Category: Strategy

If there was one factor that prevents people from handicapping the games on a regular basis, it would be time. Not having enough time to study the games is why many bettors will follow the selections of somebody else or handicap the games with less than desired results. Having time constraints is certainly understandable; most people have jobs, family and other things that are going to come first by necessity.

The simple truth is a method that takes 45 minutes a day and picks 54% winners is going to be more valuable to the majority of sports bettors than a 57% method that takes five hours a day just due to time available for handicapping.

But there are some things you can do to find a little more time to spend on handicapping the games. For many people, the best time is actually the night before, especially if you’re one of those who has to watch any game you wager on. There’s nothing wrong with doing a little work and watching a game at the same time. Not all of your attention has to be riveted on the television and you can do a little of both.

There are certain people who are night people and certain people who are morning people. I fall into the second group and am usually up at an ungodly hour each morning, as I can work faster and with a clearer head than if I try to work late in the evening. Depending on what type of person you are, try to spend what time you can afford to during your peak hours. If you’re a morning person get up a few minutes earlier than you have been and look at the stats or handicap the games in the manner you typically do. If you’re more of a night owl, after the games are over may be the best time for you.

If you’re allowed a lunch break at work, that’s another opportunity to get a little studying in and also a good chance to look at the latest line moves and possibly check on the status of any questionable players.

Those who live on the East can spend a little time as soon as they get home from work on handicapping the evening’s games. Those on the West won’t have the same luxury, but do have the advantage of having early starts for everything and can handicap the next day’s card when all of the games are complete.

There’s nothing wrong with specializing in a particular conference or league if you’re pressed for time. Eliminating half of an NBA, MLB or NHL schedule, will give you more time for those games you do handicap. It’s practically impossible to handicap an entire college basketball card, especially on a Saturday. Having a couple of conferences you follow religiously may enable you to form a solid opinion of the teams within that conference.

If you’re going to concentrate on one conference, it makes sense to concentrate on the one closest to you. If you live the West, focus on the Western Conference in the NBA or NHL, while those who live on the East would want to stick to the Eastern Conference in the same two leagues. College sports conferences should also be close by, as you may hear something worth noting on a local sports talk radio station or by reading your local paper.

Time constraints are going to hamper everybody who handicaps, from the first-time bettor to long-time pros. All we can do is our best and look for little opportunities to help us gain any sort of advantage over our fellow bettors and the sportsbooks.

When writing the series on handicapping techniques there was one additional aspect that I could have mentioned for statistical handicappers, which is your work is never done. It’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing; it’s simply part of the game. To an extent the same could be said for situational or trend-based handicappers, who could be spending time pouring through databases looking for certain patterns, but it’s the number-crunchers who can find themselves spending more time than expected at their computer.

I’ll use my baseball system as an example to show the thought process that goes on in the head of a handicapper. For starters, I use a 50-cent difference in the Vegas line and my line for a play. The first question is if 50 cents is the ideal number – should it be 40 cents, 60 cents or something else? The same concept applies to those of you who do mathematical projections for football or basketball and then look for overlays of five points or seven points, etc. Only by looking at the entire results of a season can you determine if there is a better number to use.

Do your predictions fare better when the line moves in the direction of your prediction? For example, if I have Team A -150 and the line is Team A -120, there’s only a 30-cent difference and the game becomes a pass. But if the line moves to -128 over the course of the day, do these games win at a rate that would be profitable? Again, those who handicap basketball or football can ask themselves the same question. If you make Team B -9 points and the line is Team B -4.5 points and the line moves to Team B -6 points, do these games win more often than not?

Injuries are another concern for mathematical systems. Do you stay away from the games, make an adjustment or march on as if nothing happened? Naturally, a lot of it has do with the player who is out, as certain players and positions are more important than others.

I briefly touched upon on this in the article on rookie pitchers, but using an estimated value of 6.00 runs allowed for rookies may be slightly on the high side. Is 5.00 a better number or should a new pitcher’s first couple of starts be passed on until we have a better idea of how he will do?

