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Auburn Tigers Basketball Point Shaving Examined

03/09/2012 6:44 AM ·


RJ Bell from Pregame based in Las Vegas has examined the Auburn Tigers basketball team point shaving allegations. Data analysis on the two specific games mentioned in the Auburn point-shaving allegations. Corrupt games typically share two tendencies: 1) There is lopsided betting action AGAINST the team paid to lose. One way to measure betting action is the percentage of bets made on each team.

1/25/2012
Arkansas 66% | Auburn 34%

2/7/2012
Alabama 36% | Auburn 64%

Conclusion: Auburn received less bets in one game, and more bets in the other  – by about the same margin. A second way to measure lopsided action is movement in the odds. When one team receives a disproportionate amount of action, the odds for that team are made worse (to discourage additional action).

1/25/12
Arkansas started as a 10.5-point favorite over Auburn, and closed as a 9.5-point favorite (implying lopsided action ON Auburn).

2/7/12
Alabama started as a 5-point favorite over Auburn, and closed as a 5-point favorite (implying even action).

Conclusion: Neither game had lopsided action against Auburn  – and one game had exactly the opposite (i.e., lopsided action ON Auburn)

Second tendency of corrupt games: 2) The team paid to lose actually loses the game against the Vegas spread.

1/25/12
Betting against Auburn (and on Arkansas) LOST vs. the Vegas spread.

2/7/12
Betting against Auburn (and on Alabama) WON vs. the Vegas spread.

Conclusion: 1-1 record would have resulted in any point-shavers LOSING money overall (after accounting for sportsbook commissions) 

RJ Bell of Pregame.com said: “Las Vegas data on the two specific games named in the Auburn investigation is inconsistent with point-shaving” As an example of data consistent with point-shaving, consider the notorious case of Tim Donaghy (as reported by Pregame.com at the time): The first 15 games of the 2006-07 NBA season refereed by Tim Donaghy that had lopsided enough betting to move the point spread by at least 1.5 points were UNDEFEATED against Las Vegas - meaning that the big money gamblers won a perfect 15 of 15 times on his games. The odds of that happening randomly were 32,767 to 1.

MovieSports Betting - Is It Fixed? Pregame's own Johnny Detroit discusses with Vegas Runner the past situations where sports betting was fixed and also discuss the inevitable question of "Is Sports Betting Fixed?"