Every year in the NFL there are a few football teams that are lucky enough to go through a stretch in which it seems like they have forgotten how to lose. These teams on long winning streaks can present a real challenge for handicappers. The public loves a winner, so they will (more…)
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Month: December 2012
There are few things more frustrating to NFL handicappers than seeing a heavy favorite who was a logical choice lose a game. Often times those losses come out of nowhere, and it can be hard to understand what happened. On top of the frustration of a losing bet these situations can (more…)
There is no better feeling when betting on the NFL than cashing a ticket on an underdog that pulls off a big upset. You feel like you can see the future and that you are, at that moment at least, smarter than everyone else. Any upset win by a big underdog (more…)
The Super Bowl is almost here. It is the biggest game of the year in every way – for fans, the media, the athletes, and bettors. Correctly picking a Super Bowl winner and making a few bucks (or more than a few) is enough to carry you through the longs months (more…)
Sunday nights and Monday nights during the NFL season are tough times to be a football handicapper. That’s when the two most popular games of the week are played. These are the games that are on national TV, and the games that everyone watches and bets on. The media attention is (more…)
Second half betting in the NFL offers you a terrific way of making the most out of your investments. There are several benefits of betting on the second half of a NFL game and we will explore them in this article. NFL halftimes are an oddsmaker’s nightmare. The bookies have 15 (more…)
We are about to head into my least favorite time in North American sports – the NFL preseason. I love the regular season, and there is no better sport than football, but in my eyes the preseason in the NFL is just an extended, seemingly endless exercise in stupidity. You rarely see (more…)
Smart and successful football handicappers know that you set yourself up for a profitable NFL season not by the handicapping you do during the season but by the work you did in the offseason to get ready for the year. It takes a whole lot of preparation and study to be ready (more…)
Suicide pools are the easiest form of popular sports betting to win. It’s not that they are easy. It’s just that most people don’t approach them logically. More than any other form of football-related betting activity someone who approaches suicide pools intelligently can have a big edge. When you are setting (more…)
Betting on the NFL season win totals is increasing in popularity every season. Most long term prop bets aren’t particularly interesting to serious football bettors because of the lack of value and the amount of time that money has to be tied up. Both things can be a problem here, too, but (more…)
When it comes to handicapping games in the NFL the schedule is more significant than many factors in terms of determining winners and losers. Schedule analysis, when done poorly, can force people to make a lot of poor decisions, though. The single most important thing to remember when analyzing a football (more…)
The NFL seems to react to every strange circumstance that pops up with a rule change. One of the more radical changes the football league has made in recent years is the introduction of a new overtime format for the playoffs. The move was done in response to New Orleans’ entry (more…)
Make no mistake – betting on the NFL playoffs successfully is very different than betting on the NFL regular season. A lot of casual, and probably unsuccessful, sports bettors wouldn’t see the differences – football is just football in their eyes. the distinctions are very real and significant, though, and successful (more…)
The week between the end of the NFL regular season and the start of the playoffs is an important one for bettors. Those who are serious about having a successful betting experience in the playoffs can do a few things during this time to give themselves a better chance at success. (more…)
Each year we see online sports books offering more and more options for NFL player props. If books are offering more of them then there is one thing you can be absolutely sure of – they are very profitable. The more profitable a type of bet is for the sports books, (more…)
The injury of a star player in the NFL is almost certain to cause panic and have an affect on betting decision and on the NFL odds. You would get less reaction yelling fire in a room full of sports bettors than you would if you yelled out that Peyton Manning (more…)
One of the many challenges of handicapping the NFL is trying to figure out how to handicap football teams that have no playoff future left to play for. Once teams have been eliminated from postseason consideration it can be hard to assess what their effort level is going to be in their (more…)
A NFL parlay or accumulator is a single bet that links together two or more individual wagers and is dependent on all of those wagers winning together. Many experienced bettors will joke and say the parlay is French for “loser”. Many professional sports bettors will stay away from parlays due to (more…)
With Thanksgiving coming up and the NFL playing Thursday games weekly now it is a very good time to be thinking about short weeks and the impact for football handicappers. A lot is made about the challenges teams face when getting ready for games with less preparation time than normal. Here’s a (more…)
Making money betting on the NFL is very difficult. It is a very popular league to bet on – by far the most popular in the U.S. – but it is certainly not the easiest. The betting volume and the quality of the stats and information available on the NFL means (more…)
