I love the story of Jason McElwain the 17 year old high school senior who got into the game in the final four minutes and scored 20 points (6 were three pointers). I saw Jason with President Bush last night and it was pretty touching to see how kind George Bush was. He seemed to really be genuinely happy to be with Jason and of course vice-versa. Nice story.
Wishing you a good time watching, listening, or if you are really lucky attending or even playing in the NCAA basketball tournaments.
