Figuring the True Line

Question
If you find a game where most places have the favorite at -114, and the underdog at +104, is the ‘true line' -109?

Answer
For our purposes here, yes, minus 109 is the true line. Of course, we can't know that for sure, since if we did we'd all be off sipping Coronas on a beach somewhere. But as a rule you can be pretty certain that the true odds for a given team to win lie somewhere between the odds you get if you bet them and the odds you get if you take the other side. In the absence of any information to the contrary I would simply assume that the true line in the above game should be favorite -109 or underdog +109, which gives the favorite roughly a 52% chance of winning and the underdog a 48% chance of winning.

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