In this essay we'll explore how one can make profitable sports bets without doing a lick of handicapping. The secret lies in learning how to properly 'bet blind', which is a way of identifying a profitable opportunity simply by assessing the point spread.
Let's start with an example. Let's say the Lakers and Bucks are playing tonight in Milwaukee , and every shop has the game lined somewhere between Bucks -1 and Bucks -2. Further, let's say that after seeing these lines I offer you the opportunity to take L.A. +6; i.e., I'm willing to give you four more points on L.A. than you could find anywhere else. Would you take L.A on these terms?
Of course you would! In fact, you probably wouldn't give it a second thought. Even if you hadn't handicapped the game you'd figure that there's no way I could know something about the game that all these sports books didn't know. You'd probably assume-correctly, might I add-that a line like Mil -1.5 'more or less' offers a 50/50 chance of each team covering (give or take a few percentage points), which means the additional four points I would be offering you would tip the scales greatly in your favor. The average point in the NBA happens to worth about 3.2%, which means that if L.A had about a 50/50 chance of covering the +1.5, they'd have about a 53% chance of covering +2.5 (since Milwaukee will win by exactly 2 points about 3% of the time). By extension, L.A would have about a 63-64% of covering +6. This would give you a whopping edge on a bet on L.A.
Maybe you've had the opportunity to make a bet like this with a buddy, or a friend at work. You know someone who's a huge fan of one team, and they're willing to give you three or four more points than you could find at any shop. They figure it's a 'friendly wager', so they're willing to take the worst of it. If you're like me, you've probably jumped on these chances as soon as they were presented. True, the money usually isn't big, but you almost have to take the bet out of principle.
Although most people don't know this, these kinds of opportunities pop up on online sports books every day. All you have to do is be there when the line moves, and jump on it before someone else does. Let's say that almost every book on the net has an NBA game at -2, except for one book that has it at -3. Assuming the -2 is pretty much a 50/50 bet, taking the +3 will give you a bet that has a 53% chance of covering. Since you only need to hit about 52.5% to break even (assuming you're laying 11 to win 10, or in other words taking the bet at -110), blindly betting the dog here will give you a small edge.
Now I know what you're next question is going to be: 'How do you know that the -2 gives each team about a 50/50 chance of covering?' Well the truth is, you don't. Sometimes the dog might have a 55% chance of covering this line, and sometimes the fave will. But in the long run this will 'even out', meaning that sometimes when you take the +3 you'll only have a bet that has a 49% of covering (assuming there will be times when the dog is only favored to cover the -2 about 46% of the time), and sometimes that same dog will have a 57-59% chance of covering the -3 (again, assuming there are occasions where the dog would have covered the -2 54-56% of the time). You don't know where this particular bet may fall on the continuum, but you do know that it will 'all even out' in the long run. And the long run, my friends, is what advantage gambling is all about.
In order to bet blind profitably there are a couple things you should do. Following, we'll go over precisely what you need to learn in order to get started.
1) Find 'Positive Subsets'
What we mean by this is identifying situations in which one team has either a) historically covered the spread more than 50% of the time, or b) in the case of a money line, has historically been a break-even or better bet. A classic example of this is home dogs in the NFL getting 4 points or more. In the past, teams in this situation have covered the closing line around somewhere between 51-52% of the time. Since you need to cover 52.5% of the time to break even, you can't expect to win by blindly betting home dogs against the widely available line. If, however, you can get an extra point or two (especially when that point is on or off the 3, or the 7), you're looking at a bet that you can expect to make you money long-term. The same is true for home dogs in the NHL that are priced at +180 or more; looking back, if you'd taken every heavy home underdog in the NHL you'd have broke even (or perhaps lost a little). Thus, if the widely available line on a team is +190, and you find a shop offering the same team at +215, you have a bet that should offer an advantage. To identify positive subsets you need to research past results, and look at games where either the line, or a scheduling dynamic, has given one team an edge against the other. You don't want to get too exotic, (i.e., teams coming off 2 division games where they've lost by 20+ points are 19-6 against the spread when playing an inter-conference game the next week, or something like that), since you won't have a sample size large enough to determine whether or not the edge is real. Also, make sure that the plays you're examining 'make sense'. The fact that teams wearing blue jerseys are 21-4 over the past 10 years against teams with red jerseys, for example, is worthless. Since there's no reason for this to have happened, a subset like this has no predictive value.
By finding positive subsets you'll improve you're winning percentage whenever you find a 'rogue line'. Let's say, for example, that you do your homework and discover that the dog in the NBA covered about 51% of the time over the past 20 years. This means that whenever you can get an extra point on the dog, you'll be looking to win around 54% of the time. Conversely, betting on the fave, even when you get 'line help', will only win about 51% of the time. Thus, you'd know to stay away from the favorite whenever you're only getting one point.
2) Learn what a 'point is worth'
In order to 'bet blind' effectively, you need to be able to examine just what your edge is. This means learning what each point is 'worth' in terms of percentage points (when betting on sports that offer a point spread), or learning what the difference in price on a money line means to you. For example, as we mentioned one point in the NBA is worth about 3.2%. If both teams have a 50/50 chance, on average, of covering a given line, then getting an extra point on one team over another means your bet (again, on average) will cover around at around a 53% clip. The NFL is trickier, since the way the game is scored means that some certain winning margins are more common than others; however, with a little homework you can figure out what any given point is worth in the NFL (if you don't want to do the work here, Stanford Wong reveals just how often any given NFL game can expect to fall right on the line in his book 'Sharp Sports Betting'. If you haven't picked this book up yet, then now would be a great time to do so).
