Aug 23, 2021

  • David PurdumESPN Staff Writer

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    • Joined ESPN in 2014
    • Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008

They're called caput fakes in the cutthroat globe of high-stakes sports betting, and on an innocuous Wed in July, one syndicate unleashed an all-timer.

A team of bettors, with associates around the state, had been preparing for the release of the over/under on the total points scored in the WNBA All-Star Game for days. The betting syndicate thought in that location was a take a chance an oddsmaker would brand a mistake.

The game featured the WNBA's top players confronting the U.Southward. women's national team, which was tuning up for the Olympics. The syndicate believed more than defense would be played, leading to reduced scoring compared to traditional wide-open All-Star Games.

The syndicate sent one of its members to New Jersey in advance, and on game twenty-four hours (July fourteen) closely monitored the odds screen, waiting for the first sportsbook to mail service the total. At ten:29 a.m. ET, the syndicate got its wish. A mistake had been made. Las Vegas sportsbook Circa Sports opened the total at 248, a number reflective of a typical defense-optional All-Star Game, and not an intense, competitive affair featuring a team preparing to win a gilt medal at the Olympics.

Everything had played out perfectly. The syndicate was in position to capitalize on the error by hammering the nether, but the uninitiated might non believe what it did next.

A suggestion was sent to to the syndicate member in Vegas tasked with making the first wager: "Let's encounter what happens if you bet over."

That'due south correct, believing the total was thirty-plus points too high, the syndicate chose to make its first bet on the over. The strategy was not designed to dupe Circa equally much as it was to create a smokescreen and not alarm other sportsbooks that the number was off.

The head fake worked.

The syndicate partner who made the beginning wager is sharp, regularly causing lines to motility after placing a bet. When the account placed a limit bet on over 248.5, Circa oddsmakers moved the number to 252. Shortly after, sportsbooks from Republic of costa rica to Colorado to New Jersey to Nevada copied Circa and posted the total at around 250.

The syndicate went to work, this time betting the under at as many sportsbooks as it could. The full got as depression as 191, before endmost at 197. The WNBA All-Stars won 93-85, with the total staying under by 19 points. The syndicate did well.

"That was just a unique i and not a typical example. It doesn't unremarkably work that mode," said a member of the betting syndicate, who spoke to ESPN on the status of anonymity. "It happened to be the perfect storm."

And perhaps the perfect head fake.

Introducing the caput simulated

Head fakes are bets placed on the opposite side of a bettor's bodily preferred position on a game. They are used to disguise a bettor'south true intentions and, more importantly, move the betoken spread to a more advantageous number. They occur most often in smaller markets, with less liquidity, such equally college basketball, and 2d-half over/nether totals in the NBA or the WNBA, but some bookmakers say they've even happened on the Super Bowl.

Done with precision, the most stiff head fakes can prompt sportsbooks all over the world to move the line the wrong fashion.

It works similar this: An influential bettor likes Duke +3 over N Carolina. When the first line appears at a prominent sportsbook, the bettor places a $1,000 head-fake bet on the Tar Heels -3. The bettor, who is enlightened of their influence on the market, expects the caput fake on N Carolina to cause the line to motility to -three.v at the prominent sportsbook, as well every bit others. If successful, the bettor afterward places $40,000 in bets on Duke with the sportsbooks that inflated the line to +3.five. For $1,000, the bettor is able to identify his larger wagers on the preferred side with a better line.

Bettors have been giving bookmakers headaches with head fakes for decades in Las Vegas. In the 1990s, renowned sports bettor William T. "Billy" Walters' head fakes became legendary and kept everyone guessing, "Which side is Baton on?" Fine art Manteris, who ran Las Vegas sportsbooks for xl-plus years, remembers wise guys head-faking on the opening line for Super Bowl XXXII betwixt the Green Bay Packers and Denver Broncos. Today, caput fakes play out in real fourth dimension online, on odds screens that light up when point spreads and totals outset to motion.

"We're not a group that does caput fakes -- that's not our business model," says Shane Sigsbee, who leads the high-book betting syndicate ImawhaleSports. "Only when I watch other groups do these head fakes, it'south like art. Information technology's beautiful the way they do it."

The caput-faux master

In a earth total of cunning wise guys, the well-nigh potent caput fake of them all belongs to Walters.

"You can get caught with your pants downward," longtime professional bettor Gadoon "Spanky" Kyrollos said well-nigh trying to decipher head fakes, "and the one that was notorious for it was Billy Walters."

Later on growing up in hardscrabble rural Kentucky, Walters moved to Las Vegas in the early 1980s, teamed up with the fabled syndicate the Computer Group and rose to the top of the sports betting food chain. For the past forty years, Walters has had more influence on U.S. sports betting than anyone else. He has about a mystical presence on the marketplace, causing a sense of paranoia amidst bettors and bookmakers, who are constantly trying to figure out which of Walters' bets are legitimate and which are head fakes.

Even while Walters was serving time in federal prison for an insider trading conviction, rumors of which side he was on regularly circulated in the sports betting community. (Walters' sentence was commuted in January by President Donald Trump).