Should we give more attention to a team’s most recent games? What a baseball team or NBA team did three months ago probably doesn’t have much bearing on today’s game, although we’re most likely still using those stats. Should a baseball pitcher’s last 10 starts be the only ones considered? Does an NFL teams opening week 44-10 victory mean anything in a Week 14 game?

And finally, how do we handle anomalies, such as the baseball team that scores 17 runs or the NFL team that puts up 50 points in a game where everything goes right? Not only does that affect a team’s offensive rating greatly, it affects the opposing defense. In Noah Syndergaard’s last game before going on the disabled list, the Mets were defeated 23-5 by Washington. Using those numbers would take his runs allowed per game from 3.13 to 5.10 and he’s a better pitcher than that. Likewise, that game artificially boosts Washington’s offense a bit. Should we cap scoring at a certain number to take into account those rare games? And if so, what number should be used?

These are all questions that a handicapper has to contend with and how they are answered and acted upon could very well be the difference between winning and losing over the course of a season. So even though you may have developed a handicapping method, the real work hasn’t even started yet.

The majority of information written for Daily Fantasy Sports players concentrates on who to choose for your line-up, which makes perfect sense. But there are other things DFS players can do to ensure that they show a profit in the long run. Just as it is for sports bettors, poker players or horse racing bettors, following a practical money management plan is one of those things. The one money management system that makes the most sense for DFS players is the Kelly Criterion, which some people simply know as the percentage of bankroll method. Kelly can be used in head-to-head games and double-up or 50-50 games, and gives you a good idea of the price of the contests you should be playing in.

Probably the most difficult thing regarding any Kelly system is that you have to be able to estimate your true chances of winning or finishing in the money as it pertains to DFS contests. Here, use your previous results as a guideline. If you’re finished in the money in 45 of your last 100 double-up contests, don’t estimate that you’re going to finish in the money 56% of the time. You’ll lose money faster that way because you’ll be playing in games that demand too much of your bankroll.

If you’re playing in a true double-up contest, where you risk $10 to win $10 and your chances of finishing in the money are 53%, Kelly Criterion recommend risking 6% of your bankroll. If your bankroll is $200, you should be looking for games in the $12 range, while if your bankroll is $500, it’s the $30 range.

The recommended percentages are calculated in the exact same manner as sports betting and horse racing and we’ll work through a traditional 50-50 game where you risk $11 to win $9 after factoring in the house take.

Let’s assume we finish in the money 57% of the time. Our first step is to convert the odds into numerical form: 9/11=.82. The next step is to multiply our probability of finishing in the money by the odds: .57*.82=.467. Next, subtract the odds of not finishing in the money, which is .43, and we now have .467-.43=.037. The final step is to divide .037 by .82 and you get .045 or 4.5%, meaning the recommendation is to risk 4.5% of our bankroll. The size of your bankroll will determine the size of the game you should be playing in.

The Kelly Criterion as it pertains to daily fantasy sports is a relatively new concept, but it does have some promise as a tool for helping you select the best contest you should be playing in.

The fourth part of our series on handicapping techniques will look at trend-based handicapping, which gets a bit of mixed reviews from handicappers. Some like them, others ignore them, while others will use them if they happen to go along with the play they like to begin with.

There is really no correct way to use trends and it’s up to each individual bettor to determine whether or not it’s meaningful when a team has seen 11 of its last 14 games going over the total or not. The one advantage for using trends is that you may be able to catch a team going on a winning or losing streak early on, just as you may catch a run of overs or unders, but it’s just as likely that you’ll notice the trend when it’s closer to the tail end of a run than it is the beginning.

One of the biggest drawbacks, particularly for those who use trends for college sports, is that the players who made some of those trends are no longer with the team, so it makes more sense to pay attention to the coach. Coaches who beat up weak opponents at one school will likely do it at a new school if they have the roster to accomplish that.

Baseball: Baseball does attract its share of trend betters because the number of statistics can be overwhelming at times. Some bettors like to hop on the hot team or fade the cold team and will use the most recent trends, such as a team winning six of its last seven or dropping five of its last six.

Basketball: Basketball will also get its share of trend followers, many times in totals, where bettors like to tag along once a team sees four or five straight overs or unders. A team’s performance at home or away is another area trend players can be visible. A team losing six of seven as a road underdog may go largely unnoticed by most bettors if the team is doing well at home and has a 12-game ATS record fairly close to .500.

