Each year in the NHL there are several teams that see their playoff dreams mathematically end well before the end of the regular season. That means that they have to play some games to finish the year that have no real meaning. For handicappers those games can be challenging. Most people (more…)
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Month: May 2012
The NHL playoffs are an absolutely brutal test of teams. In order for a team to shine and hoist the Stanley Cup they need a few key things – excellent goaltending, depth, talent, and a whole lot of luck. Most significantly of all, though, a team that wins the Stanley Cup (more…)
Home ice advantage is a big factor in the NHL playoffs. If bettors aren’t careful, though, they can give it too much credit, or incorrectly determine what the impact will be. Here are six mistakes bettors make when looking at home ice advantage in the NHL playoffs. Avoiding these mistakes is (more…)
Power play and penalty killing is a big focus of importance for NHL teams, and it’s a big focus for a lot of handicappers as well. But are those statistics as useful in the NHL playoffs as they are in the regular season? Should they be handled differently in the postseason (more…)
The trade deadline in the NHL is by far the most active of any major sport. The coverage of the day makes it feel like a special event. There are typically literally dozens of trades done on the day and in the days right before the deadline. While many of those (more…)
Goalies are by far the single most important part of any hockey game. They are similar to starting pitchers in their importance in the outcome of a game. A hot goalie can salvage a lousy performance by a team, while a lousy outing can destroy great offensive play by the team. (more…)
The goalie is the most important player on the ice in a hockey game, so he is the single most important factor for bettors to look at when handicapping a game. If a handicapper is skilled at evaluating goalies and how they are likely to perform they are on the fast (more…)
People who don’t spend a lot of time betting on hockey – and even those who do – often have trouble determining what the role of goalies is in the outcome of games, and how to deal with them. In my view – or at least in a simplified view – (more…)
By the time the NHL season is about a quarter of the way over we tend to have a pretty good sense of how good teams are and about what we can expect from them. Inevitably, though, there are some teams that are still hard to figure out. The toughest are (more…)
One of the many things that make the NHL playoffs so great are the rare marathon games – the games that stretch into two, three or even more overtime periods. By the end of those games you can see that the guys can barely stand up, but they aren’t willing to (more…)
The NHL does a better job than most leagues of scheduling their playoff series so that the games are played at a balanced pace – a game every other day or so. Sometimes, though, there are situations that lead to an extended break of three or four days or even more (more…)
Hockey is a grueling, physical sport, so it is inevitable each NHL season that several teams will be forced to play for some period of time without their best player. The impact of a single player isn’t as significant in the NHL as it is in many other leagues, but the (more…)
Midseason coaching changes in the NHL are reasonably common. They are also more significant than in any other major league sport because of the immediate impact a coaching change can have. A new coach in the NHL is often to significantly improve the performance of the team in a short time. (more…)
The Stanley Cup finals are the best time of the year to be a hockey fan or a hockey bettor. The play is brilliant, the emotion is highly charged, and teams can and will do anything to win. It is great theater, and it is capped by the best trophy presentation (more…)
Coaches often get fired during the season in the NHL, and it is getting more and more common as teams get more expensive to run and owners get less patient as a result. When a coach is fired handicappers immediately have to try to figure out what is going to happen (more…)
If you are a hockey fan then there are few things you like more than a game seven in the playoffs. Everything is on the line, teams play like they have nothing to lose, and the hockey is very often incredibly memorable as a result. People who bet on hockey are (more…)
There are few situations tougher for a team to face in the NHL than being forced to playing for their lives after losing three games in a playoff series. Their margin for error is zero, and they know that with one more mistake and one more loss their season can be (more…)
Every year in the NHL it seems as if there is a team or two that improves dramatically and often unexpectedly from where they were the season before. It could be that they have gone from a totally irrelevant team to one that makes the playoffs, or from a team that (more…)
A lot of people who bet on hockey don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the beginning of training camp in the NHL. It’s not hard to be distracted from the start of things on the ice since the NFL and college football seasons are in full swing and baseball (more…)
At the beginning of every NHL season there are a few elite teams with serious Stanley Cup aspirations that really struggle out of the gate. Inevitably this will cause panic among the hockey media and the betting public. Sometimes these teams continue to have a poor season, but far more often (more…)
Each year in the NHL there are times when teams are forced out of their home buildings and on to the road for extended road trips. Some of those occasions are annual – like in November when the Blackhawks are replaced by the circus and the Oilers make way for the (more…)
