Each year it seems like sportsbooks offer more and more opportunities for bettors to bet on year-end awards in different sports before the seasons start. It used to be that you could just bet on the high profile ones like the NFL MVP, the Cy Young, and the Heisman. Now the (more…)
Sports Betting Section
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Month: May 2012
Future bets – a bet on whether a team is going to win a league or event that is usually going to be held well in the future – are something that books absolutely love to post and take action on. There’s a pretty simple reason for that – they are (more…)
A lot of bettors – most, I would even say – don’t like betting heavy underdogs on the moneyline. They equate the large potential payouts with a high amount of risk and a low chance of paying off, and they look elsewhere – often with the heavy favorites. In many cases (more…)
Late January and February is all-star season. Over the course of three weeks three of the four major league have their all-star festivities. in 2011 the NHL and NFL even chose to have their games on the same day. When each league has their all-star game there are no other games (more…)
One of the so-called laws of sports betting that I hear all of the time is that you shouldn’t bet on teams that you are emotionally invested in. If you care then you can’t be objective, and if you aren’t objective then you are making bad decisions – or at least (more…)
When you first start out in sports betting you might get the idea that the spread for a football game is fixed – it’s set at the beginning of the week and that’s where it stays. That’s certainly how the mainstream media talks about it on the rare occasions they acknowledge (more…)
Correlated parlays are a dream concept for sports bettors – in some cases they have a positive long term expectation. In other words, if you bet these bets time and time and time again then you would make a guaranteed profit. they are like a guaranteed cash machine. Of course, virtually (more…)
We are currently in the early days of the NHL season, and in just a couple of weeks the NBA season will be underway. College basketball starts up in a while, too. It’s always exciting when a sport you love to bet on gets underway again after a long break. The (more…)
Betting games at halftime is one of the most under-appreciated and under-bet options available to sports bettors. Just think about it – before you have to make a bet on a team you get to watch them play half of the game. What happens in the first half isn’t necessarily an (more…)
Sports betting is one of the most popular sorts of gambling throughout the world because of all the different sports that can be bet on. There are different types of bets that can be made and it can seem very overwhelming for the first time sports bettor. However, I will outline (more…)
Angles are a big part of betting. Some people use angles a whole lot, and others don’t use them at all. Like most things in sports betting they can be very useful and profitable – but only if you use them profitably and responsibly.
The obvious starting point is to look at (more…)
Bettors who are interested in betting systems need to become effective at back testing. Simply, back testing is looking back to see how your system or angle would have performed against past games. By looking back at how it would have performed you can get a sense of whether it is (more…)
A lot of bettors like to use angles in their betting. An angle is simply a trend that has occurred in the past with enough frequency to be profitable that you use as a guide to find bets in the future. Angles can be found in every sport you can bet (more…)
One of the terms we heard thrown about a lot when it comes to sports betting is ‘smart money’. It’s a very important concept for sports bettors to understand, but it’s largely misunderstood and misused.
Simply put, the smart money is the money bet by the sharps. Sharps can be defined in (more…)
I have been thinking and writing a lot about the smart money recently. Basically, smart money is the money bet by the most prepared and effective of bettors – the true professionals. One of the more interesting – and often profitable – things to do is to try to figure out (more…)
With the NBA and the NHL seasons over and football still a couple of months away a lot of sports bettors find themselves lacking something to bet on in the summer – especially if they are not fans of betting on the endless grind that is baseball. If you aren’t interested (more…)
It’s hard enough trying to figure out if the odds for a given game are fair or attractive. It’s even harder when you have to figure out how to read the odds in the first place. There are several different ways that sports odds can be written. While they all ultimately (more…)
One of the pieces of advice that you’ll get from most experienced sports bettors is that you should only bet on sports that you are familiar with. Knowledge is obviously very important when it comes to effective handicapping, so it only makes sense that if you are betting sports in which (more…)
One of the biggest problems that new and inexperienced sports bettors have is that they don’t understand what a line actually is and how they are set. If you don’t properly understand the lines and how they work then you are not always going to interpret them properly, and that can (more…)
One of the terms that gets thrown around a lot when talking about sports betting is the ‘betting public’. The reason you hear about it so much is simply that understanding what it is and what it means can help to fatten your bottom line. Fat bottom lines are good, so (more…)
Hedging bets is something that is talked about more than it is understood. It’s also a concept that can be very dangerous because it can easily be used incorrectly in ways that negatively impact your bottom line.
