I bet a lot of underdogs. I bet almost exclusively moneyline dogs in the NBA, I bet almost all underdogs on sides in the NHL and I bet many more baseball underdogs than favorites. In the NFL, my eyes have been well trained to analyze large dogs before I think of betting heavy wood.
I have been told by many a gambler on this board, from the wildly succesful to the marginally skilled, that this is a good policy. There is a lot of "value" in many underdogs.
I can only assume that a person's definition of value is long term profit. If one simply looks for value in the games they select and ignore any emotional feeling of who is going to win or lose, they will become at least able to make a profit as long as they do the work that goes into sound handicapping.
This seems like a very logical theory. Personally, I have been able to make a fairly consistent profit in my time playing underdog moneylines. When I browse around the message forum I also see a great many handicappers in baseball and hockey (where moneylines and value seem to be stronger themes) posting winning profit margins by playing a good number of dogs and writing about their value.
This theory of value certainly had been reinforced in a number of other areas. I know, for example, that the public loves to bet favorites. I also know that in your average year, Vegas books will take in about 8% of whatever is wagered on a given NFL season. Now, if 4.5% is the take if the public hits only 50% of its wagers, one can surmise that the general public as a whole can't even hit 50% of its wagers, and therefore underdogs must be providing more value than faves.
I also have a good friend who was a bookie throughout his high school career. In that time, the only sport he accepted moneyline wagers on was baseball. Sure enough, most of his clients (many high schoolers with quite a number of young adults as well) would play chalk almost exclusively and basically all of his clients would lose money year after year.
It all seems so simple. Bet your underdogs, be patient through your cold streaks, and in the end you will grind out a profit. Simple. You see, these fools who view Vegas sportsbooks as harmless fun will remain sheep. They will fly in weekend after weekend, bet their favorites, lose their money, and I will take advantage of the value they leave to make myself some discretionary income.
Of course, it is not that easy. It is never that easy. Though it took a trip to Sunset Station for me to figure that out.
To the professional gambler, Sunset Station is arguably the most romantic spot in the Nevada desert. Not in the Humphery Bogart/Ingrid Bergman sense of the word. More in the "visionary" sense of the word, to quote Webster. It is a romantic notion indeed to imagine the magnificent Las Vegas strip built by the parted money of fools as window dressing to an out of the way hotel in Henderson, but that is essentially the case.
Sunset Station is a place where the players play. It is not touristy. There is no Sphinx welcoming you at the entrance. Heck, the sportsbook boards remain hand written. But you will find in Sunset Station is a larger concentration of professional sports gamblers than most anywhere else.
Included in that group is "fletcher" of this very board. Fletcher is a professional gambler. Fletcher plays most sports consistently, save the NBA and NHL. He specializes in baseball and college football.
Anyone who has followed fletcher's plays on this board knows that he plays chalk. I mean CHALK. Big chalk, little chalk. He will even turn a dog to chalk by almost always taking the run line when playing a dog.
As a person who has been enlightened by the constant preaching of value in the forum, I could not wait to sink my teeth into fletcher when I arrived at Sunset Station. I came to Vegas armed to the teeth with reasoning to elighten fletcher to the foolish nature of his wagers. 'Do you know what percentage you have to hit to make money? Do you know that most losing baseball bettors bet chalk?', I imagined myself saying. Surely fletcher could not argue with my hard mathematical evidence. Surely he would be betting dogs and praising my genius by the time I left for Los Angeles.
As you can tell by the tone of this story, that didn't happen. I said my lines, just as I imagined. He answered with ambivalence, just as I imagined, and we placed our bets. And just as you imagine, I got creamed and he cleaned up.
One day does not a gambling career make, so the bath I took is only incidental to this story. What is not incidental is what I saw and what fletcher told me. While at Sunset, a seemingly endless stream of professional gamblers, both well known and unknown, frequented the sportsbooks and made their bets. And, much to my surprise, they almost exclusively bet chalk.
This astonished me. How could the millions of losers and the hundreds of huge winners both take the same approach? Fletcher's reasoning for this was typically simple. "The best value is in a winning ticket."
Indeed. You see, value may be the most productive word in a gambler's vocabulary, but it is also the most dangerous. It is my opinion that the single largest fault of the underdog bettor is is falling for artificial value.
Here is one example. In the second game of the NBA finals, Philly was about a +700 moneyline. How rediculous, I thought. There has to be value in that line. So without so much as one second of research, I saw a huge line placed on a wager that had almost no chance of winning and I took it. Think about how ignorant I was. Any jerk off the street could have told me that the Lakers were not going to go down 0-2 at home.
My thinking was, 'If the Sixers have at least a 12.5% chance of winning this game, this play has value.' Rather than asking myself if I actually thought the wager would win, I got caught up in mathematical percentages and turned an easy $400 profit on a spread wager into a $100 win by playing the moneyline.
