Gary Sutton

The odds makers?

The people who are paid to...

put the odds down and balance the betting?

Or is it the gamblers who have the real skin in the game because they're betting their own money?

I would assume the odds makers, but I'm curious what you say.

It's the gamblers.

Really?

So it's the gamblers collectively.

So think of, let's say you've got a gumball machine and you're asked to guess the number of gumballs in the gumball machine.

Okay.

Well, your guess will be potentially way off.

My guess would be potentially way off.

We can get others, let's say on your team, Sean, to do likewise.

They all might be off, but if you take the average, the average might be fairly accurate.

So an individual gambler might not be smarter than the odds makers, but when you cancel out their errors and aggregate where they're betting, the gamblers collectively are smarter than the odds makers.

So when you look at the opening odds versus the closing odds, the opening odds come from the odds makers, the closing odds are influenced by where the money is going.

The closing odds way more often,

at least more often than not, are closer to the actual results.

It's even more pronounced early in the season when you don't have a lot of data to work with.

The data you really have is from the prior season, which doesn't necessarily apply.