Basically, hedging is just a way to reduce or eliminate the risk of a bet. (more…)
We’re about to make the transition from the time when baseball is the primary sport people are paying attention to to when football takes over. That means that sports bettors will be making the transition from primarily betting using the moneyline to primarily using the point spread. Most people seem to (more…)
One of the power factors when it comes to effective handicapping is one that is often overlooked and misunderstood by many bettors – the public action. Once you understand how the public views a game you can look at why they are betting like they are, how that is impacting the (more…)
You probably hear a lot of talk about sharp bettors. The term has reached almost mythical proportions in the sports betting world. It’s also a very misunderstood term. Frankly, people give sharp bettors too much credit. They think that sharps are people with inside information, foolproof systems, and more knowledge than (more…)
Every year in golf a few players who have been playing on the European Tour decide to give the PGA Tour a try for a year, and vice versa. In some cases those moves are high profile – especially when a guy from Europe tries the higher profile PGA. Other times (more…)
It doesn’t happen every week in the PGA, but quite often bettors see a golfer storm out to a lead on the Thursday with a very strong first round. Sometimes that fast start isn’t sustained and the golfer is far back in the pack by Sunday. Other times it’s a sign (more…)
As bettors who follow the PGA Tour know, pro golf tournaments are held every year in every corner of the United States. There is even one held annually in Canada. At some points in the season the tournaments are clustered in some parts of the country – like the Hawaii and (more…)
Bettors need to realize that winning golf tournaments in the PGA is hard. Very hard. It’s quite possible, then, for even the best golfers to go through a long drought between wins. the losing streak could be blamed on any number of factors – health, motivation, off-course distractions, a change in (more…)
Wagering on the President’s Cup, which is the poor cousin of the Ryder Cup,is an interesting venture for sports bettors. It is played every second year when the Ryder Cup isn’t played, and features the top golfers from the United States against the top golfers from the rest of the world (more…)
Golf bettors are looking forward to the Ryder Cup, which gets underway later this week at Celtic Manor in Wales. It’s not a major or an official event, but many top golfers will tell you that it’s the most significant event on the calendar when it appears every second year. Players (more…)
Golf bettors look forward to every January, which brings the start of a new PGA season after a short layoff since last season ended. For bettors who like to bet on golf the days before the start of the new season are a good time to make sure you are ready (more…)
Veteran golf bettors know that golfers have no control over who they get to play with in their pairing every week, yet those pairings can have a big impact on how well they play. A good pairing can lift a player up, while a poor pairing can leave a player frustrated, (more…)
Just a couple times a year we get to bet on the best format there is for pro golf in my eyes – match play. I love watching golfers stare each others in the eye until one guy blinks. It’s like every hole is a playoff. For bettors it takes a (more…)
Every year in January golf bettors see the dawn of a new season in the PGA. That means that every January a large group of new golfers join the tour. Most of those new players are obscure when they join the tour, and still obscure when they leave the tour a (more…)
A few times each year the PGA schedules an alternate event that can offer betting possibilities. Those are the events that are played at the same time as other events with limited fields – like the British Open or WGC events. The events obviously don’t feature the most elite fields or (more…)
Outside of the majors the match play format is the best there is in professional golf. There are a few reasons for that – the head-to-head competition is rare and always intriguing, the format is perfect for TV and fun to follow, and it is fun and profitable to handicap. If (more…)
The PGA is all about the stars. That’s all that most fans and most bettors care about. Betting on those stars, whether you choose to bet the spread or place a parlay bet, is never easy as a result. They get the lion’s share of the attention and action, and their (more…)
Veteran golf bettors know that the relationship between a caddy and a golfer in the PGA is one that is unique in all of sports. The caddy has to be part servant, part coach, part confidante, and part security guard. The relationship is so close it is almost like a marriage. (more…)
Each year in early January a new PGA season gets underway. Betting on the sport in January and February is different in a lot of ways than betting on it later on. Bettors who don’t think about those differences can make some costly mistakes that can impact their betting throughout the (more…)
The PGA season starts in early January each year. The betting public largely doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the sport until the Masters unless something big happens. That means that there are a lot of tournaments with comparatively little public attention that are prime spots for prepared bettors to (more…)
The Fall Series is a unique part of the PGA schedule for bettors – one that gets almost no attention in the realm of the casual golf fan. These are the tournaments that stretch for a month or so after the FedEx Cup has concluded. While top level golfers are worried (more…)
For most golf tournaments during the PGA season you can bet on them for less than a week before the field tees off. In higher profile tournaments the time frame for betting can be a bit longer. There is no tournament higher profile or more popular among fans and bettors than (more…)
