Clijsters, Wozniacki into QFs; Dementieva upended in Montreal

Tennis Betting Lines

08/20/2010 - Montreal, QC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - U.S. Open champion Kim Clijsters was an easy third-round victor, while defending Rogers Cup champ Elena Dementieva was an upset victim Thursday at this $2 million Canadian event, a U.S. Open tune-up.

The fifth-seeded former world No. 1 Clijsters pummeled Estonian Kaia Kanepi 6-2, 6-1 on the hardcourts at Uniprix Stadium. The big-serving Kanepi was a surprise Wimbledon quarterfinalist last month.

Clijsters is the reigning U.S. Open champ and fresh off her title in Cincinnati last week. She captured this Rogers Cup tournament, in Toronto, in 2005.

Up next for Clijsters in Friday's quarterfinals will be quality Russian Vera Zvonareva.

Chinese Zheng Jie stunned a fourth-seeded Dementieva in 7-6 (7-3), 6-4 fashion. Zheng was a surprise Aussie Open semifinalist back in January.

The two-time major runner-up and 2008 Olympic gold medalist Dementieva beat former No. 1 Maria Sharapova in last year's all-Russian Rogers Cup finale in Toronto, as this event shifts between Toronto and Montreal each year.

In a later contest, Danish Caroline Wozniacki, who was last year's U.S. Open runner-up to Clijsters, needed more than two hours to subdue Italian Flavia Pennetta, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

Francesca Schiavone, seeded sixth, downed former world No. 1 Dinara Safina, 6-4, 6-3. Also on Thursday, former top-10 star Svetlana Kuznetsova continued her recent winning ways by ousting seventh-seeded Pole Agnieszka Radwanska 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 on Day 4. The 11th-seeded two-time major champion Kuznetsova corralled her eighth win in nine tries on Thursday and was a titlist in San Diego two weeks ago.

Kuznetsova's quarterfinal opponent will be Zheng.

The aforementioned eighth-seeded Zvonareva added another win to her great summer, as she cooled off red-hot Hungarian Agnes Szavay in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3. Szavay had won her last 12 matches heading into Thursday and was seeking a third title in three events, with recent titles coming in Budapest and Prague.

Zvonareva was the Wimbledon runner-up to the great Serena Williams last month.

Meanwhile, surging 10th-seeded Belarusian Victoria Azarenka drilled ninth- seeded Chinese Li Na 6-3, 6-3, and 17th-seeded former Wimbledon runner-up Marion Bartoli of France leveled Czech qualifier Iveta Benesova 6-0, 6-1. The lefthanded Benesova stunned top-seeded former world No. 1 Serb Jelena Jankovic here in the second round.

The world No. 13 Azarenka titled in Stanford three weeks ago and has now won eight of her last nine matches.

Azarenka and Bartoli will lock horns here on Friday.

This week's winner will earn $350,000.

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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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