Posted in: NFL
With the start of the 2018 NFL season just around the corner, there is no better time to start looking at all the different options you have to bet a game these days, than right now! It used to be the only bet you could make on an NFL game, was before the game started. But now you can make live, in-game wagers, while the game is in action!
This is a fun and exciting way to bet, but if you don’t know what you are doing, you can lose a lot of money, very quickly. In this article, I will give you some insider tips and tricks on how to exploit in-game live betting for the NFL. Let’s get started!
This is likely the most important thing to keep in mind when you are looking to make any bet, but it is especially important on an in-game wager. Did the star quarterback just go down hard and has come up clutching his knee? Guess what, the books saw that too, and they are going to adjust the number.
Is the wind blowing hard in circles, making it nearly impossible to throw a pass? The books see that too. Nothing you are going to see in the game is going to get past the books, so make sure you aren’t overreacting to readily available information.
The books know the true value of losing the starting quarterback or that star defensive end. And for the most part, losing one player just isn’t going to have much of an impact in an NFL game these days. I know we all think that Aaron Rodgers is worth two touchdowns a game, but in reality, he just isn’t.
So, when the number adjusts only slightly, don’t feel like you are getting one over on the books by hammering the other side. They understand the game at a deep statistical level, and they have no emotion in their decisions, and neither should you. Make sure that you have all the information available to you before you make that in-game bet and try not to over-react to any changes in the action.
This is likely my best tip for in-game wagering. When you have a team that was a major favorite before the game but has fallen down two scores early. We see this all the time. The Patriots are -14-point favorites against the Cleveland Browns and six minutes into the game, the Browns are improbably leading 10-0.
While the media and the fans are clamoring for an upset, not all the much has really changed. Yes, two scores early in a game are nice to have on the board, but if the Patriots were -14-points better than the Browns six minutes ago, they likely still are.
This gives us the great opportunity to take the favorite at a much more reasonable price. When the game kicked off the Patriots would have probably been in the -400 money line range, and now with very little of the game gone, you could get that at -150 or maybe even close to even money.
Don’t let the small sample size fool you. If they were the better team coming into the game, they probably still are, and now you get to back them at a much more attractive price. This is a trick the sharp bettors use a lot to extract value from a game.
This is probably the easiest way to exploit in-game wagering, as you can find lots of situations where you just can’t lose. In-game betting has opened up a whole new level of hedging your bets. Have a multi-team parlay riding on the outcome of a game that has turned sour? Make an in-game bet the other way to lock up some profit from the soon to be unrealized value of the parlay.
You can even hedge your in-game bets with more in-game bets! Make a big play on the over early in the game, and the pace has significantly slowed? Many times you can find a new number where you can pick up a big middle to hedge your bet. For those of you that don’t know, a middle is where you have both sides of a bet and have a couple of points in the “middle” where you can win both bets.
Locking up guaranteed wins where you literally can’t lose and finding middles, where you can earn jumbo payouts, are both tactics you can exploit using live in-game betting. The name of the game is winning money, and when you can find spots where you can’t lose it does wonders for your bottom line.
This last tip is going to be one that you have to be very careful with. I mentioned above that the books set their lines with zero emotion. And most of the time that is the right thing to do. Emotion can usually only cloud your judgment. But momentum is one thing that statisticians can’t see. In fact, many math experts will try and convince you that momentum doesn’t even exist, and I just don’t buy it.
After watching over thirty years of NFL football, I can say without a doubt, that momentum is very real. You can feel it when watching a game. Sometimes it is a big score or turnover. Other times it could just be a hard hit or a timely penalty. But when that momentum swings, it is palpable, and many times the game can turn quickly the other way.
The books will rarely if ever, adjust on momentum alone. This gives us an opportunity to take an underdog at just the right time, getting just the right price, and make a lot of money! But be careful because as quick as momentum can swing in one direction, it can swing back the other way just as fast.
In this article, we have given you an introduction to live in-game betting and given you a couple of places to look for value while making your in-game NFL bets. Just remember that in-game betting can be a fun and exciting way to bet, but like all forms of betting, make sure you are betting with one thing in mind, how to make the most return on your investment. Betting for entertainment is all well and good, but we all know it is more fun to win! Good luck and happy betting!
