monday night football

How To Win Betting Football
By Bettorsworld.com, Fri Dec 9th

How To win Betting Football

You want to learn how to win betting football this year? Tiredof always coming out at the wrong end of the figure column?Tired of combing the net for free nfl picks Well, sit back, readthis article, and by the time you are finished, I guarantee youthat you will be a tough player for the sportsbooks to beat.

Don't expect miracles. It can take many years to become aseasoned pro. However, by following some simple guidelines, youcan drastically improve your play and be well on your way tobecoming a "sharp" and certainly will do better than randomlyplaying the free picks you'll find on the net.

There are three keys to being successful betting sports.

1) handicapping/picking winners

2) money management

3) line value

With all three, you need DISCIPLINE

All three are equally important. I've seen plenty of very goodhandicappers go broke because they weren't able to manage theirmoney and weren't able to understand line value. Of the three,handicapping is probably the LEAST important. Those that areable to spot value and know how to manage their bankroll, canwin without the slightest clue how to handicap a game.

But let's start with handicapping. Of course there's allot moreto handicapping than I am going to be able to talk about here.But what I will do, is give you some key pointers to point youin the right direction and instantly improve your chances ofwinning.

We'll start with power ratings. You need a number to beat anumber. Nebraska is playing Florida ST and Fla St is -6. Is thatthe correct number? Or is that a number put up in an attempt toget even action on the game? Sometimes, it's both. But the gamesyou're looking to bet are the games where the number/pointspreadis NOT the actual difference between the two teams, and thereare plenty of opportunities to find these games. That's whereour power ratings come in.

I keep my own power ratings. Allot goes into them and I couldn'tpossibly teach you here in the space I have. But you don't needto keep your own power ratings. There are some ratings availablefor free, or for a few bucks, and all do a decent job. The GoldSheet is one such publication. They have been keeping powerratings for decades and do just about as good of a job asanyone. Teamrankings.com is another source of power ratings.Just do a google search for football powerratings and you'llfind plenty, and some of those are kept by some very sharpmathematical minds.

Once you have your ratings, you can assign a line to each gameon the card for the coming week, and then compare it to theactual betting lines. You're looking for significant differencesbetween the power rating and the betting line. Those are thegames you want to zero in on.

But you can't just use a power rating. That's just a startingpoint. From there you need to to take a look at other factorsthat could influence the game. Weather, injuries, revenge,etc.etc. For example, you may find a significant differencebetween the power rating and the line, but further research maytell you that the reason for the big gap is a key injury in thegame.

I mentioned revenge above. In my opinion, psychological factorsin games are often overlooked but can be absolutely HUGE indetermining the result. Particularly in college football. Maybeit's revenge for a blow out at the hands of their opponent theyear before. Maybe one coach said negative things about a playeron the other team. The list goes on and on but any bulletinboard material is worth looking in to. Coaches routinely usethese motivational factors when

they prep their teams forupcoming games, and these motivational factors work!

I once played on a hockey team that lost 19-2. Three weeks laterwe played the same team again and beat them 6-0. Why? Becausefor one thing, our coach had us wanting blood/revenge for the19-2 drubbing we took 3 weeks earlier. He had us in a frenzy.Another key factor was Bobby Orr was going to be at the gamethat night. Our team knew about it. The other team didn't. Whatkid doesn't want to play well in front of Bobby Orr???

Now had you been able to bet on this game, and had been able tofind out Bobby Orr was going to be there, and added in the HUGErevenge motive we had, you could have cashed a nice bet on ourteam who would have been a fairly good sized underdog going in.All things being equal, the other team was probably better thanus. They may have beaten us 9 out of 10 times. But there was noway they were going to win that particular night.

Situations like this arise each and every week in collegefootball. Take note.

Trends are another misunderstood area. To me, trends are 90%useless. There may be one or two trends worth their weight, butthe majority of the trends you'll find printed on the net orelsewhere are trends that are discovered AFTER the fact. It'seasy to go back over a large sampling of games and find trendsthat WOULD have won had you played them from the starting point.You may read a trend that says some college football team is10-0 against the spread after losing by more than 20 points theweek before. Well that's just great. But who knew that when theywere 1-0 after losing by 20?? Further more, you could startplaying that trend now and go 0-5. But guess what, you'll stillsee that trend hyped next year. It will say that the team is10-5 after losing by more than 20 the week before. Hey, 10-5still looks good doesn't it?

You get the point. Forget trends. 90% are garbage and the onesthat are meaningful, everyone knows about them, INCLUDING theoddsmakers, so this is already reflected in the betting line.

One last tip in the handicapping department. A method you canuse to isolate solid selections each weeks is the yards perpoint method. It's a very simple, yet very effective way to comeup with your own number on a football game. I've written aseparate article about YPP.

If doing the above work doesn't appeal to you, there is oneother thing you can do. Hire a handicapper. Now granted, 90% ofthe so called professional sports services are complete jokes.But there are a select few. Contrary to what you may think,using someone else's selections isn't taboo. Some of the mostsuccessful sports bettors in the world aren't handicappersthemselves. They have professional handicappers which they hireto work for them. Now these handicappers aren't the commercialhandicappers you see in magazine ads or on TV on Saturdaymornings. They are generally professional bettors and playersthemselves, and look to fatten their own bankrolls by going towork for one of the big money players that are out there,generally receiving a percentage of the win or a free roll ontheir plays for a certain amount per play.

While you won't find one of those guys, you may be able to finda handicapper who can consistently win. In which case, you wouldthen need to focus on the other two key factors involved withwinning. Money Management and Line Value.

For more information on betting on sports, please visit Bettorsworld.com

About the author:Bettorsworld.com hasbeen covering the offshore sportsbook industry since 1995,providing in depth sportsbook ratings, free football picks andodds and much, much more.