For most of the last 30 years, Las Vegas Sports Consultants has been the primary source providing opening lines to Vegas casinos. Each Sunday, the LVSC send out would give the suggested line for each game and the casinos would almost unanimously copy the number. No more. Over the last few years, many sharps have developed models that are more accurate than LVSC's were. Never forget this about betting football: Understanding math, statistics and probability is more important to long-term winning than understanding football. To win at this game, you have to know when a line is priced right and when it is not.

This year, Cantor gaming (the same Cantor that operates very sophisticated stock trading systems) bought LVSC and kicked out the LVSC chief oddsmaker and prez, Kenny White. So now LVSC is run by market trading jocks, not by a football bettor. The difference is pretty interesting. They are missing badly on some of their send outs, but the casinos know this and it's actually not so important to them because the casinos have changed their business models.

Vegas has cut limits way back on early action. So if books hang a bad number at the open, the market hammers it into shape real fast and the book's exposure is small. In fact, maybe too fast. I have seen a few game lines move this week on $10k or less. That is ridiculous for a multi-million dollar weekly football betting market. Books are setting numbers to the "face" rather than to the $. Let me put it this way...if you bet $20k on the Bears this week, the line won't move. If another guy known to the books as a long-term consistent winner bets $20k on the Bears, the line moves a point. Actually, that's pretty much what happened this week.

IN the old days, the books would have been confident in their number and took a position that the 9 they hung on the game was the right number and let people bet into it. There were bettors running the books and they thought they were smarter than the guys betting at the window. They weren't afraid to take a bet. Any bet, because they trusted their numbers. It would take Billy Walters betting a quarter million on one side on Sunday morning to move a number.

Now, it's different. Books are hanging numbers that may be off, but they are accepting low limits early (low limits on NFL still in effect on Thursday), are moving lines on air (or on relatively small bets) from flagged accounts and are generally letting the market determine the price they will carry a bet. Their overall exposure is limited and they are merely facilitating a trading desk rather than taking a stand against bettors on football games or teams. The Vegas casinos have basically adopted the Pinnacle business model. So what does this mean for bettors?

In the past, when a line moved you could be pretty sure there was a lot of money behind the move. Now, not so much. The books are moving so fast (literally within 10 seconds of noted sharps posting their plays online) that they are opening themselves up to assaults of a different kind. We saw it this week. I'm guessing no more than $10-$20 k on the KU-So Miss under moved that total line down 2.5 points. When the line hit 47.5/48, the sharps pounded and bet all they could on the over. THe books over-reacted and maybe they will get burned with a middle. We can only hope. It would make for a much more efficient market if the books weren't so damn afraid to hang a number and let people bet into it. But if they are going to be afraid and move lines on air, then they are opening themselves to getting hit with wrong side bets early and much larger right side bets later in the week when limits increase.

I think we are going to see a lot more of this this year. So don't necessarily look at early line moves and think that's the sharp move on the game. The head fake worked so well this week on the Kansas-So Miss total, that the sharps are talking about how maybe there ought to be head fakes like this every week...at least until the books stop moving their numbers so fast on air.

So if you are one to look at early line moves and try to interpret them, I wouldn't do that right now unless you're damn sure you know what the number ought to be.