Sports Betting Strategy: Sports Betting Tips That Make Money
- Filed under: Sports Betting
- Date: Aug 22,2010
Successful sports bettors know that there is one important thing in betting: the numbers. My own sports betting strategy system is based on numbers, there are no silly emotions, half baked ideas, or gimmicky concepts like so many other books out there. When you look at the National Football League, the studies show that there is another bias that could be useful to bettors, and it happens late in the football season. This simple advantage? Well, it has to do with the home team.
Basically, this is a bad sports betting strategy to follow with winning percentages dropping below the required fifty-two. four percent you need to make even the littlest profit with ten cent juice, but the research shoes that later in the season, the home ‘dog play will start to make more sense to you.
If you wait until week fourteen a wager on the home underdog will just cover 51.4 percent of the time, and that is a losing idea. However, after week fourteen that amount jumps up to a profitable sixty percent. That is a big advantage to have on your side so late in the season. If you are blessed enough to find a home ‘dog in the playoffs, these come in at a success rate of nearly 78 percent.
A few more points: Playoff season means a limited and shorter schedule so there aren’t as many chances for parlays or teasers, the weather plays a bigger role during play offs, so keep this in mind when you bet on a warm weather team that is going into a colder city.
In his study about late season home dogs, Richard Borghesi of Texas State University found that there was a statistically significant number of wins by home underdog teams to justify a winning formula. In studying NFL games from 1981 to 2000, he found that late season home dogs (weeks 15-18) beat the spread by an average of 4.46 points. You do have to keep in mind that there aren’t a ton of games to choose from so the sample size is relatively small, but there were enough samples to justify a statistical trend. In the playoffs, the home dog won by an average of 11.3 points (again small sample).
You may wonder how this lines up against weeks 1-14. On average, visitors win by .09 points when taking into account all of the games (damn those odds-makers are good). In weeks 15-18 however, home teams win by an average of 2.06 points, and home teams in the playoffs win by an average of 2.86 points. Betting late home underdogs was profitable in each of the 5 year increments studied from 1981-2000.
Basically, it does not pay off to follow the buzz about a specific sports betting strategy or what is “hot” at the moment. However, when you do find a strategy that works, and has worked for a long time, you’d be a fool not to use it and stick with it!
Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Betting Strategy and has worked for Las Vegas and Atlantic City books. His Sports Betting Professor Systems have sold over 250,000 units and cover all major sports. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-betting-strategy