Sports betting is hard work. You can get lucky and be on the bright side of variance for extended periods. But picking winners consistently demands a lot of focus, knowledge, and patience. Approaching sound money management and building the skill to beat the closing line will help any sports bettor in any given sports. When it comes to pro football, there are a few NFL betting tips one should consider when distributing his hard-earned money in one of the biggest betting markets in the world.
NFL Betting Tips Part One
At the beginning of the football week, preferably earlier, you should already know at which price you would bet the Sunday Night Football game. Your betting results from the afternoon don’t change your pricing on the night game. As the week advances, you should get a pretty clear picture for the Sunday slates. Don’t let losses get in your mind, don’t chase!
Recency bias is one of the biggest enemies for sports bettors. In a football game, a lot of things can happen. Teams can have a pretty good week where everything works out their way. They can also have an awful week where everything works against them. In conclusion, sports teams don’t perform to their standard week in week out. Separating outlier performances and applying them to the mean is one of the most important skills for sports bettors. Therefore, it’s the easiest NFL betting tip I can tell anyone.
Be Aware of Steam Moves
When you open the NFL odds board at Sportsbook Review prior to the Sunday kickoff, you realize a lot of different colors. It’s when spreads and totals move the most. A lot of bettors come in late in the week and there’s also a lot of influential money moving the markets late. 90 minutes prior to kickoff, NFL teams have to hand out their final inactive report. There are reasons to bet late, but those moves shouldn’t dictate your own betting behavior. Don’t follow big late moves just for the sake of it. There is no correlation between steam moves and the outcomes of NFL games.
Sports betting is math, and many bookmakers are good at their job. They wouldn’t offer you options to buy points if they didn’t profit off that action. Buying points will increase your chances of winning a bet. However, most of the time the cost of buying (the difference in price) negates your advantage which leads to a -EV (Expected Value) bet. You will hurt your Return on Investment long-term. Buying or selling points merely is a math thing. It is barely an NFL betting tip, but an important nugget in general.
Beware of the Hype
ESPN headlines – or the ones of any other big sports media outlet – can dictate opinions. How many times did the media fool us with the narrative that the Patriots have nothing left in the tank? Most recently in 2018. I wasn’t high on them either, but that’s a different story. Draw your conclusions on your own and don’t get fooled by public opinions.
First of all, I don’t know of a reliable tracking system which proves that reverse line movement holds any value. It indicates a shift in the market opinion, nothing more. Big websites sell this concept to make money. Secondly, as soon you bet into reverse line movement, you bet into a worse number. Therefore, we need to try to anticipate line movement and create a system that helps you betting into good numbers instead.
This one is one of my favorite NFL betting tips. Because of the significant impact of fantasy sports, many bettors overvalue injuries to skill position players and tend to ignore other significant injuries. For instance, there are a few middle linebackers who can genuinely make a difference. Cornerback is one of the most critical positions. This position group can negate a lot of what the front-four does on a per-play basis. In other words, the best pass rush can get devalued with an awful secondary.
Betting Tip: Sports Betting is Math
The difference between odds of -110 and +100 is 2.38% in break-even percentage. However, the push frequency of the 4 is somewhere around 2.25%. By selling from -3.5 to -4, you only add half of the push frequency which results in an advantage of 1.13%. These are the kind of calculations every sports bettor must have in his arsenal.
NFL teams might show you some of their tendencies during pre-season, but their game plans are mostly vanilla. As a result, only a few NFL coaches that put any relevance to pre-season scores. Teams who dominate in the pre-season can very well lose their first four regular-season matchups. Don’t get blinded by pre-season performances. If all, you should track the drives when teams let their starters play.
I couldn’t find any correlation between the pace of play and the scoring outputs of teams on the season level. As a result, the speed of the game has no impact on totals. An offense could make full use of the snap clock between plays. However, if they get a lot out of their snaps and are efficient, they will score anyway. Find exploitable matchups.S