Football Betting Tips
How to Think Like a Sharp
Football is the most popular bet sport in North America, whether we’re referring to college football or pro football.
The betting pool on these games ranges from fans, those just betting their favorites teams, to squares, a novice bettor who often uses flawed logic, to sharps, who are professional or otherwise sophisticated players.
If you’re a fan just looking for some entertainment, this article won’t interest you as much and we’ll encourage you to instead read my article: avoiding sucker bets. For everyone else, the goal of this article is to help you start thinking less like a square and more like a sharp.
Football Betting Tip #1 – TV is a square's worst enemy.
So often, bettors will race to their favorite betting site based on what they see on TV. We could be referring to a news report someone is injured, or a so called expert such as a coach or a former NFL player sharing his picks, or commentary on anything given during a game.
If you’re following along with the same info in order to bet, you’re most likely a square. Keep in mind tens of thousands, or perhaps even a million plus viewers are getting the exact same info. Bookies are reacting to it. If you don’t understand this concept I suggest reading the page: sports betting lines.
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Football Betting Tip #2 – Last week doesn’t matter.
The Jets as a 3 point underdog beat the fan favorite Pats by 14 points. What do most bettors do? They suddenly believe the Jets are now a better team, and look to bet on them next week.
Don’t fall into this trap of thinking. In fact, more often than not when a team is upset the previous week, they hear about it from their coaches, their teammates, their friends etc. This team will bust their asses to ensure they don’t have to experience that same taste of defeat or embarrassment again and are generally well prepared to bounce back the following week.
On the other hand, the team that performed better than expected is off celebrating their win, getting congratulated etc, and might ultimately not practice as hard, or at least with the same intensity as the team that looked awful the week before.
Football Betting Tip #3 – Bet against the locks.
When everyone and their grandmother are telling you a team is sure to win, bet against that team. This is an old concept that’s been around for years called a Bar Stool Pundit, BSP for short.
When everyone in a sports bar is sitting on their stool saying the odds makers lost their minds, this team for sure covers, rest assured far more times than not this team fails to cover. In fact, a poster Natedogg use to cover these on 2+2 poker forums during which time picks based of BSPs were winning at around a 70% clip.
If a bookmaker is willing to take lopsided action, remind yourself where these guys get the money from to build billion dollar casinos.
Football Betting Tip #4 – Take advantage of line moves.
As a general rule of thumb when a line is moving early in the week you want to be on the side the line is getting worse for. This is because early bettors, which are mostly sharp, are likely giving lopsided action on this team.
When a line is moving late, you want to be on the side that the line is getting worse for because squares are betting up the opposite team. I cover this in greater detail on the page sports betting lines.
Football Betting Tip #5 – Take advantage of half points.
When betting a favorite of -7 or -7.5 you will often want to buy points moving the favorite to -6.5. The same applies to underdogs +6.5 or +7 you’ll often want to buy points moving these to +7.5. When moving on or off the 7, each half point is worth about 15 cents.
If a bookmaker offers you the opportunity to take -7 -110 or -6.5 -125 each are about the same bet. When these are sold for less than 15 cents, which is often the case at Bookmaker.eu, you’ll gain an advantage by buying the half point.
Note: In all other scenarios we know of in football betting, the half point is not worth buying and will cost you expectation.
Final thoughts on how to think like a sharp.
If you’re looking to win at sports betting, you need to spend less time thinking like a square and more time thinking like a sharp. We strongly suggest reading the book Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong; this is a great book to teach anyone how to think more like a sharp.
Finally know this, because they are the first site to post lines for nearly all football games, every sharp has an account at www.Bookmaker.eu, and most use it as one of their most popular betting outs.