Cooking the Books with the Hook Slide

All NFL games have an opening line that is released to the betting public usually on Monday for the upcoming games. This is the linesmaker’s best preliminary estimate to entice equal action on both sides. As accurate as the linesmaker is at setting the initial line, there is obviously no guarantee that equal action will follow for every game. To overcome this uncertainty, sportsbooks have the capacity to adjust the line, usually in half point increments, right up to game time to keep the action balanced to the greatest extent possible.

The biggest line adjustment usually occurs right after the opening line is released. It is said that many professional gamblers will see great value in some early lines and they want to get their money placed before the line moves against them. Sportsbooks often use this first round of activity to fine-tune the pointspreads. After this adjustment period, the lines in most NFL games stabilize to a large degree. This frequently happens before many cappers and bettors even begin to look at the games on the betting card.

Yes, you will see half point differentials in Vegas and offshore books throughout the week. There are times you may even see a full point differential, but this is usually over a short time occurrence. When shopping for the best line, the key for bettors is to guess when the line is affording them the maximum value. For example, a bettor wants to back the Steelers and the accessible lines have the favored Steelers at -6 or -6.5. If the bettor feels that -6 is going to be the best line available to back the Steelers throughout the week, the bet is placed at -6. This is not to say that the line couldn’t move to -5.5 at some point later.

There is a general rule that says if you are going to play favorites, get the action down early. Conversely, if you are going to play dogs, get the action down late. Consider the logic in this process. If early money goes on the favorites, then the books will obviously increase the points for the dogs to attract the equal action. However, like everything else in life there are no guarantees that this will hold true for any given game. In fact, some games will do the direct opposite. Hence, the term is gambling.

On numerous occasions, I have heard and read comments from professional handicappers who claim that “while shopping for the best line is prudent, a half point difference (referred to as a hook) here and there over the long haul should balance out, therefore it should not have a significant impact on winning and losing.” Moreover, many pro cappers have often stated that if a half point is going to make the difference between winning and losing, one should not be in the sports betting business.

On the surface, I totally agree with this viewpoint. Due to the total randomness of how a sports contest could play out, there are certainly heavy doses of good and bad luck associated with sports betting. We all have experienced the agonizing half point defeats and the exhilarating half point victories ATS. They are inevitable. We can only hope that the half point margins balance out over time.

Unfortunately, there are many professional cappers who take an unfair advantage of an unsuspecting public with their half point tactics. This sleight of hand is accomplished when pro cappers release their plays by just giving the side or the over / under. By not listing a specific pointspread or total associated with the games, this allows them the opportunity to grab a half point should they need it to convert a loss to a push or a push to a win. In other words, they are not going to lose a game by a half point as compared to the actual posted line. If the betting client losses the game by a half point, the capper maintains that it is the bettor’s fault for not getting the best line.

Another approach is for a capper to simply post the best line or total that occurred during the entire week which reflects the best value for their selection, even though that number may have been the opening line and is no longer available at the time of the release.

Such tactics are trickery and certainly unethical. I refer to this unscrupulous practice as the “hook slide.”

So how much of an advantage is the hook slide? Dating back to the 1997 NFL season, there have been 3,148 NFL games. 100 of these games resulted in a push. 200 of these games found the final outcome to be within a half point of the posted number. 300 of these games found the final outcome to be within one point of the posted spread.

These past results show that about 6.4% of all games fall within a half point, or hook, of the spread. Therefore, for every 94 NFL games released by a handicapper, there will be approximately 6 games available for the hook slide.

Let’s say a hypothetical capper released 94 NFL plays over a season and the capper maintained his ATS record was 49 wins against 42 losses with 3 pushes. Such an ATS record represents a respectable 53.8% winning season with +2.8 units based on a 10% juice. However, it was found that this pro capper had readily employed the hook slide tactic for six games. Three of the games were losses that were converted to pushes and three of the games were pushes that were converted to wins.

Therefore, the betting client who bet the same exact 94 plays of this capper had an actual record of 46 winning bets versus 45 losing bets with 3 pushes for a losing 50.5% effort. The bettor doesn’t enjoy the luxury of the hook slide after the game result. While the pro capper was touting his service with “another” winning season, the reality of the situation had the betting client closing out the season at -3.5 units, in addition to the amount paid out for the capper’s selections. Bottom line, the bettor suffered a disappointing enterprise by finishing in the red for the NFL season.

The hook slide allows a convenient way for cappers to dupe the betting public about their ATS record. Since the hook slide affords about a 3 to 4% increase in winning percentage, you can readily see that handicappers only need about 50% winners ATS when picking about 94 NFL games to show a winning season when using the hook slide. This offers a huge advantage to the devious capper and the hook slide practice can really add up over the course of numerous seasons. For a five year period, the scam can produce an additional 40 to 50 positive plays.

Be on the lookout and follow the results closely and you will see that these scammers rarely if ever lose a game ATS by the actual half point. The games that they do show as a half point loss are probably a loss by a full point anyway. Here they are actually using the hook slide to show that they actually do lose by a hook on occasion. Not!

Use of the hook slide to an unsuspecting public is the greatest scam going by these devious “pro” cappers. In accounting terms, it is simply cooking the books to show a profit. Anyone can play pro handicapper by basically flipping a coin to make pointspread predictions and using the hook slide to rescue the losing 50-50 venture to project it into a winning effort. Unfortunately, this is an all too common “smoke and mirror” handicapping scam and there appears no way to prevent its continued use.