The hockey season seems to go on forever, so by the time it ends even the most avid hockey fans and bettors are probably ready for a break. As soon as the Cup is hoisted most bettors are thinking ahead to other sports, other bets, and where their next action is (more…)
More than any other major sport there is a lot you can tell about a team in the NHL regarding their readiness to compete in the playoffs before the regular season even ends. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still upsets or surprises in the NHL playoffs – there certainly are. (more…)
The NHL season is here. Each year more and more people discover the joy of betting on hockey. It really is a great sport to bet on – there are games virtually every day, the lines and totals offer lots of value, and there is more than enough information available to (more…)
Hockey isn’t nearly as much of a statistics-driven league as football, basketball, or especially baseball are. Stats are obviously recorded and available, but the stats aren’t nearly as sophisticated as they are for other sports. That’s partly because hockey just isn’t as popular as other sports, but there is a bigger (more…)
There are some sports and some leagues that lend themselves to afternoon games. It’s more than common for a football game to be in the afternoon, baseball is at it’s best in the daylight, and basketball is played on many a weekend afternoon. For some reason, though, hockey is not played (more…)
There are few things in the Stanley Cup playoffs that are more exciting than an unexpected upset – when a lower seed finds their game at just the right time and pulls off the miracle series win. While that can be intriguing when it happens it can also create a headache (more…)
As betting on mixed martial arts becomes more and more popular there are more people out there who are getting serious about betting on it successfully. That means that betting on the sport – which is still very new compared to betting on other sports – is getting more sophisticated all (more…)
There are a lot of sports in which betting parlays doesn’t make a lot of sense for smart bettors. In fact, in most cases betting parlays isn’t a great idea. Mixed martial arts betting is one place that can potentially be an exception, though. In fact, often times betting fighters in (more…)
Betting on mixed martial arts, and the UFC in particular, should be very attractive to people who are drawn to betting on underdogs. Because the sport uses moneyline betting it is far from uncommon to see underdogs going off at very high potential returns, and upsets are a big part of (more…)
The majority of UFC cards take place in the United States. In their attempt to conquer the entire world, though, the organization has taken their events around the world. They have held events in Canada, Brazil, Australia and across Europe, and they are soon heading to Japan. Typically, when the organization (more…)
MMA is a brutal sport, and training for it is incredibly tough ad demanding. It’s not a wonder, then, that injuries are an unfortunate but frequent part of the lead up to any fight card in the UFC. When injuries happen after the fight card is set organizers are frequently required (more…)
When people talk about handicapping UFC events one of the factors that comes up often is the location of the fight and the advantage that can give to fighters from that country. The UFC likes to schedule home country fighters in events in their own countries to boost the box office (more…)
With every event they hold betting on the UFC gets more popular. Once the ultimate fringe sport, MMA is now totally mainstream, and the public has embraced it as spectators and bettors. If you aren’t familiar with betting on the UFC then there are a few things you have to get (more…)
As the UFC grows they are adding more and more cards every year. In 2012 they scheduled well over 30 cards. They have to have that many fights because their aggressive expansion and the swallowing of all the other organizations out there has left them with a whole lot of fighters (more…)
The United Football League barely registers on the national sports consciousness. It seems like we don’t need another football league, and certainly not one that features mostly NFL castoffs and has-beens. I understand why fans aren’t flocking to the league in major numbers. For bettors, though, the league provides some real (more…)
Mixed Martial arts continue to get more and more popular. More promotions start up every week, the UFC draws big live attendance and growing pay-per-view numbers, and the stars of the sport are making their way into popular culture. This is no fad. As MMA, and the UFC in particular, gets (more…)
With each new event they hold – especially the ones with big name fighters in championship fights – the betting popularity of MMA grows. The UFC is the clear and obvious king of the sport, but other organizations offer great opportunities as well. Betting on mixed martial arts can be very (more…)
In the UFC you could loosely break fighters into three different groups based on their weight classes. There are the big men – the heavyweights and some light heavyweights – though not as many now as there used to be as the light heavyweights have become more technical and less about (more…)
The single biggest factor in handicapping mixed martial arts is the styles of the fighters and how those styles work against each other. A stronger, faster, more athletic fighter can and often does lose a fight if they can’t handle the style of their opponent. Fighters are typically capable of adapting (more…)
