Bellamy withdraws from Wales for friendly

Soccer Betting Lines

08/20/2007 - Cardiff, Wales (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Wales captain Craig Bellamy withdrew from the team on Monday for the upcoming friendly with Bulgaria.

The 28-year-old striker pulled out of Wednesday's contest because his wife, Claire, is due to give birth.

Bellamy, who signed with West Ham from Liverpool for nearly $15 million over the summer, is expected to pass the captain's armband to Danny Gabbidon, his West Ham teammate.

Derby striker Robert Earnshaw or Daniel Nardiello of Queens Park Rangers will likely take Bellamy's place up top alongside Freddy Eastwood.

Pokervattle Soccer Betting News

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Macclesfield, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Ladies European Tour announced the first nine players for its 2007 Solheim Cup team on Monday. Those nine players include two rookies and seven others that have combined for 35 previous appeara

<< Gerrard among list of withdrawals for England
London, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard was among a list of four more players who have withdrawn from the England squad that will meet Germany in a friendly on Wednesday at Wembley Stadium. Gerrard played in

<< Klose to miss next game with injury
Munich, Germany (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Bayern Munich striker Miroslav Klose will miss the team's next league contest on Saturday against Hannover because of a knee injury. Klose suffered the injury in Bayern's 4-0 thrashing of Werder Br

<< Rudd to retire at end of season
Brooklyn, MI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - While waiting out yesterday's rain, 50-year- old Ricky Rudd announced that he would retire at the end of the 2007 season. "I've been fortunate that it's something that I've loved to do, had fun doing and m

<< Benfica bags manager Santos after season's first match
Lisbon, Portugal (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Benfica fired manager Fernando Santos on Monday just two days after the club opened its season with a 1-1 draw against promoted side Matosinhos. "Benfica have reached agreement with Fernando Santos

Lucio, Gilberto ruled out of Brazil friendly >>
Sao Paulo, Brazil (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Brazil will be without two more defenders for its upcoming friendly against Algeria on Wednesday as both Lucio and Gilberto were ruled out of the match because of injury. Last week, Roma's Juan and

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(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - In a season void of any real promise, the Chicago White Sox can easily look back and point to the month of August, when everything officially went down the tubes. Chicago is mired in a season-long eight-game losing streak,

It's not time to panic in Manchester just yet >>
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - It's been a long time since Manchester United has found itself in the bottom half of the Premiership standings. However, that is exactly where the defending EPL champions currently reside through three game

Line of Scrimmage: Silly to Think Vick Won't Play Again >>
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - We hold our flaming torches aloft, watch the No. 7 jerseys smolder away on the bonfire, and do so with a certain sense of satisfaction. There's no justice like angry mob justice, so said Principal Skinner,

Dolphins name Green starting QB >>
Davie, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Miami Dolphins head coach Cam Cameron announced Monday that Trent Green will be behind center when the team opens the season in Washington next month. The 37-year-old Green beat out Cleo Lemon, who will se

MySportsbook.com and Kentucky Derby Offer Bonuses
The 2008 Kentucky Derby has announced a $1-million bonus for this weekend’s 134th ‘Run for the Roses’ and MySportsbook.com is doing the same.

Well, not quite $1 million, but MySportsbook.com is offering a 75% rebate for Kentucky Derby lines. Check out the exclusive horse racing bonus for all the details.

According to MySportsbook.com, the favorites for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky are: Curlin (+250); Street Sense (+500); Scat Daddy (+700); Circular Quay (+750); and Nobiz Like Shobiz (+800).

Derby organizers announced this week that there will be a $1-million bonus at the 2007 Kentucky Derby odds if the first-place horse wins by more than 6 1/2 lengths – the margin of Barbaro's victory last year. The bonus would be divided Saturday among the winning trainer, jockey, owner and a charity, with each receiving 25 percent. The designated charity is the Barbaro Memorial Fund.

''It's certainly creative, it's certainly fun and it has something for the horsemen, which we always want to embrace,'' Churchill Downs president and chief executive Robert Evans said at a news conference. ''What's really cool is it will force us to remember Barbaro.''
    
Meanwhile, the Derby favorite – Curlin – is going against the odds this year. It's been 125 years since Apollo won after skipping his 2-year-old season, and not since Regret in 1915 has such a lightly seasoned horse worn the blanket of red roses.

Arkansas Derby winner Curlin – unbeaten in three career races – tries to overcome both those obstacles in Saturday's 133rd Derby.

''We're not running against history,'' trainer Steve Asmussen said Monday. ''We're running against who they load up.''

Six other horses have run in the Derby without benefit of 2-year-old races and with three or fewer starts. The best any of them managed was a sixth-place finish by Showing Up last year.
   
Asmussen dismissed suggestions that Curlin's lack of racing experience could keep him from the winner's circle.

”He exudes confidence and he's got a great presence about him,'' the trainer said. ''I feel great about the position we're in. He's not worried about anything, why should you be?''
   
The Kentucky Derby is at 4:04 p.m., ET Saturday.

For complete odds on the Kentucky Derby, visit MySportsbook.com. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards.


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.”

To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.