Sports Betting Tips

The best time to place your NHL futures bets is after the first game of the playoffs. Hey, that is today! Most of the best value will be on teams that lost the first game. What I try to do with my futures bets is turn $50 into $1,000. If you’ve been following this blog you know that we did just that on the New York Giants this year at the beginning of the NFL playoffs. And we came darn near doing it with Davidson in the NCAA tournament (with our field bet). Now it’s time to make it happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

So let’s take a look at the hockey contracts. This is a great sport to bet the underdogs on because there isn’t that much difference as far as the number of games won between all the teams that made the post-season. With the exception of Detroit, they all won forty-something games. The Redwings certainly look like the standout team this season with 54 wins. However it will cost you about 25 at Tradesports to back them, which is only getting 3-1 odds. There is simply no value in that. So lets pick some teams to knock them off.

Looking at the standings there is one stat that can help us find the better underdogs, and that is the OT number. This is the number of games that were won in overtime by shootout, which really means that this is the number of games decided by luck. We want our long-shot bets to be good teams, so we prefer that number to be as low as possible. The lowest number of regular season OT wins for any team that made the playoffs this year is 7, and the highest is 13.

OK, now on to Tradesports. We are going to want to buy teams with a price under 5.0, risking less than $50 to possibly win $950. Four teams stood out today and here are the ones I purchased.

Senators (8 OT wins) - bought at 2.8

Devils (7 OT wins) bought at 4.4

Stars (7 OT wins) bought at 4.7

Wild (10 OT wins) bought at 2.9

Maybe I got a little wild with the Wild, as they had 10 OT wins, but I just can’t resist a bargain sometimes.

Technorati Tags: NHL, Hockey, Sports betting

Wow, all number one seeds in the final four for the first time in history! That’s really something. Makes a bigger accounting chore for whoever is running the office pool, that’s for sure. Every year a lot of people choose that scenario in their brackets - but this is the first time it has ever happened. So most of the pools will still be hotly contested. Value players like me find themselves on the sidelines now. Let’s see if we can fix that.

But before we do, one last little fantasy about the final shot of the Kansas/Davidson game going in and allowing me to cash my Field bet at a huge profit. Yeah, I like that one. Oh well, time to move on.

Tradesports has North Carolina bid at 34 currently. Memphis is at 24 and the other two are sitting at 20. So where’s the value? Well if you think like I do then you figure any of these teams could win and they all have an equal chance. That means they should all be worth 25. So you could buy UCLA and/or Kansas at 20 and have an overlay if that theory is correct.

But there is a better alternative. Those two teams are -5 off where they should be so that’s only five points of overlay for those wagers. Instead you can simply sell NC at 34 and pick up 9 points of overlay. Then you have both those teams working for you anyway. And that’s what I am off to do!

Good luck in your office pool.

Technorati Tags: March madness, Final four, Sports betting, Ncaa basketball

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