[iillllii]

I'm definitely familiar with him, his well post was more enlightening than a lot of published material.

I read most of what gets posted here although I don't usually post, just because I don't have much to add....but I've been thinking about line movements a lot recently myself and late movements in particular, so maybe you can enlighten me further here, as your contention is counterintuitive at least in the context of my own understanding of sports books...

I know that books will sometimes purposely take uneven action when they know they are on the +EV side of the equation, but I've always just assumed this was the minority of betting events - I'd guess maybe 1 out of 10 betting events, at most, would they purposely take a reasonable volume of lopsided action. So it seems odd that it would be standard for them to hold lines constant just prior to kick off, with that late square money rushing in. Here are some hypothetical examples to illustrate my confusion:



NFL game: Team A -6.5 vs. Team B

Book has ~$300K of bets on A and ~$300K of bets on B. Then, 3 hours prior to kick off, square money starts rushing in on A, bringing the book's balance to $450K A and $300K B. The book just went from balanced to unbalanced, risk free to risky, on a betting event that isn't clearly +EV on either side. Wouldn't they add a half point to try to balance their position here? Or is it your contention that in such a scenario they really just say 'eh, screw it, this is square money, it's +EV in general to fade squares.'

Another possibility is that my assumed allocations are off? Maybe instead of

$300K A / $300K B --> late square $--> $450KA / $300K B,

reality is closer to

$2.5M A / $2.5M B --> late squre $ --> $2.55M A / $2.5M B

?

In this case, the extra $50K square money isn't large enough to justify a line move, especially if making the spread 7 instead of 6.5 will encourage $400K sharp money?