Why is it that 65% to 75% of the time amateur sports bettors go with the favorite when they bet the point spread? That’s the stat on amateur bettors and it’s sort of an amazing one. Why is it amazing? Because the whole point of the spread is to even out wagering (more…)

The NFL and college football seasons are a time when online and land-based sportsbooks and handicappers are exceptionally busy. Professional bettors are working throughout the week, preparing to wager on college and pro football games that are played from Thursday through Monday. Many sports bettors enjoy handicapping games themselves. The process (more…)

Here’s a question that many sports bettors find difficult to answer correctly. The question is would you like to bet less and win 60% or bet more and win 54% of your wagers? Most bettors would say that they’d like to do the former; that is, bet less and win a higher (more…)

If you’re a sports bettor, you may have considered hiring a sports betting handicapping service. Some sports bettors think that hiring someone to make their picks is equivalent to either cheating or wasting their cash. But neither is true.

Of course, if you enjoy handicapping and are good at it, then chances (more…)

If you don’t know what F-T-S stands for in sports handicapping, then there’s no time like the present to find out. These are the three basic methods used in sports handicapping. Many pick artists will use a combination of these methods. All are useful and each one helps create a solid (more…)

For some reason, sports bettors seem to be a volatile lot. When a pick service gets it right for them, they can be overly thankful and when they don’t get it correct, the sports bettors can be a vocally miserable group. They exhibit what Allan Greenspan has called an “irrational exuberance.”  (more…)

Sports betting involves research, an understanding of the game being bet and the ability to correctly evaluate stats, facts and trends. There’s a lot that goes into being a successful sports bettor. Along with all of the fact gathering and number crunching, the sports bettor has to attend to the management (more…)

Every preseason sports publication around carries hype and hoopla. Why? Because that’s what grabs attention of sports bettors, makes money and causes a lot of buzz. There are plenty of good reasons to read these publications. They usually give a good overview of specific players and teams and offer a historical (more…)

Statistical analysis in sports is getting more and more powerful all the time. Sports handicappers who are aware of the stats that are available and how they can be helpful in the handicapping process have a clear and obvious edge over others. Baseball stats guru Bill James is one of the (more…)

Anyone who is a serious bettor of any pro sport in North America knows that at some point each year you have to make the transition from the regular season to the playoffs.  In a lot of ways betting on the postseason in any sport is the same as the regular (more…)

Successful sports betting is all about handling transitions well when handicapping. You regularly have to make transitions between different sports, types of bets, or phases of the season. The preseason is different than the early part of the regular season, and the stretch drive of the season is different than the (more…)

People who are trying to become better sports bettors will hear time and again that as handicappers they have to have a long term view. There is nothing that is more true than that. Once you have a sports handicapping approach that works you can’t worry about what happens in any given (more…)

In sports betting on the NHL and NBA playoffs quirks of scheduling and series that run long means that teams can have short layoffs between one series and the next. They could endure a grueling seven game series only to have to start the next with just a day of rest. (more…)

There are many different ways for sports handicappers to bet on a game, and some will work better for you than others. The two most popular are betting on a side and betting on totals. Lots of bettors successfully play both kinds of bets, but there is almost certainly one type (more…)

Twitter, which is getting more and more popular every day, can be useful as a sports handicapping tool. It used to be that it was just a fringe website used by gossips. Now everyone is on it, and there is an incredible amount of valuable information out there. For handicappers it can (more…)

Every major professional betting sport in the country has a substantial playoff. Each sport’s playoff is obviously unique, but regardless of which sport it is there is some common factors that indicate likely success or failure for teams. Here are five bad signs that will tell sports handicappers if teams heading into (more…)

As expert sports handicappers know, there are few things as hard for teams in the NHL or NBA than winning a seven game series. The intensity of the sports increases almost exponentially once the playoff begins, and every win comes at a big cost. For fans there is nothing better than (more…)

Power ratings – a term that every sports handicapper has heard, and every successful handicapper understands. A lot of winning bettors use power ratings as the basis of their handicapping approach. Even those who don’t formally use a power rating often employ the underlying principles behind power ratings that make them effective. (more…)

When handicapping games, sports bettors need to spend a lot of time looking at the stats, the matchups, the star players, and so on. What often doesn’t get as much attention, though, is the coaching matchup. Quite often the coaches aren’t particularly relevant because they are fairly evenly matched, or they (more…)

Good sports handicappers know that getting an insight into how a game is likely to turn out requires a careful analysis of statistics that matter. Figuring out which of the statistics actually matter is a big issue, but one that we won’t deal with here. What I do want to look (more…)

If you read or talk about sports betting at all then one of the words you hear all the time is ‘edge’. People will tell you that sports betting is all about finding an edge, that they know that they have a big edge, and so on. It’s a very important (more…)

If you have spent any time at all in the sports betting world then you have inevitably heard about locks – expert sports picks that absolutely can’t lose. We’ll go into more detail, but if there is one thing every sports handicappers needs to take from this article it’s this:

There is no such (more…)

One of the many tough things to deal with when handicapping the NHL or NBA playoffs is a team that wins their seven game series in just four or five games. Teams that win that quickly are all but certain to have a long break between the end of one series (more…)

One of the things that both players and bettors learn is that you shouldn’t spend time looking ahead to games further up the schedule. The most important game is the next one you are playing, and if you forget that you can make costly mistakes. There are times, though, that it (more…)

Without question, the single most valuable part of my handicapping process – regardless of what sport I am handicapping – is when I make my own lines. Before I look at the lines that the sports books are offering I determine what I think a fair number would be. I don’t (more…)

If there is one trait shared by almost all losing sports bettors – other than the fact that they lose more bets than they win, of course – it’s that they make too many assumptions. At the heart of it all, sports betting is about looking at facts, comparing those facts, (more…)

Spring is the time when we clean our house, our yards, and our offices, so it only makes sense that we do a little spring cleaning on our handicapping as well. Spring is a good time for most bettors to do it as well – hockey and basketball are winding down, (more…)