While You Were Sleeping

I asked the question in the picks post last night whether there had a so-called "false move" in the Butler/Bradley game yesterday. The line opened Tuesday night at Pinnacle/CRIS (whichever was out first that night) at Butler -1, then when I woke up Wednesday morning, the line had been pushed up to Butler -2.5, which really stood out to me as I had Bradley handicapped as the better team (this turned out to be incorrect). Later in the day, the line was slammed down to a Pick'em, which made more sense to me based on my evaluation of the teams (again, apparently an incorrect evaluation). But what happened in the overnight hours?

I have heard of false moves before, wherein the professional gamblers or betting syndicates know which side they want to be on when the lines come out, but want to push the line another point or two the other way to gain some extra cushion (apparently happens in horse racing also, as betting was suspended in the Irish Champion Stakes three months ago because of a feared false move). So, they start placing enough bets on the other side to get the line moving that way, and then others who follow line movements ("steam-chasers") join in and the line gets pushed a point or two in the professionals favor. Then, of course, the guys who started this whole thing slam an even larger amount of money on the side they originally wanted but at an even better number now, which increases their chance of covering, obviously. In some rare cases, they could even win on both sides if the game result lands in between the original number and the manufactured number (getting a "middle" or "middling"), but mostly, they are just looking for a little more insurance on the line they wanted originally.

Then, once I started thinking about a potential false move in the Bradley game, I recalled some weird movement in the Drake/Iowa State and Texas/Villanova games on Tuesday (but, the false movers would have lost those also). Of course, I could just be seeing things that aren't there. Like, when you hear weird noises in bed after watching a scary movie, or how a hypochondriac hears a report about a new disease and suddenly starts noticing that he seems to have all of the symptoms. I never really looked into it before, but does anybody out there who knows more about this stuff than me have an idea about how frequently this occurs? And if the answer is even somewhat frequently, does that make it more important to wait longer before putting in your bets in, for fear of reading the line movements incorrectly? An interesting concept, any thoughts appreciated.