The NFL Draft is, as I write this, a month away. There is also a pesky lockout going on, so outside of annoying labor talk and posturing the football league is very short on news to get excited about. I can’t think about the NFL right now – especially because free (more…)
When you really think about it the NFL Combine is a bizarre spectacle – hundreds of older men judge the manliness of half-dressed younger men while millions of other men watch on TV. Regardless, though, the Combine has turned into a very big deal – complete with 30 hours of TV (more…)
Handicapping bye weeks in the NFL is a real challenge for a lot of football bettors. Ever since the NFL instituted the bye to wring an extra week of rights fees from the TV networks bettors have had to figure out what impact a week of rest is going to have on (more…)
When people are handicapping NFL football games – something millions of people will be doing every week for the next several months – there are some factors that they generally pay too much attention to, and others that don’t get enough attention. In a lot of cases people aren’t getting the (more…)
Many football bettors overlook the additional value that alternate NFL betting lines offer. They stick with the regular point spread, the money line, or the total. In this article we will show you the benefits of looking at alternate lines when you are searching for additional value. Alternate lines usually offer four (more…)
Football is a complicated game, but when you boil it all down NFL handicapping it isn’t all that difficult – all you need to do is figure out whether an offense is going to be able to score on a defense. The offense that can score better is, in most cases, (more…)
It’s winter, and in a lot of places that means really, really lousy weather. Football handicappers need to be fully aware of the weather and the impact it can have on the outcome of NFL games. Cold weather and snow cause sports bettors to act in some strange ways, and some (more…)
The NFL turnover differential – the difference between the number of times a team turns the ball over, and the number of times they recover a turnover from their opponents – is a very powerful statistic for football handicappers. However, If it is used incorrectly by the sports bettor it can (more…)
The beauty of betting on sports is that there is a thousand different ways you can do it and make a profit. Every successful bettor will have different approaches and priorities when it comes to spotting winners and making a few bucks. At the root of it, though, there are a (more…)
Finding value is what sports betting is all about. When the potential payoff for a bet is greater than the risk associated with that bet then you have value, and if you keep making your sports picks like that over the long term you will make a very nice profit. Unfortunately, (more…)
In theory, the NFL Injury Reports should be one of the most helpful football handicapping tools there is. Every team in the league is mandated by the NFL to report all of their injuries to the league and the media. The reports are due on Friday for Sunday games, and are (more…)
NFL Betting is the most popular form of sports wagering in the United States. NFL gambling is in part popular because most of the games happen on one day. This gives the gambler an action filled day by being able to place and collect on all the bets within a span (more…)
If you can’t successfully handicap divisional games in the NFL then you aren’t going to be a winning bettor. It’s as simple as that. Football teams play each of their three divisional foes twice each year – something that happens for no other opponent. The games are particularly important because the value (more…)
While the majority of the betting public has their eyes on the spreads, moneylines, and totals for the full NFL games, there are far more options to consider when choosing how to invest your money. One of those options is first half betting on NFL games. For first half wagering, most (more…)
Sometimes it seems like there are some football teams in the NFL that have forgotten how to win. They fall into long losing streaks, and they look truly terrible doing it. When NFL teams lose several games in a row the public will assume that they will never win again, and their (more…)
We talk a lot about how to profitably bet the NFL regular season. Really, though, I don’t think that that is specific enough. The long regular football season is really more like a continuous series of short seasons. Each one is a little bit different, and strong sports bettors need to adjust (more…)
A lot of football handicappers will tell you that if you want to make money betting on the NFL you should look towards the totals. There is nothing easy about handicapping the NFL, but there is often more value to find in the totals than in the spreads and moneylines. If you (more…)
We’re now into the second half of the NFL season. In a lot of ways the league only gets more and more exciting as it gets closer to the postseason. For pro football handicappers, though, the midpoint of the season signals a subtle shift in the NFL that requires a shift in (more…)
So far this college football season we have already seen some truly demoralizing, soul crushing losses. I’m talking about games where a team goes in with high hopes, yet comes out trying to figure out how they lost by 20. Or 50. If the football team that gets blown out is (more…)
When you are handicapping college football you don’t have the advantage of a preseason, and you often don’t get a lot of good information out of fall practices. That means that you have to go into the first game of the season relying more on what happened last season and what (more…)
