The reason I'm fairly certain that it does NOT happen, is that no matter how clever a player/offical might be in making it look like a normal part of the game........while doing something crooked to affect the outcome vs. the spread, there is one problem:
YOU CAN'T HIDE THE MONEY
In order to PROFIT from point shaving, you have to BET. These days, the online books are so sophisiticated that it would be almost impossible to get large amounts down on repeated games in which there were "odd" outcomes, without it coming to the attention of the security departments in the books.
You can get 10k or 20k down...... even that would need to be spread out to remain fairly anonymous....but try to get down 250k or more in such a way that nobody notices. And if there is a strange result in a game, and the books notice that the same account has been on the side that benefited from the possible "fix"....what do you think would happen?
They busted some people betting on the outcome of the Academy Awards just by noticing that a lot of bets on one particular canditate were coming from people who lived in zip codes that were near each other. That's small potatoes compared to what we're talking about. The books would figure it out REAL quick, if anything like that happened on anything remotely resembling an ongoing basis.
And do you think that a player earning a couple of million a year would risk ending his career (and possibly going to jail), to win 10 grand?
Now....*college* sports is a whole different story. A college kid very well *might* shave a few points for a very modest amount of money. These things would work fine for chump change. You could get 10 grand down in small chunks spread out among 20 books, and in all probability nobody would notice. But no Pro athlete would risk the consequences for anything LIKE the tiny amount of money that you could expect to get away with, which is why limits are so much higher on pro games.
YOU CAN'T HIDE THE MONEY
In order to PROFIT from point shaving, you have to BET. These days, the online books are so sophisiticated that it would be almost impossible to get large amounts down on repeated games in which there were "odd" outcomes, without it coming to the attention of the security departments in the books.
You can get 10k or 20k down...... even that would need to be spread out to remain fairly anonymous....but try to get down 250k or more in such a way that nobody notices. And if there is a strange result in a game, and the books notice that the same account has been on the side that benefited from the possible "fix"....what do you think would happen?
They busted some people betting on the outcome of the Academy Awards just by noticing that a lot of bets on one particular canditate were coming from people who lived in zip codes that were near each other. That's small potatoes compared to what we're talking about. The books would figure it out REAL quick, if anything like that happened on anything remotely resembling an ongoing basis.
And do you think that a player earning a couple of million a year would risk ending his career (and possibly going to jail), to win 10 grand?
Now....*college* sports is a whole different story. A college kid very well *might* shave a few points for a very modest amount of money. These things would work fine for chump change. You could get 10 grand down in small chunks spread out among 20 books, and in all probability nobody would notice. But no Pro athlete would risk the consequences for anything LIKE the tiny amount of money that you could expect to get away with, which is why limits are so much higher on pro games.
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