
The reason why I know this is because I was the relief runner at Little Caesar’s one day a week.

They had $1 hotdogs and 50 cent Schmidt’s beers that you poured yourself from an iced keg that they rolled in at about 2 p.m. One of them was Little Caesars, which was a crappy hole in the wall joint in a strip mall on the Las Vegas Strip. Where did we get the lines? We actually had runners in the three most influential sportsbooks in Las Vegas at that time. Bookies would call the office and we would provide line updates all day long. There was no Internet to disseminate betting lines, so we sold lines to subscribers around the country. I wrote copy for the handicappers that sold selections through 900 numbers, and I edited the weekly football forecast publication. This is a relatively common ploy, so you are making a rookie mistake if you blindly follow the steam.ĭuring the late 1980s, I worked for the preeminent sports service in Las Vegas. Maybe they actually want to artificially move the line in one direction, assuming others will follow the steam and push the line further in that direction.Īll the while, they intend to bet much more money on the other side when the odds get nice and juicy. When you are on the outside looking in, you really don’t know the motivation of the syndicate or big money bettor that created the steam.

In reality, this is an oversimplification.

After all, if wise guys love this play, they must be onto something, right? Some people think that you should “follow the steam” and bet with the “smart money” that is moving the line. The source of the bets will be a syndicate of gamblers pooling their resources in most cases, but a big-time whale may push enough money into a pool to create a steam move.ĭoc’s Sports offers college football expert picks for every game on our college football predictions page. It is indicative of a large amount of money being bet on a particular side or total all at once. A “steam move” is a sudden, significant betting line movement that reverberates through all of the sportsbooks, on land and online.
