10/13/2008 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jeff Burton began the 2008 "Chase for the Sprint Cup" as the seventh seed, but after winning last Saturday's Bank of America 500 at the Lowe's Motor Speedway, the 41-year-old driver moved up to second in the championship standings. He is 69 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson with five races remaining in the season.
Burton led the final 57 laps on Saturday, took fuel only on his last pit stop, and held off Kasey Kahne at the finish for his second Sprint Cup Series victory of the year.
"(Crew chief) Scott Miller did a great job, made that call there at the end, and that's what won the race," Burton said. "I'm sure everybody was questioning it. Hell, I was questioning it. I was thinking, 'I don't know if this will work or not,' but it did."
It's the first time Burton has recorded multiple victories in a Cup season since 2001, when he drove the No.99 Ford for car owner Jack Roush.
Burton, in his third consecutive "Chase" this year, has finished ninth or better since the playoffs began last month at New Hampshire.
Johnson is the only other driver with Top-10 finishes in the first five Chase races this year.
Two years ago, Burton held a 45-point lead after Lowe's, but dropped to sixth in the standings the following week at Martinsville when he suffered engine failure, and ended up finishing 42nd. The Richard Childress Racing driver finished the 2006 season seventh in points.
"It was our first year in the Chase, and we had worked really hard," Burton said. "It was my second year at Childress. We had been through a lot of changes, a lot of stuff going on at the shop, trying to make things better. Being a small part of Richard Childress Racing, we had both teams in the Chase."
Teammate Kevin Harvick joined Burton in the '06 Chase, while all three RCR drivers qualified for the playoffs in '07 and '08, with Clint Bowyer joining the action.
Burton has been a Cup competitor since 1993, but has finished no better than third in points (2000). As the oldest driver in this year's Chase, Burton is already pleased with his season, regardless of whether he wins the title or not.
"We're just having fun, and we're paying attention to us," he said. "We're not going to get caught up in the point thing. We're paying attention to it, but we're not going to get caught up in it. If we don't win the championship, our year's not a failure. We weren't one of the teams that set the bar up there. We're just laying it out there, having a good time."
Johnson, the two-time defending series champion, is attempting to become the first driver since Cale Yarborough to win titles in a row. Yarborough won the championship consecutively from 1976-78.
At the start of the Chase, Johnson, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards were considered the top championship contenders. But Busch collapsed in the first two races as he finished 34th New Hampshire and 43rd at Dover and dropped from first to 12th in points, while Edwards has fallen from second to fourth in the ranks after finishing 29th at Talladega and 33rd at Lowe's. He is now 169 points behind Johnson.
Third-place occupant Greg Biffle is the only other driver close to Johnson in points (-86). Biffle won at New Hampshire and Dover, but was caught up in the second "big one" at Talladega and finished 24th.
Johnson ended last year's Chase by winning four of the last five races en route to his second-straight championship. He also completed the 2006 season with finishes of first or second in five of the last six races to capture his first title. Despite his previous late-season surges, Johnson is not about to underestimate Burton in this year's championship bout.
"He's always been on my radar screen," Johnson said. "He's been doing this a long time, and he knows the tracks. He's revitalized RCR over the years. I think we can all give him a lot of credit for the turnaround RCR has had. On the track he's smart, and he knows how to race hard. He's been out there a long time."
If Burton pulls off the upset and wins the Cup championship, it will be the seventh title for team owner Richard Childress, but his first since 1994 when Dale Earnhardt captured his record-tying seventh championship.
As long as Burton remains consistent, he should be battling for the title all the way up to the final lap in the November 16th season-ending race at Homestead.
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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. “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).
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.
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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