We’re at the point in the college football season – about two-thirds of the way through – when it becomes clear that there are some coaches who are coaching their final games with their team. Some schools will fire their coaches in-season – a couple have already this year – but (more…)
As a general rule people aren’t nearly patient enough when it comes to the impact of recruiting in college football. Fans hear about the big names that their NCAA team has signed, and they expect the results to show up on the field right away. It’s rarely as quick or as (more…)
We are in the dying days of the college football season – most teams have just one or two games left. At this time of year it can be very profitable to be able to spot teams that have packed it in – those that just don’t care anymore. Those teams (more…)
The major college football preseason polls are out. Every year when they come out I immediately rush to absorb what they have to say. Soon after, though, I find myself thinking about what they mean and the impact that they have for bettors – both positive and negative. Here’s a look (more…)
If you are like me then the biggest sporting activity of every summer is counting the seconds until the next college football season starts. While college football bettors can get very impatient in the dog days of summer, there are a lot of things they can be doing to sharpen their (more…)
I’m not sure that there is a time in any sport and certainly in college football that is better for making money with relatively little risk than the first two or three weeks of the non-conference season. NCAA football teams aren’t game tested, and most bettors haven’t done the work required to (more…)
When you are thinking about betting on college football you have two general options. You can bet on the high profile games that everyone will be watching, talking about, and betting on, or you can instead go for more obscure football games featuring ignored teams from lesser conferences that are well (more…)
The third week of the college football season taught us a lot about the power of an early week off and what it can mean for teams. We’ll look at the specifics in a second, but let’s look at it generally first.
Most college football teams schedule a week off at some point (more…)
In non-conference play it is very common for good college football teams from the top conferences to schedule games against badly outclassed opponents from weaker conferences. Since there is no preseason in college football teams use these games to work out the kinks, build confidence, and give young players game experience (more…)
Early in each college football season there are countless issues that can cause headaches for bettors that need to be considered. One of the more challenging is determining whether a new starting QB is ready to be a strong contributor from the start or if betting against him is going to (more…)
We are two-thirds of the way into the college football season – more in several cases. In most cases we know about how good most teams are by now. More importantly, by this point the general betting public feels very strongly that they know what football teams are like and what to (more…)
We are nearing the end of the college football season. That means one fantastic thing – rivalry games. The most storied NCAA programs save their most hated opponents for the end of their football schedule. That makes for spectacular spectating. It also makes for very interesting sports handicapping. In some ways these games (more…)
We have seen teams play other opponents in their conference in college football in each week since the start of the season. We are at the point in the schedule, though, here conference games start to become more of a rule than an exception. In many ways football is just football, (more…)
We’re heading into conference championship weekend – including the first Big Ten championship game ever. In most ways conference championship games are just like other games – or at least other games with a lot at stake. In some key ways, though, these games are different. Smart bettors will recognize these (more…)
Betting totals in college football can be a very lucrative undertaking if you do it properly. When a lot of people are betting on the sport, though, they consistently make simple mistakes that cost them money and make what should be a very profitable bet. Here are seven mistakes to avoid (more…)
Every spring college football fans are inundated with news from spring games. We can even watch more and more of them every year as they show up on TV to satisfy hungry fans. Calling most of them games is being generous – they feature adapted rules and even scoring systems at (more…)
Betting on season win totals in college football is an increasingly popular and attractive option. It used to be that season win totals seemed like a gimmick bet, but increasingly they are looked at as a place to find real value by serious bettors. You have to tie your money up (more…)
We constantly hear about the importance of returning players in regard to college football betting. The biggest reason why Boise State is so good this year is because virtually all of their players have played together before. Why are Florida and Texas struggling in the face of major expectations? Well, a (more…)
There is nothing in college football that gets more attention than the polls. Where a team is ranked and how they are moving in the polls is a topic of endless discussion, debate, and arguments. Used properly and logically, the polls can be a useful tool for bettors – especially those (more…)