People who bet on sports regularly know that in a lot of sports the biggest event comes at the end of the season. In the PGA, though, tournaments don’t get any bigger than the Masters, and that tournament comes in early April – just about a third of the way into (more…)
The Masters is by far the most popular and closely watched golf tournament of the year. That means that it is also the most popular for betting. Leading up to the Masters every little detail about the competitors is analyzed from every possible angle. One of the more interesting factors to (more…)
The Masters is by far the biggest golf tournament on the PGA calendar each year. That means that winning has a major impact on the golfer who comes out on top. If they are already a star then their legacy and reputation will be enhanced, and they will be even more (more…)
The match play format in golf is increasingly popular for bettors. There are a few reasons for that – the head to head competition is relatively unique and exciting, the format plays well on TV, it’s something different, and so on. The biggest reason for the success of the format, though, (more…)
A lot of casual golf bettors only bet on four of five tournaments a year – the majors and the Ryder Cup every other year. When you are betting a sport so rarely you are inevitably not going to be as sharp as you would be if you bet it much (more…)
Betting on golf is a very attractive and interesting thing to do. It’s also very different than betting on other sports, and it can be challenging and intimidating for people looking to give it a go. For those who want to try betting on golf for the first time, here are (more…)
Betting on golf is hard for casual bettors. They likely only bet on the sports four or five times a year – the majors and the Ryder Cup – so they are certain not to have a deep knowledge of what’s going on in the sport. That can make picking one (more…)
For a lot of casual golf bettors, there are only four or five events each year that they care about – the majors and the Ryder Cup every other year. They may pay attention to a couple of the WGC events as well – like the Match Play. That still leaves (more…)
Most casual golf bettors only bet four or five times a year – the four majors, the Ryder Cup if it is on, and maybe the match play. That’s obviously when the sport is in the spotlight, and when the most betting options are available. I’m not a huge golf bettor (more…)
For casual golf bettors there are probably just four tournaments a year that they bet on – five if it is a Ryder Cup year. The majors get the large majority of attention in the golf world, and betting action is dramatically higher than in other weeks as a result. If (more…)
The Masters is the most prestigious golf tournament in the world, and Augusta National is the most revered golf course in the world. It’s the only course that hosts a Major every year, and it’s a course that has a mythology of its own. Handicappers who want to succeed betting on (more…)
The British Open is just one of the four grand slam events in golf and it attracts solid betting action. It is so different from the rest of its major brethren, though, that at times it is almost as if it is a different sport. Bettors who approach the tournament in (more…)
The British Open is a very unique tournament and interesting for PGA bettors. It is unlike any of the other major championships – it’s played on another continent, the weather can be especially brutal, the courses are often links style, and so on. Because the tournament is so different from most, (more…)
Every year in baseball there are a couple of rookie pitchers who absolutely explode onto the scene. They may or may not have been highly heralded before the season starts, but by June they have piled up the wins, scorched the radar guns, and garnered miles and miles of headlines. Sometimes (more…)
Spring training is an interesting time for baseball bettors. Baseball takes their preseason much more seriously than other sports, so it’s much more compelling than other preseasons. That could make it tempting for people to bet on it, then. The problem, though, is that betting on spring training is very different (more…)
When it comes to handicapping baseball there is nothing more important than evaluating starting pitchers. It’s the pitchers that make the difference between good games for a team and bad ones. No other single player affects the outcome of games in any major sport more than the starting pitcher does. When (more…)
As a baseball handicapper there is nothing that annoys me more than streaky pitchers. They can look for a long time like they can’t possible lose, and then before you know it – and for seemingly no reason – they can forget how to pitch for several games in a row. (more…)
Baseball bettors know that betting on the playoffs is a very different proposition than betting on the regular season. In some subtle but still significant ways betting on the wild card round, the LDS, is different that betting on the LCS as well. here are seven of those differences and the (more…)
Betting on the World Series is one of the best things that baseball bettors get to do each year. If you aren’t careful, though, it can also be a very easy time of year to make costly betting mistakes. The coverage of the World Series is understandably more comprehensive and more (more…)
The World Series is by far the busiest time of the year for baseball betting. Serious MLB bettors bet more money on the final series than on others, and more casual bettors are drawn to betting on the biggest games of the year. While it can be easy to make mistakes (more…)
By the time the World Series rolls around the weather can be a real issue. The ball games are played in the last half of October, and the games are played at night, so it’s almost certain to be cold in northern markets, and rain and even snow can occasionally be (more…)
For baseball bettors and fans, opening day is a great, great day. It’s when everything is new, and everything is still possible. It’s also the end of an offseason that seems very long after we got used to seeing so many games played every day for months. For bettors who aren’t (more…)
