Handicapper Q&A: Right Angle Sports, a group all bookmakers know and respect

It’s been about a month since I’ve done a Q&A on the site, but like any good gambler, I like to pick my spots. Last time, I spoke with @So_Money_Sports, who belongs in the Twitter Hall of Fame for all the free handicapping tips, advice and picks he has distributed over the years.

This time, I decided to chat with MikeRAS from Right Angle Sports. If you’ve never heard of RAS before, then you probably haven’t been paying much attention. RAS is one of the most respected services in the industry and has single-handedly moved hundreds of lines just by giving out their opinion.

RAS operates a little differently than most in the handicapping industry, as they try to focus in on a few sports — college basketball and football, primarily — rather than all of them. This, they believe, allows them to maximize their edge and has enabled them to increase their profits over time.

Mike joined RAS in 2007 and has been instrumental to the group’s success. In this Q&A, we discuss the group’s enormous influence, the WNBA, the industry and the mistakes that casual bettors would be smart to avoid.

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BTB: OK, so let’s start here. You guys decided not to release paid WNBA plays for clients this year, and are instead releasing plays for free on Twitter. What was the motivation behind this decision, and even without a paid service, how have you still managed to influence the market in WNBA?

RAS: One factor in not having the paid service is there was (and still is) a lot of uncertainty surrounding the offshore sportsbetting marketplace heading into the WNBA season. In addition we are working on a new release system that will be introduced before the start of college football that will deliver our picks in a real-time application, with no delay. We are spending thousands of dollars in order to eliminate any delay that some might encounter refreshing our release page because it’s important we give everyone an equal opportunity to bet the plays as the lines move almost immediately upon release.

BTB: So, in case people are unaware, why don’t you explain that in a bit more detail. When you release plays — whether they are paid, or otherwise — your clients must act quickly, or else they won’t beat the line move, correct?

RAS: By releasing WNBA plays at Betting Talk and our Twitter account (@RASpicks) for free, we are still providing our highly respected opinion into the WNBA betting marketplace. The releases cause line moves but if the betting market judges we are on the wrong side, the games can and do get bet back. This happens on occasion but not very often (two games closed without positive line value this season). Of the 42 games we have released so far this season, 15 games moved two points or more than our release and 7 of 42 moved three points or more. Part of this can be attributed to our release and RAS following, most of it can be attributed to the RAS team being on the right side and our opinion on a game being validated in the marketplace.

BTB: Any chance you have the biggest line moves off hand? I wrote a post earlier this year in which I tracked the biggest moves of the season, and I’m curious to know which ones you guys were involved with?

RAS: These are the 7 biggest movers of the season:

BTB: I’ve noticed that the market seems to be much more efficient in WNBA this year than in previous years, or at least it seems that way. Are oddsmakers setting better numbers now than they were, say, three or four years ago?

RAS: Yes, the lines are tighter in recent years. As for the WNBA having weaker lines 3 to 4 years ago, the theory [is that] if there is an inefficient market, eventually people will see others are making money in that particular market, and thus start inserting their influence via betting on the games. The more sharp money that enters a market, the tighter the lines become.

When bettors find an edge in the market, it forces the sportsbook to do a better job of setting lines.

BTB: Very few handicappers release WNBA plays to their clients. The same handicappers that talk about ‘betting markets’ and ‘beating the closing number’ and capitalizing on oddsmakers mistakes are those that are ignoring the WNBA. I have my own theory, but why do you think this is the case?

RAS: Most handicappers don’t care what is beatable because most beat nothing. The WNBA is not a marketable sport, so unless you are a handicapper that is actually winning you are going to focus on sports that sell, and the WNBA is not one of those.

BTB: My thought has always been if you can win long term in a sport — even if it’s cricket — as a handicapper, you will attract an audience. So I’m interested in your perspective on that. If you thought you could hit, say, golf head-to heads at a 60 percent rate, would you release those plays? Do you think you’d attract an audience for those plays?

RAS: We do give out some Arena football plays, but there needs to be a big enough liquidity in the market to offer picks for sale to be fair to the clients. RAS would gain a following in any sport we chose to sell because the marketplace is aware we would only attempt to sell a product we were confident was profitable. As for someone else without our brand recognition, if you can prove you are a winner long-term then I imagine there will be an interest.

BTB: The NFL and MLB are obviously very mainstream and easy to market, and yet, you guys don’t release plays on those sports like most others in the industry. Why is that?

RAS: NFL and MLB have extremely efficient markets so the edges are minimal to start. Secondly, these sports are very well covered by mainstream media so it is very hard to find any hidden info that isn’t already priced into the marketplace.

BTB: So basically, you accept that you can’t — and won’t — have an exceptional edge in every sport. For your purposes, you’d much rather isolate a few sports and, if all goes according to plan, maximize your profits in the leagues you do best on?

RAS: It is difficult to have an edge over every single sport especially if you spread yourself thin, so we choose to focus our energy on college football for the first eight weeks, college basketball and then WNBA during the summer.

BTB: You mentioned that you’ll only bet college football during the first eight weeks. I’m assuming that’s when you feel the edge is gone, that is, you exploit bad lines in nonconference play and then fire away for a month or so once conference season picks up. I’m curious: Do you think there’s more of an edge betting non-con games in college football, or betting the first three to four weeks in conference play? 

RAS: We do a great job of identifying teams early in the year before the market catches up so I would lean towards non-conference football as having the bigger edge but we have had success in all weeks of the college football season. We tend to focus on the non-BCS conferences which are under the radar and receive less attention from the media.