Is POINT SPREAD The First And Oldest Sportsbetting Term?

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HacheMan

HacheMan

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For those of you who go way back, is the sportsbetting term most commonly used and known today as POINT SPREAD the first and most original sportsbetting term of all used these days?

Did any phrases or terms get lost throughout the years?

(<)<
 
Fishhead

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Not even close, point spread is a relative young term in the world of sportsbetting..........
 

8ate

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"It's a Boulder at the cave entrance"; which was used a lot before locks were invented..

a Cincg

gl
 
HacheMan

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Winner and loser, and favorite, would be referring to the actual TEAMS though guys.

There had to have eventually been a name for the actual NUMBER (spread)

Could it have simply been LINE before point spread?
 
budlight

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when did "lines" get invented? so to speak. how long have they been around?
 
Fishhead

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Fishhead said:
Not even close, point spread is a relative young term in the world of sportsbetting..........
Click to expand...

Charles K. McNeil

The odds are pretty good that you've never heard of Charles K. McNeil. Even most hardcore sports bettors are unfamiliar with the man who has had the greatest impact in the history of sports gambling. McNeil was the inventor of the point spread, which revolutionized sports betting.
Prior to McNeil's invention of the spread, sports betting was conducted by using odds, much like baseball and hockey today. But with the number of big favorites in football and basketball, odds could be 12 to 1, or greater, which drastically reduced betting interest.

Legend has it that McNeil, a former teacher, was working for a Chicago bank for low pay and decided to supplement his income by going to baseball games and wagering with other fans in the stands. He did well enough to quit his banking job and gamble full time.

After the Chicago bookmakers put limits on his bets, due to him constantly winning, McNeil opened his sportsbook in the 1940s and introduced the point spread, which gambler's immediately loved. He quit booking bets several years when the mob wanted in on his operation and resumed betting for a career
 
Fishhead

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Fishhead said:
Charles K. McNeil

The odds are pretty good that you've never heard of Charles K. McNeil. Even most hardcore sports bettors are unfamiliar with the man who has had the greatest impact in the history of sports gambling. McNeil was the inventor of the point spread, which revolutionized sports betting.
Prior to McNeil's invention of the spread, sports betting was conducted by using odds, much like baseball and hockey today. But with the number of big favorites in football and basketball, odds could be 12 to 1, or greater, which drastically reduced betting interest.

Legend has it that McNeil, a former teacher, was working for a Chicago bank for low pay and decided to supplement his income by going to baseball games and wagering with other fans in the stands. He did well enough to quit his banking job and gamble full time.

After the Chicago bookmakers put limits on his bets, due to him constantly winning, McNeil opened his sportsbook in the 1940s and introduced the point spread, which gambler's immediately loved. He quit booking bets several years when the mob wanted in on his operation and resumed betting for a career
Click to expand...

In 1950, McNeil suddenly quit bookmaking. He later told a friend he did so because the Mob wanted "to go partners with my brain." But he didn't give up gambling—not by a long shot. In the 1950s, McNeil, by his calculations, bet an average of $200,000 a week on college football and won 60% of his bets. In an average season, he said, he turned a profit of roughly $320,000. At the end of the 1957 football season, he sat down and computed his career results: He discovered that he had been a winner in 25 of the previous 27 years. That's a success rate that most others involved with point spreads can only dream of.

He once said, "There are three things a gambler needs: money, guts and brains. If you don't have one, you're dead. I've got all three."
 
Fishhead

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Fishhead said:
Not even close, point spread is a relative young term in the world of sportsbetting..........
Click to expand...

[FONT=Georgia, Times, serif]While various civilizations and cultures around the world have been engaged in some form of betting for more than 3000 years, the point spread, or 'betting line', is a relatively new invention and has only been in use for the better part of 70 years. Its impact in this relatively short period of time is undeniable and as an un-named bookie quoted in a 1951 book by sports journalist Charles Rosen put it: The spread has easily been 'the greatest discovery since the Zipper'. Without question, it has had a huge part to play in today's popularity of one sport in particular, the game of American football.
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[FONT=Georgia, Times, serif]While most certainly an American invention, the true origin of the point spread is cloudy. Some experts believe it was introduced in the 1920's while others claim it wasn't widely used until the 1930's in the New York area. Regardless of its actual birth-date, this much is known. In the years following the 2nd world war, the point spread became the dominant form of wagering for both American football and basketball. It was a bookies dream, helping to make the underdog much more attractive and assuring sports books and bookies a 10% profit on the 'vigorish' shaved off the top of winning bets.
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[FONT=Georgia, Times, serif]Originally set in the early days by a consulting firm out of Minneapolis run by Leo Hirschfield, spreads are now more of a consensus originated by managers from sports books inside Vegas casino's, as well as offshore establishments. For the purposes of my research, I have relied on the lines provided by the Don Best Sports Information Service, a consensus of roughly 25 sportsbooks [/FONT]
 
barman

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Hache Man said:
Then the original term was/is..........??
Click to expand...

Use of a point spread in sports betting did not enter in until at least the 1940s

From Wikipedia entry for "point spread" (spread betting):

Spread betting was invented by Charles K. McNeil, a mathematics teacher from Connecticut who became a bookmaker in Chicago in the 1940s.[4] The idea became popular in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. In North America, the gambler usually wagers that the difference between the scores of two teams will be less than or greater than the value specified by the bookmaker.

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I would venture that one of earliest terms employed in sports betting is "vigorish" - or related synonyms.
 
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