Submitted by rsteel on
Over the course of your sports betting career, you are going to lose a chunk of wagers for a million different reasons. A missed field goal, a meaningless 3 pointer, a wild pitch, an empty net goal. The list goes on and on.
Some of these bet busting phenomena are out of your hands and are just part of the 45-47% no matter how good we are that are going to end up in the loss column. However some losing bets leave you smacking yourself in the forehead wondering “What the heck was I thinking?”
Betting against streaks: All streaks come to an end but figuring out when is high risk low reward game. When sizing up a team on an extended losing slide, it is best to wait until that club shows some signs of life and snaps the skid before considering them. You should never bet on a bad team when they are also playing badly. Sounds simple but it is not as easy as you think.
Skewed stats/records: Often times the result on the scoreboard does not reflect how a game played out. Teams can get completely outplayed on both ends, but turnovers and a couple of costly errors turn a win into a loss or non-cover. Your job is to monitor the situation and next time out see if you can capitalize on the markets not picking up on the underlying issues misleading final result.
Public overkill: The betting public is far more knowledgeable than ever before but there are still times too much love is being given to the popular high profile teams. Most professionals are contrarian by nature and while you should never blindly fade the publics favorite plays you can often find good value on the other side of these public picks.
Chemistry: These days rosters turnover almost every year. New look rosters sometimes especially early on struggle. Chemistry is a key when betting on team sports. It is hard enough to win but when a team cannot set aside differences and play together where they are more interested in individual stats it is impossible to win.
Injuries: Often times a big name injury is overvalued. Odds makers do make an adjustment but often the betting public piles on moving the number to a level where the value is with the team with injuries. Look for teams that have cluster injuries at certain positions. Also look for injuries that are more under the radar that will affect a team’s performance much more than people think. A good example of this is in football where offensive and defensive line injuries are critical especially at the center position.