Always something to learn when Betting NFL

No matter how much time you’ve spent following the NFL odds and wagering on-line, a good rule of thumb is to expect the unexpected. Let’s look at the early weeks of the 2010 season and see what lessons were learned (or at least what memories were jogged).
Over the last three years, we developed a logic-based product to pick NFL spread winners against the odds. It points to the best wagering opportunities if a certain threshold value is surpassed. During our product testing, we never came up with a scenario where selections exceeded seven points – more often wagering odds were in the 3-6 range.
So what happens in Week 1? Eleven teams make the cut. One option would have been to increase the threshold value and show the top-6 teams rather than the top-11 in the Preferred Wager document. This, in spite of the fact that research indicated every team beyond the empirically-determined threshold was equally as likely as any other team to win against the spread.
One of the problems with showing all 11 winners was that the early investment strategy was to wager the same constant value on all selected winners for the season. In fact, that was one reason we initially balked at showing 11 teams over the threshold level. We didn’t want to blow too much of the annual budget on just one week of the NFL season. Especially Week 1 – when stats and expert picker data would not be as solid as later on in the season.
Of course, the top-6 listed wagers lost money and the 11 recommended wagers made money. Covering all the picks meant going into the upcoming weeks with funding intact – when more reliable fresh data would be coming on stream.
Lesson 1: The solution is to modify the strategy by setting up a weekly budget cap and compromising the “same bet per game” strategy when necessary
Take an example of 10 betable NFL games. Using the best strategy, if a weekly cap was set at $250, one would bet all 10 games at an amount of $25 per game. That would be preferable to betting the normal $50 per game on the top-5 matchups.
Lesson 2: There were a few examples in the early 2010 weeks of the general rule concerning teams winning in multiples of 3s and 7s. Pick your underdogs at plus 3½ and +7½ and your favorites at minus 2½ and 6½, even if you have to take higher betting lines.
Having just stated the above, however, also consider taking even number spreads like three or seven (no half points) to help preserve a reasonable line in a selected betable NFL matchup. It’s sometimes better to “push” a sportsbook wager (and still have a good chance of winning) than to flirt with missing out completely because you’re on the wrong side of a close game scoring difference.

Lesson 3: Be smart about when to place your selected weekly wagers. The general rule of thumb is: do not place your NFL bets too early in the week. More often than not, there are more opportunities for better spreads and lines as game day approaches. It’s a competitive market out there in sportsbook land.
Now for the exception. We could easily have been hurt on a couple of games early in the season because we got too greedy and missed out on favorable odds that were available earlier in the week. Keep an eye on spreads that start showing up on Tuesdays of game week. Try to get a feel for which way they are moving from day to day. Most sources show the opening spreads and the current spreads as the week progresses.
Once you’ve identified your betable wagers (and the spreads that make them work) jump on the ones where the spreads seem to be drifting away from your ‘workable’ target spread. It’s unusual for spreads to reverse back to opening levels once they start slipping away in one direction or the other.
Lesson 4: Week 3 of the season confirmed the importance of ensuring that the stats and the pickers are on the same page. Based on stats, Carolina was originally selected to beat the spread against Cincinnati. But the pickers eliminated that notion by strongly supporting Cincinnati to cover the spread (Cincy pounded Carolina).
More interesting were three highly unusual games where both NFL stats and pickers resoundingly pointed to clear winners, namely San Diego over Seattle, Washington over St. Louis and Green Bay over Chicago. Yes, we know, all the underdogs prevailed.
Like we keep saying, to be successful at NFL wagering you have to be committed to betting on a high number of games over a full season so that unexpected losses are absorbed. You have to accept the bounces, fumbles, unusual plays and other vagaries of the game – rocket science, it ain’t. But, a sufficiently high football statistical sample of games evaluated against proven game winning criteria over time – well that’s something else.