When you are betting on the UFC there are two very distinct types of cards to choose from – the pay-per-view events and those that are available on broadcast television. The PPV events are at the core of the business model for the UFC, and are where most of the high (more…)
When most people think about betting sides in football their thought process starts and ends with the point spread. That’s unquestionably the most common and popular way to bet on the winner of a football team, but it’s not the only way. The moneyline is thought by many people to be (more…)
When asked, a lot of sports bettors would identify themselves simply as football bettors. They may prefer college football to the NFL or vice versa, but they are probably just as likely to have some action on Saturday as on Sunday or Monday. For most people, especially casual bettors, that makes (more…)
Football handicappers have a strange attitude toward offensive lines. That is to say that they often ignore them entirely. The quarterbacks and running backs get lots of attention, but those big guys who make it all happen up front don’t draw nearly as many headlines. There are a couple of big (more…)
Betting on football is unique when compared to the other major North American sports in a lot of ways. Perhaps the most significant is the amount of time that lines are available to be bet before the games are played. In baseball, basketball and hockey lines are typically available the night (more…)
One of the biggest challenges for football bettors is the volume of NFL and college games they have to deal with on Saturdays and Sundays during the regular season if they bet on both. On a busy weekend there are more than 50 football games on Saturday and 16 on Sunday. That’s (more…)
Weather is a factor in the outcome of both NFL and college football games, and something that a lot of sports handicappers like to consider before making a decision. Everyone knows that. Though a lot of football bettors know that weather is a factor, I suspect that fewer spend any time actually (more…)
A lot of football bettors think that their job is done once the game kicks off. There are a lot of cases, though, where the best sports betting opportunities might exist after the game has already begun. There is an increasing number of in-game betting options offered by online sportsbooks, (more…)
Key numbers – that’s one of those concepts that most sports bettors have heard of, but fewer understand what they are and why it is important. Key numbers are an important part of NFL and college football handicapping, and if you don’t ‘get’ them then you are working at a disadvantage. (more…)
One of the fastest growing segments of sports betting is live in-game betting. Technology has made this popular, and bettors, including football bettors, are embracing it more all the time. Basically, sports books offer a wide range of props based on the outcome of the next play in a game, or the (more…)
I like adrenaline as much as the next guy – a good rush is almost always a good thing. If I’m in need of an adrenaline fix, though, I’d rather going skiing or watch a scary movie or something. What I don’t want to do is to get a boost of (more…)
When it comes to handicapping football special teams certainly don’t get the same amount of attention from most bettors that offense or defense do. There’s a simple explanation for that – special teams just aren’t sexy. The best players don’t play special teams, and most fans just don’t really care about (more…)
Totals don’t get nearly as much attention from casual football bettors as point spreads, but they should. When football bettors approach them properly totals are at least as profitable as points spreads – and probably more so if you are choosy. It can be very easy to lose a pile of cash (more…)
I love betting football underdogs. If I am betting them on the moneyline then I love it because of the satisfaction of making better than even money on a bet – often much better. If it’s against the spread then there is the joy of spotting something that the betting public didn’t (more…)
We’re at the time of year in both college football and the NFL where hype is out of control surrounding some teams. Football teams that have gotten out to hot starts – whether expected or not – can do no wrong in the eyes of the media and the betting public. As (more…)
When it comes to betting on football, betting the point spread is by far the most common. A distant second would be betting the total. Totals aren’t attractive to more casual football bettors as sides because people like to think about games in terms of winners and losers. In many cases, though, (more…)
At this time of year bettors have their pockets full of money and are just dying for the football season to start. In an attempt to get their hands on as much of that money as they can the sportsbooks offer an increasingly diverse range of season long futures and prop (more…)
Since we are getting close to the start of both the NFL and college football seasons season win totals are widely available at sports books, and they are promoted with increased aggressiveness each year. They are an intriguing bet for people to consider. Occasionally they even make sense to be. As (more…)
Bettors who love football are often drawn to betting on both college football and the NFL. While the fundamentals of the two sports are similar – they are both football after all, and they both feature many of the same rules – there are some key differences between betting on Saturdays (more…)
Casual football bettors get seduced by mostly by offense – big passes and flashy runs. They don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about defense, and when they do they typically focus on the highlight reel plays – the big sacks and the impressive interceptions. When the defensive linemen aren’t getting (more…)
