I’ve been thinking about this for a while whenever I check the lines in different sportsbooks. We all see odds move up and down before a game, but the real question is, are those numbers actually showing the true probability of the outcome, or are they just being adjusted so the bookmaker balances the action on both sides?
odds are set based on the view of bookmakers after they have done their own analysis even though they generally do not have the knowledge on what the real outcome of any game will look like. the reality is that a game that is not fixed can not be determined before the end of such games and whatever adjustment in the odds that we see, it still does not reflect what the end product of the game will look like. the way bookmakers generate their data might be better than ours but that does not still place them too far ahead of us in terms of knowing what the outcome of the game will look like.