They can fire again, but never at a better number. Moving away from them makes their side more expensive every single step. Say the number really belongs at 7 and they opened us up at −5.5:

Each bite is worth less than half the one before it, and by −6.5 they are betting into a losing price even though we are still short of the true number. The vig does that work for us as we climb.

Standing still is the version that hands them everything. If we never move they do not need to bet again — they already hold the −5.5 ticket at +5.47%, the best price we will ever show, and we have simply decided to live with it.

And if they do come back at −6, that is a free read: it tells us we are still short and we should keep walking. If they go quiet, we have found the number. Juice would never have told us either way.

True, and worth conceding plainly. Small juice adjustments are a legitimate tool for fine-tuning, and for buying a few minutes when we genuinely do not know yet. The argument is not that juice is never right. It is that juice is not a substitute for moving when we are actually one-sided — used that way it costs three to five times the hold and leaves the position untouched.

The sharpest version of the pushback, and the answer is asymmetry. Correct, the half-point rarely decides anything — which is precisely why moving is cheap and freezing is indefensible. But landing on the whole number is free. It costs nothing to stop there on the way past. We take a free option even when it only pays three percent of the time, because the alternative is not a better outcome — it is the same outcome without the protection.

Modelled it. Move, and fill only 40% of the dog money we expected: we hold 7.51% of written handle. Juice, same partial fill: 5.86%. Moving still wins, because the price we write the dog at drives the result far more than how much of it we get.

Because the split is a quarter-point answer to a full-point signal. The bettor at −5 banked the push value of the 5 — about 4.5 cents. The full move takes all of it back; −5.5 −105 hands 2.5 cents of it straight back through the price. If the number really belongs at 5.5 or 6, we are still cheap — we have just made it a nickel harder to prove.

The prices also face the wrong way. We just wrote favorite money, so the side we need next is the dog. The split discounts the side that beat us and taxes the side that balances us — a price structure built to attract more of the bet that hurt us.

And steam continues: the direction of a move beat the opener 55% of the time last season, 59% on moves of 3+. The moment fair drifts past 5.5, everyone else is −5.5 −110 and we are the best favorite price on the screen — the first stop for every follower and every scalp, in exchange for the five cents we “saved.” Squares do not bet more favorites at −105. Sharps do.

There is nothing to protect between 5 and 5.5 — no landing mass, ordinary push rate — so the full move costs no square handle. The split has one legitimate use: a positional or square bet we are nudging for balance, not repricing. “With the market” is information. We paid for it by taking the bet. Reposting the same side at a discount is selling it back at a loss.