One of the most frustrating things about the early season in both college football and the pros is when a team fails to meet expectations in their first game. We spend a lot of time over the spring and summer deciding what to expect from a team, so when they don’t (more…)
Football betting is by far the most popular form of sports betting by far. Most professional gamblers only bet for 5 months out of the year because of this. When you include College and NFL together there are almost a hundred games to bet on during a 2-day span. This is (more…)
The most common football pool is the standard 100 square football pool. At almost every Super Bowl party you have ever been to you might have seen this 10 x 10 betting sheet and wondered what it is. There’s nothing like a friendly little game to liven up the party during (more…)
I love college football fall practices because they are a clear sign that the brilliant college football season is just around the corner. From a sports betting perspective the best part of fall practices is that the general public isn’t paying a lot of attention. That means as a sports handicapper if (more…)
I’m a big believer in the importance of paying attention to fall practices to get ready for the college football season. The sports betting public generally isn’t paying a lot of attention to what goes on before the games start, so if you are on top of what is happening – (more…)
One of the challenging things that football bettors – and especially college football bettors because it is so common – have to deal with is very large point spreads in games. In college football it’s not uncommon to see spreads of four touchdowns or more in a game. When you see (more…)
The media loves to talk about the potential of a good college football team looking past a weak opponent towards a stronger opponent in their next game. They’ll often suggest that a team in this circumstance could lack focus and intensity and could be vulnerable to an upset or a less (more…)
Making money over the long term on college football betting – or any sport, really – isn’t really that difficult conceptually. All you need to do is find situations where there is value in lines and then bet to take advantage of that value. If you do that consistently over the (more…)
Rivalry games are one of the biggest factors that make college football the great sport that it is. The intensity and emotion that can be felt when two bitter college rivals meet in an annual, hate-filled event is almost unmatched in sports. For college football handicappers these games are particularly compelling. the (more…)
For hardcore college football fans national signing day is like Christmas in early February. A potentially cruel Christmas if your favorite school doesn’t land the high profile football prospects you crave. Or a truly fantastic Christmas if your NCAA teams reloads with blue chip talent. For sports bettors national signing day (more…)
National signing day in college football is becoming a bigger and bigger media spectacle every year. For those who aren’t obsessed with the sport, national signing day, which falls early in February each year, is the first day that recruits for the next season can sign a letter of intent and (more…)
I love the summer for the weather and all the fun things to do, but there is a big part of me that just wants it to end. The summer is what stands between me and the glorious return of the college football season, so at times it just seems endless. (more…)
College football doesn’t get a lot of attention from the general public until the first games are set to kick off. Before that, though, there are weeks of summer practice, and for college football bettors who are willing to pay attention and do a little bit of homework there is a (more…)
By the time we get about halfway through the college football season it’s about time to start taking unbeaten teams seriously. Expert college football bettors know when a NCAA football team wins six or seven games in a row they have started to show that they are serious, and that they have (more…)
By the time we get to the halfway point or so of the college football season the number of unbeaten teams has typically dwindled down to a handful or two. Most of those teams – unless they play in lesser NCAA conferences and have played very weak schedules – have realistic (more…)
When people set out to handicap college football games there are predictable factors that they look at – the quality of the offenses and defenses, the matchups, the head coaches, and so on. Those are obviously significant and relevant. They are also what most people will be doing. One of the (more…)
College football is typically a game played in the bright sun of the afternoon. That’s how it is supposed to be, and tradition is such a big part of the sport. Every week, though, there are a couple of night games. Just a small fraction of games are night games, and (more…)
There are few things more satisfying for college football bettors – and potentially profitable – than spotting a big upset and cashing a winning ticket on the underdog. If you aren’t careful, though, then chasing underdogs who don’t turn out is a quick way to go broke. You need to be (more…)
Rivalry games are the best part of college football – especially the season ending rivalries steeped in tradition and hatred. Sometimes, though, those rivalry NCAA games lose a lot of their luster because both football teams come into them struggling. If the teams aren’t playing well then the game doesn’t have (more…)
It seems like we are in the era of the scandal in college football. The list of teams that haven’t been under investigation at some point in the last decade is much shorter than those that have. Recruiting violations, players receiving benefits, contact with agents, improper training – the list of (more…)