The running joke amongst professional person bettors is that Walters never lost.

"If a game won, Billy was on that side," said a sports bettor who goes by "Fats" and worked with Walters for a yr in Las Vegas. "If a game lost, well, that was a Billy head-faux game."

Head-simulated history

The head-fake game has been going on for a long time.

In the mid-1980s, the Stardust casino and resort in Las Vegas was home to the most influential signal spreads, totals and odds in the nation. When Stardust sportsbook managing director Scotty Schettler'due south crew put up a number, anybody paid attention -- including competing bookmakers in Las Vegas.

Bettors would line up every morning to become a crack at the Stardust'south opening spreads, even going as far equally hiring stand-ins to wait overnight and hold their identify in line. The sportsbook put upwardly stanchions to continue the herd of bettors organized, but they merely moved them out of the way. Schettler ultimately created a morning lottery, using a deck of cards to determine which bettors would go to go to the betting windows first.

As fable has information technology, the payphones outside of the sportsbook were the busiest in the nation, with associates of bookmakers from around the nation calling their bosses to report the Stardust lines. Some sportsbooks in Las Vegas would wait until subsequently the initial moving ridge of betting at the Stardust to come across how the lines moved. They then copied the adjusted numbers and posted them at their own shops.

"Back in our day, people actually handicapped their own games, did their ain work and bet their ain opinions," Schettler told ESPN in a recent telephone interview. "We actually made the line for the unabridged country. At 8 o'clock in the morning, we'd put our line up and the entire country followed it. Everybody."

The wise guys quickly figured out how to have reward of the situation. Betting a few thousand dollars at the Stardust immune them to basically create the line they preferred at every sportsbook in the nation. That is the true power of the head fake, the ability to move the line throughout the marketplace, not just at ane sportsbook.

"It only works if you're convinced other people are going to copy it," said iconic Vegas oddsmaker Roxy Roxborough. "And people copy it."

A bookmaker's head-fake headache

Head fakes play mind games with bookmakers, testing their conviction in their numbers, something that some veterans say is defective today.

Manteris spent forty years taking bets at some of the biggest sportsbooks in Las Vegas before retiring earlier this year. Few things rankled him more than caput fakes, like the one he believes went down for Super Bowl XXXIII.

The Packers opened every bit approximately 11-point favorites over the John Elway-led Broncos. Manteris remembers a flurry of early activity on Light-green Bay that pushed the number up to as loftier as -14. So, as Super Bowl Lord's day approached and limits increased, bigger money came in on the underdog Broncos. Past kickoff, the point spread had dropped back down to Dark-green Bay -11.

"Information technology was wise guys betting the favorite," Manteris recalled during a recent phone interview. "It wasn't the public, it was wise guys who in the first 24 hours pushed it up 3, 3.5 points. The weekend of the game the line dropped all the manner back to xi. I remember saying to myself, 'I can't believe nosotros but immune that to happen.'"

In the cease, the Broncos won outright, so the point spread didn't matter in terms of the result, but in the long term, Manteris says that kind of upwards-and-down action cuts into the bookmakers' edge.

"Yous wind upward having all of your money bet on the favorite at the lowest toll, and all of your money bet on the underdog at the college price," Manteris said. "Yous endeavor to book at a good number, but you can't practise that. Yous can't book the way you desire to book with people intentionally manipulating the toll.

"The reality is, [if] the bookmaker has total confidence in his own number, so y'all tin can negate [caput fakes]. But you don't have that today, I don't have that kind of confidence in the numbers anymore. There's too much ambiguity. It's very hard to exercise in today's world, to have total confidence in the numbers."

And these days, the good numbers don't last long.

Part of the game

The Don Best odds screen is where today's virtual head fakes accept place.

The Screen, as it's unremarkably referred to in the betting community, shows the point spreads, totals and odds from hundreds of sportsbooks from all over the world. Walk into whatever professional person bookmaking functioning and you'll observe the Don Best screen on computer monitors.

Want to know the price on the latest Russian table lawn tennis match at a sportsbook in Costa rica? Don Best has it. Want to monitor for the latest line movement for next year's WNBA All-Star Game to post? Lookout the Don Best screen, which lights upwards when the numbers kickoff to move. Everyone is watching it.

Estimates vary on how many betting syndicates currently take enough influence to pull off caput fakes, likely no more than a dozen or ii at almost, though. Trying to spot caput fakes is a crap shoot in itself. A bespeak spread will start moving in one direction at one prominent sportsbook; other sportsbooks copy the move, sometimes without even taking a bet, and so all of a sudden the line will begin moving in the opposite management.

"Y'all've got a matter of seconds," Sigsbee said. "This isn't something that lasts for seven or viii minutes. Y'all've got 45 seconds to put all of this into action. We're trying to judge what'south really happening and get downward for ourselves every bit well. Honestly, sometimes we get faked out, too. We're just defenseless upside downward on it.

"Head fakes are a huge office of the game."

And every bit long equally bookmakers choose to copy lines on events like the WNBA All-Star Game, they always volition be.