One of the best sources of value in baseball betting – especially in the first couple of months of the season – is betting on pitchers coming off a lousy year who are returning to their full potential – or at least something close to it. The trick is, of course, (more…)
In many ways betting on the baseball playoffs is no different than betting on the regular season – after all, baseball is baseball. There are a few key ways, though, that the two portions of the season differ from each other. Winning bettors over the long term are those who can (more…)
Tommy John surgery, the procedure in which a damaged ligament in a pitcher’s elbow is replaced by a tendon from elsewhere in the the body, is incredibly common these days in baseball, and becoming more so every day. When it was first performed on Tommy John in 1974 he was given (more…)
Over the course of each baseball season we see several pitchers who have been toiling in the bullpen become regular members of the starting rotation. Sometimes it is a middle reliever, while other times it will be a closer or set-up man. For bettors these transitions can be challenging. We have (more…)
One of the toughest parts of handicapping the playoffs in baseball is pitchers going on short rest. The deeper we get into the postseason the more desperate teams get, and the more likely it is that a guy will be asked to pitch sooner than would be ideal. A pitcher pitching (more…)
Every year at the start of the major league baseball season there are many rookie pitchers making their major league debut. In the next couple of months many more guys who weren’t quite ready to start the year get their chance. For bettors those pitchers can create interesting betting opportunities. If (more…)
Momentum should be a dirty word for sports bettors. It is one of the hardest concepts in sports to become comfortable with, and one of the very easiest ways for a bettor to be led off track and bet on a team that isn’t as good as they may seem. One (more…)
When a major league baseball team enters September with a cushion of five games or more in the pennant or wild card race then they typically can hang on and get ready for their berth in the playoffs. From time to time, though, we’ll see a team that seems determined to (more…)
At the start of every Major League Baseball season there are a few pitchers who get off to very fast starts. In their first couple of starts they are virtually unhittable. That leads to an impressive record, a microscopic ERA, impressive stats, and increased attention from the public. The challenge for (more…)
Right now baseball seems like the furthest thing from our minds – it’s the middle of winter, NFL football is still in full swing and the Super Bowl is still a couple of weeks away. Before you know it, though, it will be spring training time. Pitchers and catchers report just (more…)
With spring training almost underway, that means we are close to one of my favorite times of the year as a sports bettor – the release of baseball season win totals. These are the most interesting props available in any sport all year because they are so interesting to think about, (more…)
Regular season win totals are an increasingly popular bet, and one that can often present nice value for astute bettors. The problem is, though, that it can be incredibly easy to make costly mistakes with these bets because of the amount of time your money is locked up, and the amount (more…)
Every year in baseball there are a couple of teams that should be pretty good that get off to absolutely terrible starts. Within a couple of weeks of the season they have fallen well below .500, and are miles out of first place in their division. Sometimes these starts are signs (more…)
Baseball bettors always hear about the importance of evaluating matchups – how a starting pitcher stacks up against an opposing offense. But what does that actually mean? Here are seven factors to consider when evaluating starting pitcher matchups:
How well is the team hitting recently? – Bettors can be blinded by how (more…)
I love handicapping baseball. I don’t think it is the hardest sport to handicap overall, but it is a unique challenge. In order to succeed at the sport you have to be able to make some adjustments form other sports, and to do some things that you aren’t required to be (more…)
I love playing baseball season win totals. The number of games teams play and the power of statistics in baseball make the win totals a better place to search for value than any other long term prop bet that is available. The win totals are popular, and that popularity is growing (more…)
If you are anything like me the you are very excited for the dawn of April because it means that baseball – the most glorious of sports for bettors – is here again. It’s here for a long time, too. It can be tough betting on baseball when it starts, though, (more…)
Baseball seems like such a simple game – you hit the ball and run around the bases. People who know and love the sport, though, know how complex and at times confusing it can be. For everything that really matters in baseball there are a dozen things that seem like they (more…)
Managers are a tough thing for handicappers to deal with when making baseball picks. On the grand scale they are obviously important – the manager sets the tone for the team and keeps them on task and motivated. From game to game, though, I don’t believe at all that managers are (more…)
Typically, it takes several years for a baseball team to develop and grow from a pretender to a contender. Every so often, though, a team is able to go from the basement to the penthouse in just one year. The Twins made a habit of it in the 1980s and early (more…)
The offseason in baseball can seem like it goes on forever. For baseball bettors, then, opening day is a time of immense excitement and possibility. The first couple of weeks of the new baseball season can be unpredictable, though. New faces and changed teams can make it hard to get a (more…)
Most people who are familiar with the intricacies of sports betting will tell you that parlays are for suckers. In almost all cases they are right. There are situations in baseball that can be different, though. In fact, sometimes parlaying in baseball can be a good idea.
