Sin City! How To Use Las Vegas Lines To Score Fantasy Points

One thing is clear to every fantasy football owner: He who scores the most points wins. Week after week, we scratch our heads and try to predict the answer to this question to the best of our ability: Who is going to score points this week?

Fortunately for us, fantasy football owners aren’t the only people pondering these questions. Approximately $40 million is wagered on football each weekend in Nevada, according to USA Today.

That’s real money, folks. You thought you had problems because it’s going to cost you two bucks to drop Laurence Maroney. (Do it anyway.)

Each week, one can wager on football in several ways in Las Vegas. The most popular wagers are the Game Line and the Over/Under. Because $40 million a week is riding on these results, you can bet there are people out there doing major research on the subjects.

As a fantasy football owner, you can borrow this research as you decide whom to start and sit each week. Las Vegas has done their homework, and you might as well copy their answers.

The over/under is a simple bet: Las Vegas sets a number of points for a game, 42, for instance. If more than 42 points are scored in that game (total, both teams) and you bet the over, you win. If under 42, you lose. Simple enough.

It’s safe to say that 42 is the expected number of points to be scored in that game. As a fantasy owner, if you check the over/under every week, you’ll know which games Las Vegas thinks will be high scoring.

Very useful information.

Start players in the high-scoring games, and with all other things being equal, you'll score more points and win more games.

Part Two: Game Lines

But the over/under doesn’t tell us everything we need to know. What if the over/under is high because our team is going to get beat 44-6? Sorry Seahawks.

Las Vegas has an opinion on who's going to win called the game line. For instance, next week, the Dallas Cowboys are five-and-a-half point favorites over the Arizona Cardinals. If you bet on the Cowboys, they must win by at least six points for you to win your bet.

The over/under on the Cowboys game is 50. So Las Vegas is saying that they expect the Cowboys to beat the Cardinals by five-and-a-half with 50 total points being scored in the game.

28–22 Cowboys would be the expected final score.

Conclusions

When you take these two pieces of information into consideration as you set your lineup, you’re able to get the market’s best guess at how many points each team will score.

I could bore you with a dissertation on the merits of the efficient market hypothesis, but it’s better if you just trust me that this is a credible source.

Quite simply: Start players from favored teams when the over/under is high. These players rate to score more points than players in games with low over/unders.

Easy enough, right?

Applying this strategy over time should lead to higher point totals for your team.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave your questions on specific situations here. I'll be answering questions every day until Saturday.