For money lines, the calculation is simpler. Say you're looking at betting an NHL home dog that's listed at +240 at one shop, and around +215 everywhere else. To figure out you edge here, you first need to know what your expected return is on the +215. Like I said before, this bet has historically been about break-even against the widely available line, which means the dog here will win about 31.7% of the time.(If the dog wins 31.7% of the time here, then the bet will break-even over the long run. You figure this by taking the amount you'd wager (for simplicity's sake we'll say $100), and dividing that by the amount you will have returned to you if your bet wins. Since you'll have $315 returned to you, you divide 100/315, which gives you .317, or 31.7 %.). To figure out what your expected profit is on taking the team at +240, you do the following: The bet will win 31.7% of the time, which is how often you'll 'cash' your ticket. When your bet wins, you'll have $340 returned to you-your $100 stake, plus your $240 in winnings. Thus, you'll 'turn' $100 into $340 31.7% of the time. If you multiply 340 by .317, you get 107.78, which means that on average you can expect to turn that $100 into $107.78; a nice return of 7.78% on your $100 bet.
But what about favorites on the money line? The formula is the same. Say you have a team where the true line is around -170, yet you can get them for -155. As we've said before, to convert a money line into a percentage you divide the amount of the original bet by the total amount you'll have returned to you if you win. 170 divided by 270 is 62.9%, which means a game where the true line is -170 will see the favorite winning 62.9% of the time. So, you'll turn your $155 into $255 at a 62.9% clip. Multiplying 255 by .629, we find that you can expect, on average, to turn your $155 into $160.40. Your going to profit $5.40 on average, and 5.4 divided by 155 is .0348, or a 3.48% return on your money.
BEWARE THE SHARP BOOK
This next point is matter of some debate, so I'm simply going to throw it out there as something for you to consider. Some sharp players insist that there are certain books which shade their line away from the widely available line when they think they can get lopsided action on the wrong side. For example, let's say the Panthers are playing the Falcons, and the Panthers are around -4 at most books. If a book thinks that the 'true line' on the game should be around -5.5, they might hang a line like Panthers -4.5-even if everyone else has hung Panthers -4-- in hopes of getting more Falcons money than their competitors. In other words, the book is 'taking a stand' on the game. They're not looking to 'split the action' on the game and walk away with the juice; instead, they're looking to induce wrong side action from their clients. Of course, this means that the book is 'exposed' on the game, since if all goes right they'll have more money come in on one side than another. But they'll take this risk if they think it will make them more money.
In order to hang a 'rogue line', a book has to feel fairly confident in their numbers, since if they've done a poor job of handicapping the game they can lose their shirt. And, as you may have guessed, some books have a reputation for doing a better job of handicapping then others. As of the time of this writing, the book that probably has the strongest reputation for hanging opinionated lines is Pinnacle ( www.pinbet.com ). Other books with this reputation are Hollywood and CRIS (although they're generally not considered 'as sharp' as Pinnacle). Whenever Pinnacle has hung a 'rogue line', sharp bettors take a long look at the game before betting it blind, since it's likely that Pinnacle wants the action on the side they're thinking of betting. For instance, let's say the Brewers and Marlins are playing, and the Brewers are +180 at most shops. If Pinnacle has the Brewers at +200, sharps will think twice about taking the +200, since it looks like Pinnacle is inviting Brewers action. If, however, some other 'square' shop (i.e., one that does not have a reputation for hanging opinionated numbers) has the +200, they might jump all over it. The logic behind this thinking is that Pinnacle has done a solid job of handicapping the game, and knows what the true line ought to be. Thus, they're willing to bring their line closer to the true line than other shops in order to get action on the side that offers the least value.
An example of this actually occurred this last fall. Bowling Green was playing Miami Oh.on a Thursday night and Miami was a 7 point favorite at almost every shop. True, Miami was a home, but BG had become something of a 'media darling', and was highly ranked in the national polls. Since square bettors love to bet on highly ranked teams, it's probably fair to assume that most books were heavy on BG money. So, while Pinnacle could expect plenty of BG money by simply hanging a line of -7 on Miami , they instead chose to put Miami as a -7.5 favorite. As football bettors know, moving from 7 to 7.5 is a huge jump, since seeing a 7 point favorite win by exactly 7 is not a rare thing. Thus, it looked like Pinnacle was begging for more BG money, even though they could have gotten their fair share by hanging the same line as everyone else. When sharp bettors saw this they 'knew' that Miami was the 'right side', since Pinnacle wouldn't invite so much BG money if they weren't.
What does this mean to you? Simply put, if a sharp book is offering the best price on a game, you might want to think twice before making the bet. I haven't done enough research to substantiate the 'sharp book' theory, so I won't speak one way or another on its validity. But there are plenty of savvy bettors who insist that this phenomenon is real, so in the interest of completion we wanted to share this theory with you.
Well, folks, here you have it-a way you can make money betting sports without having to crunch a million numbers in a spread sheet. Find your positive subsets, figure out what your edge is, and stay away from the game if a sharp book appears to want your action. God willing, we'll see each other at the cashier's cage!
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