I don’t think that there is a better sport to bet on than college football. There are so many games each week that you can find something attractive no matter what you like to bet on, and the lines are usually not nearly as tight as they are in the NFL. (more…)
One of the challenges of handicapping college football is the presence of gimmick offenses. Gimmicks don’t really work in the NFL, but coaches like Mike Leach and Paul Johnson have built successful careers out of doing what no one else is doing. Year after year their offenses have worked to pile (more…)
Before the college football season starts each year there is lots of value to be found in betting conference winner futures. You can bet on which team is going to win each of the major NCAA conferences – and typically several of the minor conferences as well – and you can (more…)
The end of each college football season means that there are a stunning number of coaching changes. Guys are fired because they don’t meet expectations, and the dominoes start to fall as people move up to better jobs, coordinators become coaches, and so on. Typically, nearly a fifth of jobs change (more…)
I love almost everything about college football. In my eyes there is no better sport on the planet. There are just a very few things that I don’t like about it. One of them tends to happen most in the first couple of weeks of the season – when top level (more…)
When the college football season ends most sports bettors just move on to the next sport. If you really want to be successful with your betting, though, you need to take a little time to look at what happened last season, and what you can do next season to improve your (more…)
On the surface betting the second half in college football games seem like a great idea. After all, before you have to lock up your money and make a bet you get to watch the entire first half, or at least see the stats to get a sense of how the (more…)
In the NCAA Tournament every win counts, and winning is ultimately all that matters. Sometimes, though, the wins that teams get are particularly ugly. In the first round in particular you’ll often see a highly seeded team play very poorly but still come out on top because of a massive skill (more…)
The NCAA Tournament is an interesting challenge for bettors. For the first four days of the tournament there is a constant, almost overwhelming stream of games to watch and handicap. Then there is silence. From the end of the second round on Sunday night to the start of the Sweet 16 (more…)
I love the NIT. For basketball betting, that is. As a tournament or a spectator event it’s pretty much a waste of time these days. For people who are willing to get past that and handicap it, though, it’s another great source for profits in March. Here are five great reasons (more…)
Leading up to the NCAA tournament all of the talk is about seeds – which teams will be seeded where, and what that means for them. In some ways the intense discussion is important for handicappers to keep in mind, but in other ways it is nothing more than a distraction. (more…)
Conference basketball tournaments have the real potential to cause handicappers one more headache as they can easily add more wrinkles to the already daunting challenge of handicapping the NCAA Tournament. There are basically three things a college basketball team can do at their conference tournament. If they do pretty much what was (more…)
There is an almost endless list of factors sports bettors can consider when handicapping the NCAA tournament. Some factors obviously matter more than others. One that I think is significant and often overlooked – or at least not looked at in as many ways as it should be – is the location of (more…)
The NCAA Tournament is the best time of year for college basketball bettors, and quite possibly for all sports bettors. If you aren’t careful, though, it can also be a very expensive time of year. The lines are tighter than they usually are in college basketball, and heavy public betting action (more…)
Conference strength is a challenging concept for college basketball handicappers. When it comes to the postseason there is a lot we can learn from conference strength, but there are a lot of ways that it can lead us astray as well. As with most things, the best way to deal with (more…)
The NCAA Tournament is all about the Cinderella teams – the basketball teams that seemingly defy all odds to pull off an upset or two against higher ranked college teams. For handicappers these Cinderella teams can create serious headaches. Now that they have won you have to figure out if they are capable (more…)
When NCAA Tournament time rolls around there is an overwhelming number of college basketball teams to analyze, and not much time to do it between when the bracket is set and when the games are played. In order to have the time to look closely at all of the good teams (more…)
March Madness. Arguably the biggest, best, most fun to watch sporting event of the year. With the expansion to 68 college basketball teams, we will get to see even more games. And with the TV expansion we will literally get to watch all games. The NCAA added TBS, TNT, and truTV (more…)
Handicapping the NCAA Tournament is, in a lot of ways, at least theoretically the ultimate dream for bettors. You know teams will be playing at full intensity, and the neutral site eliminates at least some of the home court issues, so it’s a more pure form of handicapping than a lot (more…)
For a lot of people March is all about filling in a basketball bracket that is good enough to win your pool. The money is usually pretty good when you do that, but it’s nothing compared to the pride and bragging rights that come with a win. There is a lot (more…)
