Handicapping Football Games Without Stats
by Predictem.com Staff
A few years ago if somebody told me that they handicapped NFL football games without using stats I’d have told them their nuts and insisted that they had no more of a chance of winning than somebody who was basing their picks on a coin flip.
Man oh man was I wrong.
Believe it or not, there’s ways to win consistently long term without scouring box scores, team stats and weekly publications to pick winners when betting on pro football.
Now that we’ve caught your interest, let’s further investigate:
Fading the Public and General Consensus
Each week Las Vegas Oddsmakers put out a side and total for each NFL matchup. Bettors flock to the windows to make their selections and despite what you may think or have been told, the action comes in evenly on some games and one-sided on others.
The key to the fading the public consensus to find winners is to figure out which games are getting one sided. One sided means all the action is coming in on one team, while the opponent is seeing very little betting action/money. A good example (using a fictitious line) of a one sided game would be 80% of bettors on the Indianapolis Colts while 20% are on the New Orleans Saints, which in 2006 may have been an accurate assessment based on a game spread of around -9.5.
This raises a red flag with us as we see that the sportsbooks have either put out a bad line that is going to get them crushed or they’ve effectively duped the public into a sucker line and they have full intention of wiping out the players bankrolls for that payday.
What we do when we see this is keep a close eye on the point spread, looking for movement whether it be up or down. In most cases if the line rises it’s just public money and the book is trying to get a few bucks back on the other side.
If there’s 80% on the Colts and the line moves in favor of the Saints, for example down from -9.5 to 9 or 8.5 or better, we know that the sharps (aka: wiseguys who are named sharps for a reason) are finding the underdog to have good value and have unloaded on the underdog.
This becomes a tremendous spot to collar a barking dog. (underdog bet with a bunch of value) These bets don’t win every time, but it will amaze you at how high of a percentage they hit, and the ones that do lose, don’t lose by much.
In our estimation, this is a very safe way of betting pro football.
There are two sites in particular where public consensus numbers can be found. The sites urls are: Wagertracker.com and Wagerline.com.
The real value of these two sites is that most of the bettors putting in their picks are recreational players who are considered to be fairly novice. That is a good thing because that’s whose opinions we want while we’re in search of the ultimate fade!
In closing, our “fading the 80% pick” was just an example. We start watching for reverse line movement starting at around the 60% mark. The opposite side seems to hit better the higher it goes. The 80%’ers are hard to come by, but are beauties when they rear their heads.
This isn’t the only way to handicap a pro football game, but one that works long term and is great for those that have very little time to study but still want a piece of the action.
Until next time, good luck with your NFL bets!
