Montoya wins second straight New Hampshire pole

Autoracing Betting Lines

06/25/2010 - Loudon, NH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Juan Pablo Montoya edged Kasey Kahne in Friday's qualifying for the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 to claim his second consecutive pole at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Montoya, who won the pole last September at New Hampshire, turned a lap of 132.337 m.p.h. around the flat one-mile oval for his third career Sprint Cup Series pole. The 34-year-old Colombian qualified for the 2009 championship Chase, but currently sits 20th in points.

"I think the position we are in points, we definitely need to have good results," Montoya said. "We got a good race car, and right now we're running really good. Last time we were here, we ran really well, so I'm hoping for the same thing."

New Hampshire begins the 10-race stretch before the Chase begins here on September 18. In last year's fall race at New Hampshire, Montoya finished third after leading the most laps with 105. His first and only Cup victory so far came three years ago on the Sonoma, CA road course.

Montoya topped the charts in the first Cup practice earlier in the day.

"I was surprised we're on the pole," he said. "The first lap was good, but the second lap, I went for it. In [turn] three, I got really loose. I think I lost a bunch of time there, but I think I came off the corner good enough to maintain it."

Kahne qualified 0.04 seconds behind Montoya to capture the outside pole. Kahne will start on the front row for the third time since the May 16 race at Dover.

"I thought it was a pretty decent lap, and I felt really good," Kahne said.

Kurt Busch took the third spot, followed by Mark Martin, who won the most recent race at New Hampshire, and Ryan Newman.

"The car stuck well, even though the track conditions were warmer," said Busch, a three-time race winner at New Hampshire. "I knew I couldn't overdrive the car and expect anymore than what we did in practice."

David Reutimann, Joe Nemechek, Sam Hornish Jr., Clint Bowyer and Jimmie Johnson completed the top-10.

Joey Logano, the defending race winner, qualified 11th. Logano became the youngest driver to win a Cup race when he took last year's rain-shortened event here.

Points leader Kevin Harvick will start 24th. Harvick currently holds a 140- point lead over Johnson.

Travis Kvapil and Mike Bliss failed to qualify.

Sunday's race at New Hampshire is scheduled to start just after 1:00 p.m. (et).

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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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