Over half of the basketball teams in the NCAA Tournament field, and a large majority of the major conference teams, come into the tournament after having lost their last game. Some of those teams not only lost their last game, but they were humiliated – totally schooled. Those college hoop teams (more…)
There are a lot of different ways a team can win the NCAA Tournament. Different winners have had stars at different positions, different strengths and weaknesses, and have accomplished different things during the regular season. There are some things, though, that virtually all champions have in common – traits that help (more…)
Conference tournaments are a unique handicapping challenge in college basketball. They are games like any other, yet there are things that make them different as well – a compact schedule, high pressure, and so on. As a foundation you need to handicap these games just like you would any other game. (more…)
Betting on conference tournaments in college basketball is something I always look forward to – it’s like an appetizer for the glorious main course that is the NCAA tournament. It’s also a good time to find some nice value and pad the bankroll for the the big show that’s about to (more…)
For most of the 100 college basketball teams that are playing in the NCAA Tournament and the NIT it is a very exciting time. They have worked hard all season, have had some decent results, and have been rewarded for their work with a spot in the postseason and a chance (more…)
Betting on the championship game of the NCAA Tournament is different than betting on any other college basketball game played throughout the year. In some ways it’s just another basketball game, but it is really so much more than that. Players treat it differently, bettors treat it differently, and so successful (more…)
College basketball mostly comes to an end in March, but not before a whole lot of games are played. There is the NCAA Tournament – which every sports fan in the country pays attention to. Then there is the NIT, which used to be great and is now largely ignored by (more…)
There is nothing I love more than the NCAA Tournament. It’s perfect in almost every way. One of the many ways it shines is in the opportunities it provides for college basketball handicappers. Because of the huge amount of public attention on the tournament there is a massive amount of value (more…)
The preseason in the NBA isn’t particularly useful in my eyes. Basketball teams don’t really care about the games, so coaches are often more interested in just getting their team to the regular season as healthy and ready as they can. Winning the games is secondary (or worse). There are a (more…)
In the NBA we spend a lot of time focusing on coaching changes and the impact they are going to have on the team and therefore on how we bet the team. That makes sense – especially because coaching changes are so frequent in the league. When a General Manager is (more…)
The demise of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2011 NBA playoffs is one of the most interesting case studies the NBA has provided in years. If you need a refresher, they entered the playoffs as the two-time defending champions, but things did not go well. They had far more trouble (more…)
If you are a person who likes to bet on the NBA then you have some time to kill before the action gets rolling again. Most of you will likely use the time to do the obvious – bet on football. While that’s always a good idea, this is also a (more…)
By the time the All-Star break rolls around in the NBA there are at least eight or ten teams most years that clearly and obviously have no chance of making the playoffs – or even coming close. Their seasons might essentially be over, but that doesn’t mean that we can or (more…)
The NBA preseason is underway. There are ways to bet on the preseason if you are determined to do so, but I have never seen much value in betting on any preseason – too many variables that you have to guess about. That doesn’t mean that the preseason isn’t useful, though. (more…)
We are in the midst of the NBA preseason. It’s not a particularly exciting time – for fans or for most players. There is one very good reason to be interested in the preseason, though – you can bet on it. Nothing you can bet on can be too bad, can (more…)
I am writing this the day after Carmelo Anthony was traded to the Knicks in a deal that involved half the roster of both teams and the Nuggets – and some of the Timberwolves as well – so the evaluation of the immediate impact of a NBA trade is obviously very (more…)
The high seeds in the NBA playoffs are very dominant. For example, a number one seed has lost to a number eight just three times in NBA history. A sixth seed, the 1995 Houston Rockets, are the lowest seed ever to win it all. Generally there are a few teams each (more…)
NBA second half betting offers you a great tool to invest your money. There are several benefits to betting on the second half of an NBA game. Here, we will explain what the benefits are and how you might be able to come out with a chance to middle with your (more…)
Absolutely anything can happen in sports. Any bettor who has ever taken an outcome for granted knows how true that is. In the first round of the NBA playoffs, though, there are some teams that are as close to unbeatable as is possible in sports. Not every top seed is sure (more…)
I don’t really believe in momentum. NBA teams definitely can win multiple games, and it seems that wins can lead to more wins, but pointing at momentum as the cause for that is lazy. There are all sorts of factors that can lead to a winning streak – increased confidence, good (more…)
