
In the case of going against public money NFL bets, all you really need is the line to move to make a solid bet.įor example, the Kansas City Chiefs are playing the Los Angeles Rams and the odds opened like this on Monday:
Sharps – experienced bettors – see these initial line moves and try to wait as long as possible until they believe the odds are at their peak before betting the other side. First-time bettors may put their money down on a particular team because they like them, which in turn forces the sportsbook to adjust their opening odds. Successful point spread betting involves trying to get the best odds. This is also known as “fading” because you are taking the other side of where the NFL public money is going. Conversely, if you believe that the 44 percent are right, you are betting against the public. If you believe that the 56 percent are right, you are betting with the public. In this case, 56 percent of the betting public believe the Pats will cover the spread and 58 percent of bettors believe that the total will go OVER 34 points.
Video Poker Guide: Play the Best Online Video Poker Games. In a word, we ARE guessing every single day of the year, but as long as we’re doing the work, being thorough, and being consistent, then we are at least making educated guess as opposed to throwing darts or being a lemming and following the public over a cliff. Otherwise, you’re just guessing, and we know what “guessing” gets you in this business. So, “fade the public” is indeed a reasonable long-term strategy, however you’ve got to know in truth where they public money actually is, and you’ve got to develop your own parameters and follow them to a “T”. And if you’re even half-good at math, you know that early in the betting cycle it’s going to take far less money to move a line then it will closer to the time the game starts. So, we’re just not comparing apples to apples if we’re looking at those bet percentages at different times during the betting cycle.Īdd into that equation the fact that what many market mover/syndicates will do is bet very early on a game, which forces the books to adjust the number, knowing that they’re coming back with a bigger bet on the other side at a better number. To put that in perspective, and typical NFL game during the regular season will have tens of thousands (if not more) tickets on the game by kickoff. Clearly that’s an early move and one that’s NOT reflective of real public money. Speaking of different times of the day, those percentages often come out quite early, and I’ve seen some sites with bet percentages on games that may not have 100 tickets on them. And of course some books cater to high limit professionals and they’re usually going to have very different numbers at different times of the day. As we know, some books are quite public/recreational, or as many would like to call them, square. One reason and perhaps the biggest reason for that is that they all draw their numbers from a different cross-section of bookmakers.
By that I mean there are some big discrepancies from one site to another in terms of percentage. For starters, there are any number of websites that give out betting percentages, and to be quite honest, they are not all alike. It’s more complicated than simply looking at a bet percentage and making a determination, and that’s of course something that has more parameters than most people know. I’ve had conversations with many bettors over the years about this. We hear this term quite often and over a long period of time it’s of course a profitable thing to do, if you can ascertain what is and what is not public money.