College trends are a bit trickier due to players coming and going, so it’s definitely worth looking at coaching tendencies if you’re going to pay attention to college basketball trends.

Football: Trends are frequently discussed in football and are given credence by a fair number of bettors, particularly in the NFL, where teams can dominate other teams or have an exceptionally good or poor division record, etc. It makes sense that football would be the one sport where they were used the most, as you can’t get the statistical sample size you can in the other sports.

College coaches can definitely have certain traits regardless of where they are so after a coaching chance, look more at what the coach did in his previous job than what his new team did before he arrived. Again, you have to decide which are worth paying attention to or which are likely the result of random occurrences that will happen with all sports.

Hockey: Trends aren’t typically given a whole lot of play in hockey, but they can be of some use, particularly when teams show larger-than-normal disparities for home and away performances or games within their own division. Some teams will also fare particularly well or do poorly when playing the opposing conference due to the makeup of their team and the slightly different styles of play.

We hear the term “steam” thrown around loosely, and we’re going to take a closer look at what it is or what it could be. Steam is nothing more than a significant change in the market as a result of a lot of action on one side or the other. More often than not most all the sportsbooks are hit with action at the same time, causing the screen to light up.

More often than not that is indeed syndicate “sharp” money that is moving the line, but not always something you should be eager to follow. Often times syndicates will move a line in one direction, only to come back and bet the other side at a better number and for more money. It’s call a set-up move. Here is a great example of one.

As you can see, around 8:00 AM they “hit” the Phillies in this example and forced the line from Philadelphia -117 up to -124 fairly quickly. Less than an hour later they threw even more money at it, moving it up to -132.

But, very quickly they came back with Colorado money, pushing it back down below what it originated at. That would be a classic set-up move. Now, that does not mean the Rockies are going to win the game, but there are many people that would see that Phillies steam and follow it at what would ultimately be a bad number.

One other thing to remember is that the further into the betting cycle it is, the more money it will take to move a line. In this case it means that early on, it took more money to move the Phillies line back down than it did to move it up.

It is simple math, in that if the sports books are trying to balance actions (they are) then for every action there is a re-action. Look as it as if it were a see-saw. Someone sits on one end and not the other, so it falls to the ground. It is going to take someone that weighs MORE to make the other side go down. It’s that simple, only in our case the “more” is more money.

There are two points here I want to make. The first is that you have to be very patient with these things, and take into consideration the time of day, or the time in relation to the entire betting cycle. The second is that many pick-sellers will generate picks simply be following steam. You can learn to do that by yourself, the same as following reverse line movement as we talked about not long ago.

Dave Essler is a handicapper from Pregame, featured on ESPN, Fox Sports, CNN, & more.

When we handicap football we’re always looking for that edge that’s outside of the box, such as look-ahead spots and coast-to-coast travel, as well as even revenge angles. And yet, many people overlook those things in baseball, choosing to focus on the numbers. If that works for you, then don’t change a thing.

However, here are some situational handicapping techniques to consider going forward, especially if you’re looking to add to your repertoire. One of my favorites is the “first game home” angle. Teams that have been on the road for any length of time tend to struggle in their first home game coming back. That would be especially true with no days off, and clearly even better if it involves long flights.

Let’s remember that the players are human, too, and many of them have families (kids) that haven’t seen them for a week or more. So, they fly home late and have to be at the park the next afternoon, all the while dealing with the same issues you and I would in that situation. It’s called life.

Another one of my favorites is home teams that are about to get swept. Conventional thinking has most people assuming that the home team won’t lose the entire series, but sweeping a series is far from uncommon. Plus, because most novice bettors will indeed bet on the home team in that spot, there is often value in taking the road team.

What’s also proven to make me money is the bounce-back situation. I don’t mean the team rebounding from a loss, but a starting pitcher. It’s all about adjustments, and more often than not the pitchers make them more frequently than the hitters. If a particular pitcher was hit hard against a team, the next outing people tend to assume that will happen again. In practical application, the reverse is quite often true.