Before we look at why (more…)
As the season progresses in baseball it is a sure thing that starting pitchers are going to get hurt and be forced to miss a start or more. For baseball handicappers, any change to the rotation can cause a headache because it introduces more uncertainty to the handicapping process. It’s not (more…)
Baseball betting is largely done on the moneyline. Any time you are betting on the moneyline underdogs become attractive – there is nothing wrong at all with getting back more money than you bet when you win. The challenge, though, is telling the difference between the live longshots that are worthy (more…)
For baseball handicappers there are few things harder to evaluate than bullpens. It is tough to know in any given game how much a bullpen is likely to be needed, which pitchers will be used, and which batters they are likely to face. The response that most bettors have in this (more…)
It is very difficult to learn too much that is meaningful in regard to sports picks from the games played in the first half of spring training. Teams don’t care about the results, preparation means more than wins, rosters are in a constant state of flux, and split squads make it (more…)
Streaks are a big part of baseball. You never have to wait long until you can see another team in the midst of a long stretch of futility. Because teams play virtually every day it doesn’t take long for the losses to add up, and things can get ugly in a (more…)
When people think about betting on baseball, they usually consider the moneyline or, less frequently, the runline. There is another option that is far less often considered, but which can be useful in some circumstances – the 5 inning bet, also known as the first half bet. This simply is a (more…)
During the long baseball season games can blend into each other and all seem like they are the same. When there is something that can make a particular game stand out from the crowd and gain some attention then it can really draw a lot of betting attention. One of the (more…)
A lot of casual baseball bettors have enough trouble getting their heads around the moneyline, so they don’t even consider the runline – a moneyline with a spread of 1.5 runs. It’s a mistake because in the right situations the runline can be very profitable. The favorite has to win by (more…)
Baseball is a great sport to bet on. For bettors who don’t regularly bet on it, though, it can be very intimidating. There are a couple of good reasons for that. Most significantly, you have to bet with the moneyline or runline when most bettors are more familiar with the point (more…)
Baseball is a stat driven league. That means that baseball handicappers who want to be successful have to have a good grasp on statistics and how to interpret them. The problem, though, is that some of the statistics that are regularly published in newspapers and magazines, discussed on TV, and embrace (more…)
Successful sports betting, including wagering on the second round of the NBA Playoffs, is all about noticing the things that will have an impact on the outcome of games and figuring out how to exploit them. Sometimes the differences between one situation and another can be subtle on the surface, but (more…)
A lot of casual NBA bettors make a big mistake – they assume that betting on the NBA playoffs is just the same as betting on the regular season. That is true in some ways – the basketball team that scores the most points still wins, for example. There are some (more…)
NBA series bets can be a great way for sports bettors to find value in the playoffs. If you aren’t careful, though, they can also be very costly. Here are four mistakes people make when making these bets. By avoiding them you significantly increase your chances at making a profit over (more…)
Team depth, and the significance of it, is a tough concept for NBA bettors to deal with in the playoffs. Some basketball teams are obviously going to be deeper and more talented than others, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to be better suited for playoff success. In (more…)
