Plus Eleven

While looking through the NCAA football games on the weekend, one handicap caught my attention.

Navy +11.

I always look through the Las Vegas lines when considering what to bet on each week. This way, I can get a feel on where the consensus is as I can see where the lines move.

Navy were -11 everywhere else and I noticed that it was +11 where I bet so put that in my bet. I also told a few friends about it so they could jump on it as well.

Hours after telling my friends - one of them sent me a forwarded email from the betting site telling him that there was an 'obvious error' with the handicap and that they had changed the line of his bet back to -11.

An 'obvious error' that wasn't so obvious at the time they published the odds.

I didn't get an email like this but it seems they had a term in their rules that allowed them to amend their own errors.

I don't think that's fair.

If I were to walk into a shop and there was an item for sale at an erroneous price and I took up the invitation to purchase the item should I expect to be called back from the store manager telling me they had taken the extra amount out of my account because it was their mistake? I may be naive here, but I believe the law would favour the consumer in situations like this.

The result didn't matter, anyway.

Navy won the game 63-14. I didn't need the eleven points on either side of the betting.