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NFL Week 12 Betting Results: Las Vegas Sportsbooks Take One on the Chin


by Doc's Sports - 11/28/2017

sportsbook

In what turned out to be one of the biggest winning weeks in the NFL for Las Vegas sports bettors in recent memory with 12 of 16 favorites covering against the spread, Doc's Sports will try to put things in perspective in a special interview with expert handicapper Raphael Esparza .

Raphael enjoyed a long and successful career in the Las Vegas sportsbook industry all the way up to once holding the prestigious position of Director of the Race and Sports Book for MGM Grand's Aria. At the same time, he was honing his skills as one of the best sports handicappers in the nation. Once known as the Vegas Sports Informer until his retirement from the sportsbook industry in 2013, Raphael still has his ear close to the ground with the books in town while also running a diverse and highly successful sports investment service.

Doc's: What does it really mean when you say that the sportsbooks took a big loss?
Could you put things into better perspective with an estimate on the type of money we are talking about?

RE: When any book goes in the red over six figures for one day of betting, that would be considered a big loss. This was the case with several of the bigger books in town last Sunday on top of some pretty steep losses in the NFL on Thanksgiving Day. I have not gotten the final numbers for the NFL in Week 12, but the overall loss across the state of Nevada will be well into seven figures. The only saving grace was Pittsburgh's inability to cover as a large favorite against Green Bay on Sunday night.



Doc's: How does a big losing week like this really affect the overall bottom
line for a sportsbook's football season?

RE: You have to remember that most of the books in town posted some substantial gains in the first two months of the NFL season, so despite a rough November capped off by Sunday's big hit they are still in the black year-to-date.

Doc's : I assume back when real bookmaking was going on in Las Vegas this would have
been a bigger deal and heads would roll. But now that everything is corporate and done with a formula, is this the type of thing where people might actually get in trouble or is it just the type of thing they shrug off and equate to the cost of doing business?

RE: When a good deal of the losses can be attributed to heavy play by the betting public, it is considered to be part of the game. The only time that somebody might get in trouble is if they extended the betting limits for a big player. That would happen from time to time and, if that was the case on Sunday when it came to a particular book's losses, somebody will have some explaining to do.



Doc's : Does a big losing week like this actually hurt the casino or are the profit margins so small for sports vs. table/casino games that it's not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things?

RE: The higher ups in the casino end of things will never admit this, but they love it when the sportsbooks take a beating on Sundays in the NFL or any other weekend for that matter. This frees up quite a bit of money to be spent elsewhere such as at the craps tables or in the poker rooms. It was very common to see someone hit it big on a few football games and then use that money to pay down their casino marker.

Docs: Which NFL games led to the biggest losses for the books in Week 12?

RE: New England, Philadelphia and Atlanta covering double-digit spreads put quite a bit of money in the betting public's hands. You could also add in Carolina covering against the New York Jets as one of the bigger winners. Quite a bit of the books' losses in general came on a number of winning moneyline parlays involving a combination of favorites.

Doc's : Might last week's NFL results cause the books to shade the favorites more for Week 13 games?

RE: This could be the case in certain games involving highly-popular betting teams, but it could actually be traced back to the whole month of November as opposed to just last Sunday's results. A good example this Sunday would be Jacksonville giving 9.5 points to Indianapolis as a home favorite. The Colts are not that bad of a team, and the Jaguars are not good enough to command such a high spread.



Click here to visit Raphael Esparza's Insider's Page at Doc's Sports for more information on his amazingly-profitable sports handicapping picks. Also, get $60 worth of Esparza's member's picks absolutely free - no obligation, no sales people - you don't even have to enter credit card information. You can use this $60 credit for any sport Esparza handicaps. Click here for $60 worth of free picks from Raphael Esparza .

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