This does not only apply to underdogs. How often do you look at the board and say to yourself "XXXX pitcher should be more than a -1YY favorite against ZZZZ team"? Without even researching a game, people often think they are finding "value" in lines that are "off".
There are two points to this admittedly long winded piece. First of all, there is no value in a play that loses. If you don't think a play is going to win, why bet it? Don't bet the Devil Rays just because you think a +230 line is "too high". If you think today is a good spot for the Devil Rays and you think they will win, bet them. If you think you will lose but it is "worth it" to place a small wager on a game with "value", reconsider your bet. If you are considering placing a small $100 bet to win $230 on the team that you think will lose, why not place that same wager the other way and try to win $43 on a team that you think will win? $43 is not a lot of money, but winning that amount is surely better than losing $100.
I play a large percentage of underdogs and I play a number of large moneyline underdogs. I do not, however, play a moneyline underdog if I think they will lose.
The second point is don't let your search for value overcome other handicapping techniques. If you have picked out the favorite of a matchup before viewing the betting line and then that betting line is far lower than you expected, great. Consider this your lucky day. You found a game that you feel will be a winner and the books have given you a better line than you imagined.
The thing you do not want to do is let the line control your wager. If there is a favorite of a matchup that you were not planning to wager on, but suddenly you view the lines and the line on the favorite was much lower than expected, be wary. You didn't like the play when you did actual research on it, but now you are being tempted by the books to make a superfulous play because their line is lower than expected. That is the definition of false value.
I should add that this only applies to those of you who handicap qualitatively. If you a quantitative handicapper that has statistical formulas or computer programs or systems that have proven themselves to be winners over the long term, by all means, use them to find value. If your formula says to play the Devil Rays at +230 even if you think they will lose, play your formula and simply ignore individual games in favor of year long results.
I suppose the most important thing to remember is the overwhelming majority of sports gamblers will lose money over their lifetime. Heck, if you add up the results of any play of the day threads or contests on this very board, you will see an overall loss. Dedicated handicappers are told that value is the thing to look for but at heart, every handicapper is a value seeker. The average dolt walks into the MGM Grand book on a Sunday and sees Bucs -9 and says, "They are going to kill the Jets, 24-0, this is easy money." They see value in giving nine points with the better team and over the course of their lifetime these recreational gamblers will lose almost every time.
Seeking out value in betting lines does not make you a surefire winner. Every handicapper does it to a certain extent. Do the research, find sound reasoning and only bet plays that you *think* will win. Fletcher may appear to be just another chalk player, but I believe what he said: "There is no value in a loser."
I have been told by many a gambler on this board, from the wildly succesful to the marginally skilled, that this is a good policy. There is a lot of "value" in many underdogs.
I can only assume that a person's definition of value is long term profit. If one simply looks for value in the games they select and ignore any emotional feeling of who is going to win or lose, they will become at least able to make a profit as long as they do the work that goes into sound handicapping.
This seems like a very logical theory. Personally, I have been able to make a fairly consistent profit in my time playing underdog moneylines. When I browse around the message forum I also see a great many handicappers in baseball and hockey (where moneylines and value seem to be stronger themes) posting winning profit margins by playing a good number of dogs and writing about their value.
This theory of value certainly had been reinforced in a number of other areas. I know, for example, that the public loves to bet favorites. I also know that in your average year, Vegas books will take in about 8% of whatever is wagered on a given NFL season. Now, if 4.5% is the take if the public hits only 50% of its wagers, one can surmise that the general public as a whole can't even hit 50% of its wagers, and therefore underdogs must be providing more value than faves.
I also have a good friend who was a bookie throughout his high school career. In that time, the only sport he accepted moneyline wagers on was baseball. Sure enough, most of his clients (many high schoolers with quite a number of young adults as well) would play chalk almost exclusively and basically all of his clients would lose money year after year.
It all seems so simple. Bet your underdogs, be patient through your cold streaks, and in the end you will grind out a profit. Simple. You see, these fools who view Vegas sportsbooks as harmless fun will remain sheep. They will fly in weekend after weekend, bet their favorites, lose their money, and I will take advantage of the value they leave to make myself some discretionary income.
Of course, it is not that easy. It is never that easy. Though it took a trip to Sunset Station for me to figure that out.
To the professional gambler, Sunset Station is arguably the most romantic spot in the Nevada desert. Not in the Humphery Bogart/Ingrid Bergman sense of the word. More in the "visionary" sense of the word, to quote Webster. It is a romantic notion indeed to imagine the magnificent Las Vegas strip built by the parted money of fools as window dressing to an out of the way hotel in Henderson, but that is essentially the case.
Sunset Station is a place where the players play. It is not touristy. There is no Sphinx welcoming you at the entrance. Heck, the sportsbook boards remain hand written. But you will find in Sunset Station is a larger concentration of professional sports gamblers than most anywhere else.