Let’s look at double-headers for a minute, especially when they are the last game(s) of a series. Whether a team won or lost one or both isn’t important, but what is of relevance is fatigue. Assuming that the bullpens were used to any extent, the teams will be at a disadvantage the following day.

Now, I would grant you that we shouldn’t automatically bet on or against these angles, but they are something that should factor in. To expound, I would not blindly bet against the team playing after a double-header, but what it would do is preclude me from taking them. The same can be said about the “first game back” in that I would auto-fade a team, but it would more than likely stop me from taking them.

Remember, winning takes avoiding mistakes just as much (if not more) than finding winners.

Dave Essler is a handicapper from Pregame, featured on ESPN, Fox Sports, CNN & more.

Surely you have been told time and time again about money management and discipline. There’s no reason to beat a dead horse, as there are only three possible outcomes. You either have it, will learn it, or won’t. Let’s take a look at what’s really behind those terms and how we might better get there.

My father had an expression, “if you’re not sure what to do, then don’t do anything.” My guess is that he didn’t originate that, but that’s where it came to me. It’s a great life-lesson, and it really applies to gambling.

We had what was one of the most devastating losses last night. I am sure you know the kind. The one where your team simply has Christmas in the Summer and gives things away. After a tough one most people tend to react with anger and/or frustration, which is perfectly normal. However, staying in that mode for too long effects everything you do going forward, even things outside of betting. If you are going to stay in the game, get over it. Look back at the handicap exactly like you would/should any other loss.

By not getting back to your routine you will create self-doubt or hesitation, neither of which are have a positive effect on handicapping. The effects can cause you to question your work or question the work of the handicapper, if you followed someone. If you have a good track record or the handicapper has a reasonable history of finding winners, then odds are it was just one of those things. I don’t mean to diminish a loss, but rather look at the other side of things. We win games we probably shouldn’t, and over the course of time they will even out.

The only time to move forward is when the emotion is gone. I can tell you this from personal experience. I have been in the passengers’ seat with plays on plenty of occasions. I follow people I trust. I have people that follow me, probably because they trust me. But, most importantly you have to trust yourself.

Don’t over react, or at least don’t buy another pick or look at another rotation without having hit the “refresh” button. If you have hesitation, you will make a mistake. If you have doubt, you will force a play. Remember one of our goals is not have have more wins (well, sort of) but to have less losses and eliminate mistakes. We’re not perfect, but if we take the emotion out of things we can make decisions with much more clarity, hence much more confidence.

It’s not as easy as perhaps it sounds on paper, but if we’re always looking to improve often times it’s beyond the handicapping aspect of gambling. That’s the simple part and the more binary part. But, we are human.

If a quarterback throws an interception and he’s not confident in his next throw, he’ll throw another one. If Steph Curry misses several three-pointers in a row, he’s not going to stop shooting. It’s the emotional intelligence that separates them from the pack.

Remember, we will fortuitously win games, and we will lose some that sting. There are no “right side losing” tickets in my book. The tickets cash or they don’t and tomorrow will come, regardless. The sooner we recognize that the better off we will be.

Dave Essler is a handicapper from Pregame, featured on ESPN, Fox Sports, CNN, & more.

The numbers that books throw out are not by any means random, and I’d like to break down some of the components that I look at when betting a total.

The Parks

Most parks are notorious for being a hitters’ park or a pitchers’ park, and there aren’t many in between. Here is a list of the top five “over” parks in my book, and they happen to correlate to exactly the number of home runs hit in each park this season. What is also true is that not only is it THIS season, but this list doesn’t vary from year-to-year by much at all.

The most:

Park	HR’S/Game
Great American/Res	54
Yankee Stadium/Yankees	53
Minute Maid/Astros	52
Miller Park/Brewers	48
Coors Field/Rockies	47

 

Granted, it’s early in the season and the amount of games played can vary a fair bit, but in the end these parks will all be there, perhaps in a different order.

The Starters

Yes of course, but it is much more than the name of the pitcher and what he’s done against the opposing lineup. There is the last few games and in particular the pitch count. If a pitcher doesn’t typically throw many 100+ pitch games and all of a sudden has two in a row, that’s a problem for betting an under, or on his team, really. There are also pitchers that are much more prone to giving up fly balls as opposed to inducing ground balls, and of course that matters. In Yankee Stadium a ball to RF is a home run whereas in Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City) it might be a routine out.

