[rsync]

Forgive me… This is not an area. I have much knowledge of…

… But I thought even a small sports book could balance things properly by setting an appropriate pointspread?

my parent has described a risk for the sports book that seems too assume the simple picking of winners and losers and not a pointspread?

[bluGill]

The issue is the big players publish their spread. You have to at worst match them or everyone sends their money to the big players. You can beat them but not do worse. For bets on the local little league you can set your own spread but the big money is national (and international), sports where you have competition and so need to watch what they do. As a small agent you shouldn't bother calculating spread on the big games just match the large players.

[gnatman]

This is sort of an "assume a perfectly spherical gambler" type problem.