Successfully Betting on the NFL

Successfully Betting on the NFL

When it comes to betting on sports, the NFL remains at the top of the list for the action it brings in. Starting all the way back in February when sportsbooks first release their futures odds to win the next season’s Super Bowl all the way up to opening day in early September, the anticipation of a new season of NFL football will have bettors lining up to throw their money down on the games.

It is one thing to bet on NFL games, but it is a whole other animal when it comes to generating a positive return on the investment that you make. Even the top football handicappers in the country will still lose more than 30 percent of the time, but there are few basic things that you need to keep in mind to try and improve the overall winning percentage of your picks.

Develop a Betting Plan

Emotion can play a huge part in how people bet on the NFL and if you do not have a set betting strategy that you follow religiously week-in and week-out, you could easily find your bankroll dwindle down to nothing in a fairly short amount of time.

Professional handicappers will usually attach a unit play to their NFL selections based on the confidence level they have in that particular pick. A more effective strategy for the causal football bettor is to keep your wager amounts equal for every single pick and only bet on the games where your confidence level is high. If you lose on Sunday do not try and double-down with a Monday night play. Concentrate your handicapping effort on a handful of games and only bet the top two or three picks you come up with.

Shop Your Betting Lines

There are literally hundreds of sportsbook outlets where you can bet NFL games, so why would you only zero in on one or two to actually place these bets. There is no reason why you have to limit yourself when it comes to the sportsbooks you use. This is not to suggest that your spread your money all over the internet with dozens different books, but if you take some time to study betting lines for the NFL, you can probably dwindle this number down to four or five solid choices.

When Oddsmakers first release the betting odds for that week’s games, they are going to be very similar across the board. Line movements occur when the early money starts coming in and each book will begin to make the necessary adjustment to balance things out. Tracking these line movements and shopping for the betting odds that fall in your favor can have a dramatic impact on your success rate over the course of a season. Always remember that millions of dollars exchange hands each week over a half point move on a pointspread or total line either way.

Keep Recent Betting Trends in their Proper Context

History does tend to repeat itself, but that does not always mean you should bet on it. If you delve into any handicapping report for an NFL game, it will be weighed down with past betting trends for each side as well as any recent head-to-head results. These trends can sometime indicate what might happen this time around as there are times when one team appears to have the other’s number, especially when it comes division matchups. However you have to resist the temptation to place too much weight on these past results.

The best course of action is to evaluate any game on face value first and ask yourself the following questions. What is the overall form of each team coming into that particular matchup? Are there any key injuries on either side? Are there any external conditions such as weather or field conditions that could have an impact on the outcome? One you develop your own sense of feel as to which side is the best bet, then turn to the recent betting trends as another handicapping tool. At best, they should work to add even more confidence to your pick.