Written By @Hookslide23
If there is one solid, no-fail piece of advice I could give to make money betting NFL games, it would be this: pick winners! That’s what I did in Week 6, and I really don’t know why I didn’t think of doing it sooner. It’s far more fun than picking losers.
My coin-flip picks that offered the most money line value were Philadelphia (+135), Minnesota (+128), and Arizona (+105); all three teams won. My lone mistake this week was ignoring my own advice from last week on how to maximize parlay value.
A two-team parlay featuring the Saints and Jaguars offered a +161 payout, but I really needed something closer to +245 to exceed the expected value. So I thought hard about it, and made the age-old mistake of thinking; “there’s no way those two teams are going to lose,” and placed my bet. The Saints win, the Jaguars lose, and I had to settle for cashing three of four tickets after letting Blake Bortles decide my fate.
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Here’s another fun tip for you would-be “career bettors”: focus on the positives! A clean sweep would have been a lot of fun, and that +161 parlay payout would have helped my bankroll, but I finished with a net positive +2.7 betting positions on the week, and now I’m up +5.1 positions on the season. This is not the time to focus on the foolish parlay bet that lost. I’ll do that at the end of the season if I end up in the red.
“But Hook,” you ask, “why did you take the Cardinals at +105 when I got them at +120?”
That’s a great question, especially considering that I wanted to write about money line movement this week.
My basic strategy is to pick teams that have somewhere between 45-50% true odds (not implied money line odds) of winning, and offer positive money line payouts. It’s a strategy that has consistently made me money, but if I want to maximize my winnings I have to play the game within the game; the bet within the bet so to speak. I’m talking about monitoring the money lines to see if a good payout gets even better throughout the course of the week.
I tend to do my research early in the week and get my bets down no later than Wednesday, because I am an undisciplined action junkie who needs those safeguards. If I wait until the last-minute to place my bets, I’m like a kid in a candy store, except I have a squirt gun in my hand and I’m trying to stick-up the place for some reason. Bets here, bets there, numbers go out the window, it’s a mess.
When I identified the Cardinals as a good candidate for a coin-flip bet early in the week, they were +105 at BetOnline.AG, and there was value in that bet. Arizona opened +113, and I jumped the gun early because I was afraid +105 would not last. In retrospect, they weren’t favored and the public was on Tampa, if I had waited a bit longer I could have had +120 Sunday afternoon after the Bucs got as high as 3-point favorites.
There is no “sweet spot” that I’ve been able to identify yet as to when the best time to get your money down is, and if you’re already getting a good price on a pick you deem to have value, there’s nothing wrong with betting early. In fact, the 2017 market is all about getting down early. But +105 on the Cardinals after being embarrassed by the Eagles, beat up by the Cowboys, and barely slipping by the 49ers and Colts in overtime? That one probably could have waited until closer to kickoff had I done a better job reading the market.
But what am I saying? This is no time to focus on the negatives and the fact that I could have landed a better payout on the game! I cashed three of four bets, gained a couple more positions, and now I’m ready to take on Week 7. I might just play it a little smarter this time through.
