NCAA Tourney Picks
Those of you familiar with this blog already know you aren’t going to find any number 1 seeds picked to win the big dance here. Nothing against those teams as they are all very solid. It would be particularly great to see UCLA or Memphis win it all this year, and they both have excellent chances. But there is no value in betting on those teams. You have to risk too much for the reward and when you are sweating out a potential upset you don’t feel good about it.
Betting on the dark horses is a lot more practical, and a lot more fun. This way when one of your teams is flirting with upsetting the number one seed you are feeling great because you have a chance at a big payoff that you really didn’t expect to happen.
The trick to betting on long-odds teams at the beginning of the tournament is to get a few of them going for you. You should spread your risk capital over a half-dozen good teams, preferably all number 6 seeds and higher.
One good way to to this is with the Field Bet at Tradesports. I just took a nice position in it at 4.0 (risking $40 to win $960). This field bet has quite a few good teams going for it, including Vanderbilt, Drake, Xavier, Purdue, and Butler. It is very conceivable that at least one of these teams could pull off an upset or two and make the Elite Eight at which point you can close the position at a nice profit.
Here are some other positions I picked up:
Tennessee 5.1
Louisville 3.7
Wisconsin 2.9
Stanford 3.2
Washington State 1.4
Marquette 1.4
Gonzaga 0.3 (Risking $3 to win $997 should they go all the way)
And…. they’re off! Better hurry up and get your wagers in.
Technorati Tags: College basketball, sports betting, ncaa tournament
