Beating the March Madness Odds

March 12, 2007 — -- "It's like a Super Bowl every day for four days."

That's how one of the top bookmakers in Las Vegas describes the madness that takes over millions of people every year -- March Madness, that is.

With the field of 65 teams set for the 2007 NCAA men's basketball tournament, office workers everywhere are scribbling out tournament brackets and Vegas is bracing for an influx of gambling basketball fans.

"The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is the biggest of the year," said Mike Fay, the specialty games manager at the Imperial Palace Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas strip.

In big sports books like the one Mike operates, and in offices, car pools, diners and dives all across America, more people will place bets during the tournament than any other time. For bettors, there is no bigger event than March Madness.

In the Imperial Palace alone, Fay says that the bettors will line up by the hundreds and place bets by the thousands, and that the casino's sports book will do about 20 to 25 times the amount of business it does on any average day any other time of year.

And of course, the same thing is happening on a smaller scale with individuals and office pools and private bets. It is estimated by betting professionals that about $2 billion will change hands during the next week as fans put their money where their brag is.

Spreading the Wealth

Of course, not all teams are created equal. To make up the difference, there is something called "the point spread" or "the line" on the final score -- a technique oddsmakers use to make the betting more competitive.

The way point spreads work is pretty simple. If one team is clearly better than the other, as is usually the case in the early round games, when top-ranked teams like the University of Florida play much smaller schools, the oddsmakers will not take a bet for the better team to simply win. The favored team must win by a certain minimum number of points, and that number is referred to as the point spread.

So, if UCLA is, let's say, a 12-point favorite over the Kentucky Wildcats, but it wins the game by less than those 12 points, the person betting on Kentucky wins. That's what it means when you hear the experts talk about "beating the spread" in a game. Bettors all around the world rely on the point spread to determine whether they will wager.

Who Makes the Lines?

The millions of people betting on the games all have the same point spread information. What few of them know is that all of that information -- the data that results in billions of dollars in bets -- is created almost entirely by one man and a staff of fewer than six people.

Kenny White is the chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sports Consultants. He and odds director Tony Sinisi work with a small group of experts and create the odds and the point spreads used by almost every bettor in the world. How do they do it?

"It's a numbers game with a little common sense mixed in," White said.

His team analyzes every player and gives him a score. The score adds up to make up the team score. If one team has a score of 150 and their opponents are at 140, then it's a 10-point spread, at least in theory.

A variety of factors come into play when determining the teams' and individual players' strengths including player injuries and the strength of teams schedules.

"This is 80 percent science and 20 percent art. The numbers don't lie. But, who did they play? Was anyone sick? Add it all up and then try not to miss the intangibles and then try to figure out who really needs to win the most," he said.

So, it's a guarantee of picking the winner?

"Not at all -- 25 percent of all games are flukes, and if you win, it's just plain luck."

After mixing its science with the mystical art of picking game winners, Las Vegas Sports Consultantsproduces a computer printout. Its subscribers include most every major sports news outlet and all but a very few casinos around the world. When you read or hear about "Las Vegas oddsmakers," you are getting the results produced by White and his team.

Use Your Head, Not Your Heart

Back at the Imperial Palace -- part of the Harrah's company -- Fay and every counterpart in the huge gaming company use the same odds and point spreads. They receive odds for 25 different team sports, but the madness of March is unsurpassed, and alumni across the country turn their attention to the NCAA tournament. Many gamblers, he said, bet with their hearts rather than their heads.

"Our market includes a lot of Midwesterners who come for the tournament," Imperial's Fay said. "So, we'll get emotional bets for Michigan or Ohio State, for example. They aren't betting to win but to show loyalty and to have a souvenir betting slip with their team name on it. But the smart bettors think like the oddsmakers. They listen to the numbers and not the hype."

As pregame betting progresses, the spread may shift somewhat to track the thinking of all bettors -- if all of the majority of the bets are being placed on the favorite, the point spread can get bigger, and vice versa. But it all starts with a man most have never heard about until now. They take what White tells them and bet billions of dollars during a few days.

By the way, the numbers say the Top 5 favorites this year are Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, UCLA and Ohio State. Does White say that means a bet on these teams, with the point spread of course, is a sure thing?

"Odds are 60-40 that we're right."

And you can bet on that.