THE BOARD IS ALWAYS AHEAD
NOBODY IS ON A LIST HERE
PRICES SET BEFORE THE CARD // SETTLED AFTER IT// GHOST GOALS SETTLE. THERE IS NO APPEAL// UNREGISTERED ENERGY CREDITS ONLY// THE SYNDICATE TAKES FIFTEEN PERCENT// PRICES SET BEFORE THE CARD // SETTLED AFTER IT// GHOST GOALS SETTLE. THERE IS NO APPEAL// UNREGISTERED ENERGY CREDITS ONLY// THE SYNDICATE TAKES FIFTEEN PERCENT//
TWO PAGES, ONE WORLDTHE SPREAD · SPORTS NEWS AND RESULTSTHE LINE · ODDS AND BETTINGThe Spread reports what happened. The Line prices it before it happens. Both are fiction and neither takes a real bet.
THE SYNDICATE'S BOOK // A FICTIONAL SPORTSBOOK // TERRA CONFLICTUS 2066

THE LINE

THE SPORTSBOOK · ODDS ON EVERY CIRCUIT · THE BOARD, THE FLOOR AND THE HOUSE

The Syndicate's book, run out of the back booths at the Tooth and Gear. It takes bets on every circuit that keeps score, in unregistered energy credits, from people whose names it makes a point of never writing down.

Every price goes up before the fixture is played and is settled afterwards against whatever happened, so the board is always about something that has not happened yet. The Syndicate runs the sport, runs the book and takes fifteen percent of both. Nobody here pretends that is a coincidence.

IN-WORLD DATE TOOTH AND GEAR // CENTER POINT UNREGISTERED ENERGY CREDITS BOARD PRICED TO 112%
ABOUT THIS PAGE

The Line is fiction, and it is the betting half of a pair. It is part of Terra Conflictus 2066, a tabletop game setting. This page is the sportsbook: it posts odds, takes bets from invented punters and settles them. Its sister page, The Spread, is the sports paper for the same world: results, standings and reporting, no odds. Nobody can place a bet on either one, no money is involved, and none of the punters, patrons or athletes named here are real people.

The odds are not made up, though, and that is the point of the thing. Every sport on this board has published tabletop rules, and every one of them has been written as a simulator. Before a fixture is played, the book runs that simulator two thousand times on throwaway random numbers, counts how often each result came up, and turns those counts into a price. Later the fixture is played once for real, on its own separate random seed, and the bets settle against whatever it produced.

The book never sees the result before it prices. That is enforced in code rather than promised: the numbers used for pricing are drawn from a completely different range to the ones that run the real fixtures, so the two can never collide, and a market cannot be opened on anything that has already happened.

The prices are deliberately imperfect. They carry a house margin of about twelve percent, and a real amount of error on top, because a book that priced perfectly would take every punter's money and there would be nothing here worth reading. The simulated punters below win and lose accordingly, and so does the house.

Written and generated by machine every three days. The results come from the simulator, never from a keyboard.

// THE BOARD

EVERY CIRCUIT THE DESK RUNS. PRICED BEFORE THE FIXTURE, ON A FIXTURE THAT HAS NOT RUN.

// THE MOVE

WHAT SHORTENED, WHAT DRIFTED, AND HOW MUCH MONEY DID IT

// SETTLED

WHAT PAID. NOTHING HERE WAS ADJUSTED AFTER THE FACT.

// THE FLOOR

EVERY BANKROLL IN THE ROOM. RETURN IS ON SETTLED SLIPS ONLY.

// THE PATRONS

SOMEBODY ELSE'S MONEY, AND A SHARE OF THE ACTION THAT OUTLIVES THE DEBT

// THE HOUSE

OUR OWN POSITION, OUR EXPOSURE, AND THE MARGIN WE PRICE TO

// TRADING NOTE

FROM THE BOOK. NOT A COLUMN.
TWO PAGES, ONE WORLDTHE SPREAD · SPORTS NEWS AND RESULTSTHE LINE · ODDS AND BETTINGThe Spread reports what happened. The Line prices it before it happens. Both are fiction and neither takes a real bet.
THE PACKAGE DETERMINES THE STAKES // THE STAKES DETERMINE THE PRICE
A CARD THAT NEVER RAN IS A VOID. A CARD SOMEBODY BLEW IS A LOSER// MONITOR CENTRAL STOPS AT THE PROPERTY LINE// WE MOVE THE LINE ON MONEY, NOT ON OPINION// A CARD THAT NEVER RAN IS A VOID. A CARD SOMEBODY BLEW IS A LOSER// MONITOR CENTRAL STOPS AT THE PROPERTY LINE// WE MOVE THE LINE ON MONEY, NOT ON OPINION//