The Inner Workings of Graham Houston

[LondonRingRules]

Interesting insight into the inner workings of Graham.

 

Not sure what he means by official odds coming after his column though, since I thought players could find a bookie somewhere to take a bet as soon as a fight is announced.

 

I've been more interested in how his actual picks turn out since his terrible turn when he picked Mitchell over Katsidis. Everyone gets em wrong, but that was one pick I was incredulous over.

 

Guess maybe a little residual nationalism crept in there, but regardless, here tis, so enjoy some rare insight:

 

http://www.fightwriter.com/?q=node/2736

 

SETTING THE LINES

Main Body:

 

SATURDAY, June 12: Setting lines for boxing matches is a tricky business. On this website I sometimes set my own lines before any of the oddsmakers have come out with the “official” lines. Usually I find that my thoughts on a bout tie with the oddsmakers’ perceptions, with maybe a slight variation and maybe a round or two’s difference in the over/under propositions.

 

Last weekend I “went first” with some fights. I was interested to see how the pro oddsmakers saw these fights when the lines at the sportsbooks were finally posted.

 

Let’s look at the fight between 168-pounders Sebastien Demers and Brian Vera on Friday Night Fights from Montreal.

 

I liked the local favourite Demers in that fight and had him a solid -380 favourite, with Vera an underdog priced at +320. The sportsbook lines, though, had Vera at +600.

 

In other words, the oddsmakers saw almost twice as much likelihood of Vera losing than I did.

 

Graham’s Odds had the under 9.5 rounds at +150, the books at +175, so the professional oddsmakers thought there was a lower chance of the “under” hitting than I did.

 

When Vera blew out Demers in the third round it pleased the players who believed that, while it was logical to consider Demers the favourite, the books were offering incredibly generous odds.

 

The result surprised me. I don’t think many people would have expected Vera to blast Demers out of the fight inside three rounds.

 

Vera had lost his last three fights and he looked as if he might be regressing in his loss to Craig McEwan. Here is where the old “styles make fights” saying pops up.

 

McEwan is a tall southpaw who knows how to hit and get away. His style was “wrong” for Vera, who is at his best when an opponent stays right in front of him.

 

Demers, though, is not an elusive fighter. He is “available”, as they say in the trade — available to be hit.

 

Also, Demers is a boxer who does not take a punch terribly well. I alluded to this in the preview.

 

Vera can be a heavy handed puncher. I wrote in the preview that the fight represented a degree of risk for Demers. I didn’t realise just how much risk. Vera showed improved technique. He used the jab more than I have ever seen him use it, and he gave Demers some movement — he didn’t just wade in and wing away.

 

Demers, meanwhile, looked worse than I can remember seeing him. His reactions seemed slow, his chin was in the air. I don’t recall Demers being quite as easy to hit as this, and I noted in the second round, which had been a shaky one for the Quebec boxer: “D. might be semi shot.” In the next round it was all over.

 

The oddsmakers had a better feel for the middleweight main event between David Lemieux and Elvin Ayala, however. Graham’s Odds had Lemieux favoured at -500; the books had him at -1100. The books had it right, with Lemieux smoking his supposedly stiffest test in the opening round.

 

Curiously, the books and Graham’s Odds agreed on 8.5 rounds for the over/under, with the “over” slightly favoured, and I think that this line was set right, the blowout notwithstanding, because the over/under lines hardly moved. (When a line barely shifts it means the oddsmaker has done a sound job, because players — and there are some sharpies out there — aren’t sure which way to plunge.)

 

The first-round knockout surprised me — I had thought more on the lines of a stoppage win for Lemieux around about the ninth. After all, Ayala lasted into the 12th round with the dangerous Arthur Abraham, while Lemieux was unable to halt Jason Naugler although his fellow-Canadian is a durable, game type.

 

Looking back, I probably put too much emphasis on the Ayala-Abraham and Lemieux-Naugler fights. Abraham was struggling to make the middleweight limit when he met Ayala and he was boxing in a conservative fashion, saving energy; Naugler had clearly made up his mind that he wouldn’t be stopped and he was alert and mentally as well as physically tough that night, whereas Lemieux, having been blowing away everyone he met, might have been a bit lackadaisical.

 

I was concerned at the way Ayala was talking in the Friday Night Fights pre-fight interview footage, about how Lemieux was going to “cherish the loss”.

 

Sometimes fighter talk that way as if they don’t have a grasp of the reality of their situation, or maybe they are merely whistling in the dark.

 

Then the line of the great Las Vegas oddsmaker, Herb Lambeck, came into my head again: “Talkers don’t win.”

 

Lemieux, in his interview, was low key and matter of fact. He said he knew that winning wasn’t enough, that it was important to look exciting. He said he wanted to “amaze” people. I think he did just that in the three-knockdown destruction of Ayala. I’m not sure that anyone thought Ayala would go out of the fight that quickly.

 

I had the sense, though, on the night, with the boxers in the ring, that Ayala wouldn’t be around too long. When Ayala grinned and cupped a glove to each ear as the crowd booed him I thought that, far from looking confident, he just wasn’t focused on what lay ahead. He looked, in fact, like a boxer who was about to get knocked out — which is exactly what happened.