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| Sammy wants YOU to make money on the NFL this season |
It's harder than it might seem. When it comes to betting on games (you know, if gambling were legal), the "vig" makes it a lot harder to make money. For those uninitiated, the vig (or vigorish as it was known in the days of the original Ocean's 11) is the "house edge" on any wager. The standard vig is -110, meaning that a bettor has to wager $110 to win $100. So if you assume a wager is a 50/50 proposition and win once and lose once, when you win you'll win $100 but when you lose you'll lose $110, for a net loss of $10.
If you run the math on this, it basically means that a betting strategy has to be correct 52.4% of the time to be profitable. Turns out, a lot of "blanket" bets -- e.g. "always take the underdog," "always take the road team because home field advantage is overrated," etc. -- are right more than 50% of the time but less than 52.4% of the time, meaning they'll lose money in the long run.
We at BQB, however, strive to find at least a few betting tidbits that should make money in the long-run. Keep in mind that our sample size may be minimal here, but our first strategy would have only lost money once in the last 10 years and would yield an average return on investment of 7.5% . . .
Strategy: Find a team that beats the spread by 20 or more points in week 1 and loses against the spread in week 2. Bet against that team the rest of the season.
Even though we live in the age of sports information, spreads on NFL games are far from perfect. They do a pretty good job of splitting the public, which is the intent, but on average, they miss the final margin on the game by an average of 10.6 points either way. Spreads are an expectation, but there's plenty of variance around that expectation.
In week 1, the thinking might go, Vegas is largely in the dark because it hasn't seen any games yet that season. The books can bake in what they think the impact of player movement is, but who really knows how, say, Peyton Manning will fare this season until we see him play Sunday night in Week 1 against the Steelers?
Consequentially, you see some unexpected results in week 1. Since '02, 21 teams have beaten the spread by 20 or more points on opening weekend. Of those 21, 11 have covered the spread the next week. The 10 who didn't cover the spread in week 2 went 70-91 (43.5%) against the spread the rest of the season. Put another way, those teams didn't cover at a rate of
100%-43.5%=56.5%, higher than the 52.4% threshold we need
Taking last season as an example, our 2 qualifying teams were the Ravens and the Bills:
- The Ravens were 1.5 point favorites opening weekend against the Steelers and trounced them 35-7. In week 2, they lost to the Titans 26-13 despite being 6 point favorites
- The Bills were 3.5 point underdogs to the Chiefs on opening weekend. They won 41-7. The next week they beat the Raiders by 3, but didn't cover the spread of 4
If you bet $100 AGAINST qualifying teams from the past decade for the remaining 14 weeks of the season, you'd have made $1,400.
The best part about this (admittedly obscure) theory is that it's been consistent. It's only lost money once since 2002:
QUALIFYING TEAMS TO BET AGAINST SINCE 2002 AND RECORD ATS, AND RESULTS OF FOLLOWING STRATEGY BETTING $100 PER GAME
2002: No qualifying teams
2003: Bucs (6-8), Niners (6-6); Total for strategy: 14-12, +$80
2004: Browns (5-9), Total for strategy: 9-5, +$350
2005: Dolphins (6-8), Total for strategy: 8-6, +$140
2006: No qualifying teams
2007: Colts (8-6), Total for strategy: 6-8, -$280 (only year strategy lost money)
2008: Bears (5-7), Broncos (3-10), Total for strategy: 17-8, +$820
2009: Eagles (8-6), Seahawks (5-9), Total for strategy: 15-13, +$80
2010: Seahawks (6-8), Total for strategy: 8-6, +$140
2011: Ravens (7-6), Bills (5-8), Total for strategy, 14-12, +$80
Total: 91-70, +$1,400 on $18,480 wagered, 7.6% return on investment
Again, there are some sample size issues here, but at least over the past decade, the downside has been minimal.
As for the reason this works, one hypothesis could be that Vegas -- or the betting public -- overvalues week 1. Think about it -- opening weekend has become an event in the United States. I can't yet find TV ratings to back this up (if anyone knows where to find them, send us an email), but I'd venture to say that a ton more people watch the NFL in week 1 than the rest of the season. When a blowout in week 1 covers in week 2, that seems to be a signal that Vegas is about to get them right -- those teams are 59-64 against the spread the rest of the way (48.0%, or 52.0% betting against them, both below our threshold). But when the team doesn't cover in week 2, that seems to signal that the team is overvalued the rest of the way. So maybe the "information" from week 1 is getting baked in more than it should be.
So be on the look out for the blowouts during opening weekend. Watch the teams that won those games closely in week 2, and if they don't cover the spread that week, you might have yourself a betting strategy for the rest of the season.
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Gambling is very good source of earning for few peoples but on other hand few peoples thinks that it is not good, in this process few earns a lot of money but on other hand few loose money betting is good but it is not good for everyone.
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