Included in that group is "fletcher" of this very board. Fletcher is a professional gambler. Fletcher plays most sports consistently, save the NBA and NHL. He specializes in baseball and college football.
Anyone who has followed fletcher's plays on this board knows that he plays chalk. I mean CHALK. Big chalk, little chalk. He will even turn a dog to chalk by almost always taking the run line when playing a dog.
As a person who has been enlightened by the constant preaching of value in the forum, I could not wait to sink my teeth into fletcher when I arrived at Sunset Station. I came to Vegas armed to the teeth with reasoning to elighten fletcher to the foolish nature of his wagers. 'Do you know what percentage you have to hit to make money? Do you know that most losing baseball bettors bet chalk?', I imagined myself saying. Surely fletcher could not argue with my hard mathematical evidence. Surely he would be betting dogs and praising my genius by the time I left for Los Angeles.
As you can tell by the tone of this story, that didn't happen. I said my lines, just as I imagined. He answered with ambivalence, just as I imagined, and we placed our bets. And just as you imagine, I got creamed and he cleaned up.
One day does not a gambling career make, so the bath I took is only incidental to this story. What is not incidental is what I saw and what fletcher told me. While at Sunset, a seemingly endless stream of professional gamblers, both well known and unknown, frequented the sportsbooks and made their bets. And, much to my surprise, they almost exclusively bet chalk.
This astonished me. How could the millions of losers and the hundreds of huge winners both take the same approach? Fletcher's reasoning for this was typically simple. "The best value is in a winning ticket."
Indeed. You see, value may be the most productive word in a gambler's vocabulary, but it is also the most dangerous. It is my opinion that the single largest fault of the underdog bettor is is falling for artificial value.
Here is one example. In the second game of the NBA finals, Philly was about a +700 moneyline. How rediculous, I thought. There has to be value in that line. So without so much as one second of research, I saw a huge line placed on a wager that had almost no chance of winning and I took it. Think about how ignorant I was. Any jerk off the street could have told me that the Lakers were not going to go down 0-2 at home.
My thinking was, 'If the Sixers have at least a 12.5% chance of winning this game, this play has value.' Rather than asking myself if I actually thought the wager would win, I got caught up in mathematical percentages and turned an easy $400 profit on a spread wager into a $100 win by playing the moneyline.
This does not only apply to underdogs. How often do you look at the board and say to yourself "XXXX pitcher should be more than a -1YY favorite against ZZZZ team"? Without even researching a game, people often think they are finding "value" in lines that are "off".
There are two points to this admittedly long winded piece. First of all, there is no value in a play that loses. If you don't think a play is going to win, why bet it? Don't bet the Devil Rays just because you think a +230 line is "too high". If you think today is a good spot for the Devil Rays and you think they will win, bet them. If you think you will lose but it is "worth it" to place a small wager on a game with "value", reconsider your bet. If you are considering placing a small $100 bet to win $230 on the team that you think will lose, why not place that same wager the other way and try to win $43 on a team that you think will win? $43 is not a lot of money, but winning that amount is surely better than losing $100.
I play a large percentage of underdogs and I play a number of large moneyline underdogs. I do not, however, play a moneyline underdog if I think they will lose.
The second point is don't let your search for value overcome other handicapping techniques. If you have picked out the favorite of a matchup before viewing the betting line and then that betting line is far lower than you expected, great. Consider this your lucky day. You found a game that you feel will be a winner and the books have given you a better line than you imagined.
The thing you do not want to do is let the line control your wager. If there is a favorite of a matchup that you were not planning to wager on, but suddenly you view the lines and the line on the favorite was much lower than expected, be wary. You didn't like the play when you did actual research on it, but now you are being tempted by the books to make a superfulous play because their line is lower than expected. That is the definition of false value.
I should add that this only applies to those of you who handicap qualitatively. If you a quantitative handicapper that has statistical formulas or computer programs or systems that have proven themselves to be winners over the long term, by all means, use them to find value. If your formula says to play the Devil Rays at +230 even if you think they will lose, play your formula and simply ignore individual games in favor of year long results.
I suppose the most important thing to remember is the overwhelming majority of sports gamblers will lose money over their lifetime. Heck, if you add up the results of any play of the day threads or contests on this very board, you will see an overall loss. Dedicated handicappers are told that value is the thing to look for but at heart, every handicapper is a value seeker. The average dolt walks into the MGM Grand book on a Sunday and sees Bucs -9 and says, "They are going to kill the Jets, 24-0, this is easy money." They see value in giving nine points with the better team and over the course of their lifetime these recreational gamblers will lose almost every time.
Seeking out value in betting lines does not make you a surefire winner. Every handicapper does it to a certain extent. Do the research, find sound reasoning and only bet plays that you *think* will win. Fletcher may appear to be just another chalk player, but I believe what he said: "There is no value in a loser."