The Bullpen

And it is more than just looking at the closer and the setup man. Yes, we know the Yankees have Betances and Chapman for the 8th and 9th innings. But, if they’ve been used two or three games in a row, they may be unavailable. Another reason to look at fading the Yankees in that case, especially with a starter that might not pitch more than six innings. So, bullpen usage is key.

The Weather

Of course. We need to know which way the wind is blowing and how hard. Most know that. But, the temperature is as important, if not more so. The higher the temperature and humidity the more carry the ball has. Of course in Colorado there is the thin air, which also makes the ball carry. Checkout Stadium Weather here.

Recent Hitting

As I have said before, streaks are important. It is simple and takes but a minute to go on ESPN.com and sort hitting over “The Last 7 days”, which I use all the time. It’s an indicator as to what’s happening right now, not last month or last year, which is typically what people remember about a team. You can also sort that same sheet by hitting with runners in scoring position, which is also key. Most games offer opportunities, and we need to know what teams are currently taking advantage of them. You don’t have to be hitting .300 to score, just getting the timely hits will do it.

The Umpire

Whoever was at first base last night is going to be behind the plate tonight. Quite simple. And all umpires are not created equal. They all have their tendencies and many of them are pretty dramatic. Those numbers can also be sorted by NL or AL. And we can take that one step further. You may find an umpire that over the years had trended to the “over” but recently had a series of  “unders”. Well, look at who has pitched and where. He could have called games with Kershaw and Sale, and in big parks. Checkout the MLB Umpire Report Here!

And then of course there is the NUMBER. That matters, and that’s for the next article.

I get asked by people quite often if we are betting any more than a game or two on any given day. The answer doesn’t vary. It’s always “I don’t know yet.”

Recreational and casual bettors feel either the need for action, or the need to have a certain amount of wagers in play. As we’ve discussed before, if you are in this for entertainment purposes only then that’s all well and good. If you are in the serious business of making money then that way of thinking should go out the window.

If you’re one of those people that likes 3+ bets a day, you may struggle on a Monday in NFL. Then again, you can generally find baseball or basketball to add to the portfolio on a Monday night, but that would be what we call “forcing plays”. If you are going to take this seriously you need to bet a game when you feel you have an edge and simply pass if you don’t.

There is a reason there are any number of tout picks available on Monday Night Football, or better yet, the last College football game on a Saturday, generally in Hawaii when many of us are looking at the inside of our eyelids. It’s because people crave action. There cannot be an edge on every Rainbow football game or every Monday Night Football game. Add to that the fact that they are very public/stand-alone games, so there is more recreational money involved, which of course can skew the numbers.

There are days when I will bet one or two games and there are days when we might have action on five or more. If you do the work and feel that you have an edge, you bet the game. There is simply no finite way of calculating your edge, at least in my book. A game is either a bet or it is not. Often times I look back at a game and say “I knew that,” and wish I’d have bet it.

Take out the emotion for a bit. Over the years we have NOT bet games that we considered that would have lost. That is as good as winning; saving a loss. That would be the quintessential example of not making the work/handicapping/numbers say what you WANT them to say, because we can extrapolate exactly what we want to make our case. Don’t do that!

That’s also the definition of betting what we’d like to have happen rather than what most likely WILL happen. Don’t do that, either. If there is any hesitation, don’t bet the game. I know that many of you buy plays of subscribe to a service, and I also know that many off you are very sharp in your areas of expertise. If you get a play you simply don’t agree with, don’t bet it. I have a great deal of clients that know far more than me about a Conference or a team I don’t follow as regularly as they do.

So to summarize, let’s look at sports betting as if it were the stock market. In a way, it is. You don’t look at the NYSE on a daily basis and say you are going to buy five stocks that day. You look at the NYSE and know you have $500 to invest, and you either buy one stock, or spread the risk around. When people start looking at sports betting that way, they will either make more money, or lose less.

Dave Essler is a handicapper at Pregame, featured on ESPN, CNN, Fox Sports, and more.