[iggymcfly]

Disclaimer: The below is not based on any inside information whatsoever. It's just my own concept of how lines are made.

The way I see it, if the book really wants balanced action and "Team A" is the side the squares like, then there's no way they're going to want to have balanced action on Friday or Saturday. They're going to try to set their line so something like 200K comes in on Team A going into Sunday and 400K comes in on Team B. Then, when the squares hammer Team A in the morning, all it does is even out the books and they don't have to move the line. That's what rush was getting at. They know where the square money's coming from ahead of time so they factor that into how they make the line. If they move the line, it's because they didn't estimate how many squares would be betting properly.

If say -13 is the true line (let's use a basketball game for an example so we don't have to worry about key numbers) and -17 splits the square action evenly, then what line splits the action varies from book to book. Maybe on Pinnacle, -14 splits their action evenly, so they deal -13.5 to get a slightly bigger edge from the squares. On Bodog with smaller limits, -15 splits the action so they deal -14. Meanwhile with the local down the street who only takes action from 10 different people, none of whom know anything about sports betting, he deals anywhere from -15 (the optimal number in terms of edge) to -17 (the safest) depending on how high his risk tolerance is.