Training Camp: After The Football
There is no offseason for sharp handicappers.
It’s no secret that a ton of casual bettors close up shop after the Super Bowl. And in doing so, they rob themselves of an opportunity to cash in against softer betting lines than anything you’ll find in the NFL. What for? If you know the mechanics of the pointspread in football, you’ve already got the raw material to start betting on basketball.Value-conscious handicappers will capitalize on the square betting public across the entire betting spectrum. And we are talking about the wide world of sports here. Until they open betting lines on the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, this is as good as making a living gets.
The following are the six most prominent betting sports between now and September – and don’t forget about events like MMA, golf, NASCAR and the Triple Crown.
NBA basketball betting: Pro basketball is second only to football in betting popularity. Lines are still somewhat tight as a result, but in a league with an 82-game regular season, you can be a lot more selective about your picks. A success rate of 55 percent is enough to put you well in the black, and it’s a perfectly reachable goal if you take the time to handicap the key reserves on each bench as well as the starters.
College basketball betting: The sport is the same, but with over 200 of the 344 Division I teams generating betting lines, there’s a lot more room for value betting. The biggest profits are almost always found in the mid-majors and the lower conferences; for example, George Mason of the CAA is on top of the money standings at 12-3-1 ATS. The amount of freely available (and incredibly useful) advanced stats in college hoops is staggering, and programs with strong coaches do well from year to year, even while the players come and go.
MLB betting: If you’ve ever made a moneyline bet on the NFL, you’re ready to play some baseball. This is an incredible sport for handicapping – a 60-percent success rate is a perfectly legitimate target. We’re talking 162 games for each team in the regular season (that’s 2,430 games total), and you can boil down much of your research to the two starting pitchers in the matchup. Baseball is a numbers game; pick up a copy of Moneyball if you haven’t already and you’ll see how effective advanced statistical analysis is on the diamond.
NHL hockey betting: Hockey has a strong regional appeal, almost a blue state-red state thing. But the important color is green. The oddsmakers in Las Vegas who drive the marketplace know less about this sport than the other Big Four, and their opening lines reflect this. It’s an 82-game season, just like the NBA, and you can take a baseball-like approach by concentrating your handicapping on the two goaltenders involved.
Soccer betting: If people in the United States hate soccer, why do they keep drawing 70,000 fans to exhibition games in the summer? It’s about the quality of the sport; the MLS has a faithful following as a second-tier league, but betting on the English Premiership in particular is on the rise. You can make a healthy living fading the betting public by picking the “draw” outcome in select matchups – punters bet on their favorite teams to win, not tie.
Tennis betting: This sport was an automatic play for a while there – just bet Roger Federer or Justin Henin at every major. Henin has retired, and Federer is now the No. 2 man to Rafael Nadal, but there’s still plenty of money to be made. Nadal is a chalkeater’s dream at 157-14 lifetime on clay courts, including 81-2 over the past three years. And five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams is 62-9 lifetime on grass (50-4 since 2000). No football team is going to give you those kinds of numbers – or eye candy.
