The Basics: Reverse Line Movement
So, you’ve read all of our other betting basic articles and you’re looking to get into more advanced betting techniques since you’re doing so well. Hold on before you go anywhere, we have what you’re looking for! You’re interested in learning about reverse line movement so that you can track the betting market and make informed trend decisions.
What is Reverse Line Movement?
Reverse line movement is where bettors track line movement to catch an anomaly where a sportsbook is moving the line in the opposite direction of what makes practical sense. This is the textbook definition, however it is important to understand it from an application standpoint before putting it into use.
Reverse Line Movement Example
Let’s imagine the Kansas City Chiefs are playing the Tennessee Titans. Kansas City are 2.5 point favorites. The spread is placed at -110 odds both ways. While it may not be realistic, for understanding’s sake, let’s pretend 100% of the money was placed on Kansas City at -2.5. The sports book have created a huge liability for themselves because while if Tennessee covers, they are going to make a killing, if Kansas City wins, they lose everything from that game. Therefore, they would incrementally move the line to 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 and so on until they can convince more people to back the Titans and even the percentages on both sides. So, even though from a recreational standpoint, it would probably make sense for Kansas City to not be such favorites, from a risk-reward standpoint, the sports book will reversely move the line to cover liabilities.
Why do Sports Books Use Reverse Line Movement?
As explained above, sports books are not in the business that we are when we participate in betting; they are not looking to risk in order to win. Their goal is to guarantee profits with hold percentage so that no matter the outcome, they will receive revenue.
Think of it this way. On rare occasions, we as the sports bettors can guarantee profits with what’s called a hedge. Click the link to learn more about this subject. Ultimately, this is when somebody places a bet on a specific outcome, during the game or season, the outcome looks very promising, and you can place a bet on the other outcome(s) to guarantee a profit. In this scenario, you have a hold and take all the risk out of it.
This is a sports book’s mindset and is crucial to their survival. It’s not about making the most accurate lines, but creating the lines to guarantee winnings.
How to Implement Reverse Line Movement:
As mentioned, this is a relatively advanced technique. There are three ways to utilize this method:
1) Using your Eyes and Nothing but your Eyes
Like they did in the old days with the stock market, you can certainly watch lines all day to notice trends. I recommend strong blue light glasses if you plan to go this route.
2) Comparing Lines to Indexes
There are very good sites out there, like fivethirtyeight that analyzes percent chances of teams winning. If you convert this to a spread figure, you can see if there is any value in particular picks and if reverse movement has been occurring. Instead of watching the reverse line movement while it is in action, this is more of a hands-off technique.
3) Creating an Application/Program
Lastly and most complicated of ways would be to create a python or r program that can track sports books line movements and alert you when there is any suspicious activity worth checking out. This would be a great time-investment as it could prove incredibly profitable, however it is certainty an incredibly advanced technique
Hopefully this article helped in your understanding of reverse line movements. As always, bet better, bet smarter with smartsportsbet!
