Sports Betting Tips

Tradesports is closing their doors. Those squids! They claim it’s because U.S. citizens have a difficult time depositing funds. That is nonsense - I just Fed-X’d them a check two weeks ago and it was promptly deposited with no problems.

I think it’s time to switch to Matchbook. They have a good operation now and even do live in-running events. Now if these two places would just get together so Tradesports customers could transfer balances over (I emailed Matchbook about this).

I guess I will have to rewrite my ebook now to How to Milk the Matchbook Cash Cow. The same winning principles apply.

November is a wonderful month for sports fans and consequently a terrible month for the wives of sports fans. NFL, College Football, Hockey, and NBA are all going. This is the best possible scenario for the sharp sports bettor. With so many games on the schedule every day, you just know the line makers aren’t going to nail every one of them. This is a great time of year to hunt for value in the lower-profile events.

It’s also a great time for playing bookie at Tradesports. I go into great detail on this strategy in my ebook. A larger schedule means wider spreads on many of the games and more opportunity for stepping in front of the inside offers. You can regularly get +117 on a fair pointspread if you are diligent.

It greatly helps to know how to adjust for small pointspread differences. In my ebook I provide a handy chart for this. For example, if the going line at most sportsbooks is 6 on a basketball game but Tradesports has it at 6.5, you need to know what price you will settle for on either side of the Tradesports line. The objective is to get the equivalent of +110 on a fair pointspread just like the bookies do. This is a lot easier to do on point totals (over-unders), by the way.

I have never known a bookie to lose money over the course of a season. Playing at a betting exchange provides you the opportunity of employing the same strategy they do - and you don’t even have to write off any bad debt from the deadbeats! It may not be glamorous, but it is a profitable business. The sooner you quit handicapping the games and just accept the math the sooner you can start grinding out steady profits, season after season.

That doesn’t mean handicapping is completely worthless. In some of my other posts I give tips for how to do it better than most. The nice thing about playing bookie on a betting exchange like Tradesports is that you can do both. In other words, do good handicapping work and then only get into positions which pay you a premium on the side you think has an edge. That, my friend, is winning sports betting.

Technorati Tags: Sports, Gambling, Sports betting

The second half of the NFL season is almost always different from the first half, for the most part. A smart bettor takes advantage of this knowledge. The losing public doesn’t. Typical sports bettors keep doing the same thing season after season, as well as second half after first half within the season. They are the reason the bookies have such a lucrative profession. Hopefully you are not one of them. Hopefully you understand that the NFL is not like the NCAA, in the respect that everybody is a professional player and all teams are professional teams.

That may not sound like it means much, but it does. No team in the NFL is toooo much better than any other team, and no team in the NFL is toooo much worse than any other team regardless of the records, with a few exceptions. More on the exceptions in a moment. For now, just consider how those teams that you thought were powerhouses early in the season have faltered under closer scrutiny (think Cowboys), and how the doormats have come to life when you least expected it (think Rams).

That is what you can expect the first half of the season. After all, they are all professional players. First impressions in any given season can usually be profitably bet against during weeks three through six. This year was no exception. However what happens now is that another trap for the typical sports bettor gets set. He thinks he can start betting against conventional logic at this point, after the fact. Unfortunately that ship has now sailed.

The rest of the season will start to get in line with what has proven to be true thus far. All of it. And the betting line will reflect it. It’s about to get tougher folks. The smart sports bettor now must survive on small edges and avoid the whipsaws in thinking that the typical public sports bettor is going through.

If you have a Tradesports account this is going to be a lot easier for you. Finding small edges is child’s play there. The public betting money will often be lopsided, creating a natural overlay on one side. That means you can often get +110, +115, or even better on a fair betting line. Everybody else is laying -110 on a fair betting line. It doesn’t matter what side of a fair betting line you are on, just ask the bookies.

But there is something else the rest of you can do. This is where we get back to the exception I mentioned earlier. Usually the true worst team in the league will have proved their intention on claiming that title by now. As a result they will have changed their psychological outlook, and will have accepted their label as losers. This can be profitably wagered on the rest of the regular season.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Detroit Lions will by some miracle win a game this season. However if you start betting on them, you may very well go broke chasing that win. Why not bet against them the rest of the season instead and win all the other games? If you have a Tradesports account you can only take positions against the Lions where you are getting even money or better against a fair point spread. So you’ll have both math and losing psychology working in your favor. That, my friends, is how it’s done.

Technorati Tags: Sports betting, Football, Nfl, Sports