Season win totals are a very interesting and increasingly popular way to bet on college football. The downside to the bets is that your money is tied up for the entire season. That complication can be very much worthwhile, though, if the value is there – and you can find some (more…)
There is no preseason in college football, so it can be hard for sports bettors to get a sense of how ready teams are before they play their first regular season game. Fall practice It also doesn’t help that the media and fans are so excited for the season to start (more…)
One of the many things that makes college football both unique and so very interesting to handicap is the mass turnover each year caused by graduation and early departure for the NFL. The best football team in the country one year can be forced into a massive rebuilding project the next (more…)
Suspensions are a fact of life in college football, and it seems like they are more and more common these days. It seems like their is a new violation reported every day, media scrutiny is at an all-time high, and the pressure to clean up college football has never been more intense. (more…)
Most college football teams from major conferences don’t exactly challenge themselves in the first week of the season. There is no exhibition season, so teams will schedule an outmatched opponent to work out the kinks and get a reasonably safe taste of game action. That occasionally backfires, but most often it (more…)
An unfortunate reality of college football is that the time when teams are preparing for their bowl games is also the time when teams are making coaching changes and looking ahead to their next season and beyond. That means that there are several football teams that go into their bowl game (more…)
Nine weeks into the 2011 college football season Stanford was 9-0, quarterback Andrew Luck was running away with the Heisman race, and the team looked like they had a real shot at playing for the national championship. There was really only one thing standing in their way – a home game (more…)
College football fans are fickle. It only takes a couple of wins to start the season for people to start to get impressed by a team, and it only takes one loss for a football team to get forgotten about. Before you get too excited about a team after they have opened (more…)
There is a big gap between the last game of the regular college football season and the bowl game for a lot of teams. Football teams that don’t play in a conference championship game could be off for well over a month if they play in a post-New Year bowl game. (more…)
It’s not at all uncommon to see a college football coach fired before his team’s season has ended. As the pressure and intensity increases in the sport it’s only going to happen more often. When it does happen the betting public tends to react in a predictable and consistent way – (more…)
For years the major conferences in college football were relatively stable, but now it seems we can’t go a single year without significant changes to the alignment of at least one conference and often more. Every time the NCAA conferences are tweaked or shaken up college football handicappers have to come (more…)
Sometimes in college football it can seem like parity has a conference in a stranglehold. Strong teams win or lose from week to week as if games are determined by the flip of a coin, and everything handicappers think they know gets thrown out the window at the end of every (more…)
College football teams take a huge risk if they schedule a big game against another top level team to start the season – namely, they could lose. A loss early in the season puts them in a huge hole with the whole season still in front of them. For football handicappers dealing (more…)
Thanks to schools like USC and Ohio State we know a lot more about the impact of major violations on top level college football programs than we used to, and more than we probably ever wished we knew. Because NCAA sanctions at high level programs get so much media attention they (more…)
College football can be a very unforgiving sport for teams. The season is so short and the postseason opportunities so limited that one high profile loss can entirely derail a season and spell an end to the hopes and ambitions of a team. If that loss comes early in the season (more…)
When you are betting on college football one of the big challenges is that there are no preseason games. Training camps often aren’t particularly open to the public or media, either. It can be very challenging, then, to have an accurate sense of what a team is capable of before the (more…)
If you are a college football fan then you can surely think of cases where David has killed Goliath – where a heavy, heavy favorite has fallen in a very unlikely and unexpected way to an underdog that didn’t seem to have any chance of winning the game. The media understandably (more…)
One of the important things a successful sports bettor has to do is pick the right online sports book (or preferably sports books, because shopping around for the best price is very important, but that’s for a different article). The right sports book can set a bettor up for success, while (more…)
Online sportsbooks want your business. That goes without saying – they make money when people bet, so the action they can take the more money they will make over the long term. Their business is incredibly competitive, so books are increasingly competitive about offering bonuses to entice you to work with (more…)
When it comes to online sportsbooks, you’ve heard it before, but unless you are doing it regularly you haven’t heard it enough – having accounts at multiple sports books is crucial in order to maximize your profits. It’s easy to open online accounts at books and spread your bankroll between them, (more…)