A crash course in NFL betting

Hopefully there’s a few new followers to the page, first of all welcome, I hope we do well and make some good money this year.

Most important thing is to follow a staking plan – We recommend points as a stake instead of actual £ values. This is because everyone has a different budget. There’s no point us suggesting £10 bets if you’ve only got £10 for the week; Start with 100 points, divide your bank by that (£100 would be £1 per point) – I think the most we staked in any one week last year was around 30 points. Then if we have a bad week you have bank remaining for the MNF, TNF (Monday/Thursday night football) and following weekend matches. We had some bad weekends last year, but more often than not some very good ones. The key is long term profit and making sure you don’t risk more than you can afford. With that out of the way, lets look into what we usually bet on.

We will always be honest. If it’s been a shit week we’ll admit to it, if we win we won’t BOOM it all over twitter (well maybe if it’s a 55/1 winner…) You can find my profit/loss spreadsheet on the menu bar

Our weekend tips are generally released on the Sunday morning of the games – Monday and Thursday night previews will be around 1800, sometimes a little later depending on how busy life keeps me – Also on Mondays I’m planning on having a look at the following weeks matches as there’s usually some good value there. Importantly, Follow @TouchdownTips on twitter and keep an eye out on Saturday evenings as you can usually find some good prices on TD scorers before they get wind of news and change the markets accordingly! – Side note here. NFL books in the UK are pretty small so prices change quite quickly if there’s money on something. So you need to be quick to get the prices I put up. – So make sure you join the telegram group to get notifications – https://t.me/TDtips

The standard markets for NFL games are Moneyline, Point spread and Totals.

• The Moneyline – Who is going to win the game
• Point Spread (Handicap) – Who is going to win the game with X amount of points taken away or added on. E.g. Steelers -3 means they have to win by 4 points or more for that bet to win, if it’s 3 you get a refund anything else and you lose.
• Totals – How many points will be scored by both teams in the game, these include overtime.

A further little look into the point spread. The rule of thumb is that the away team will get a 3 point headstart. There are teams with a bigger homefield advantage, The Seahawks and Patriots for example will generally start with a 4 or 5 point handicap whoever they are playing. Then they add to the handicap depending on the team they’re facing.

During our write-ups you may see ATS or SU when talking about a team, these are Against the spread and Straight Up, ATS shows how many times a team wins on the handicap market, SU is just a plain old win regardless of handicap points. The Patriots are pretty good and had a record of something like 14-2 ATS last year, meaning they would have won on the handicap market 14 times out of 16.

Now most places you can find tips online only offer advice on the 3 markets shown above, the best odds you’ll get on those is around 10/11, 4/5. Basically just below EVENS. So you need to win more than you lose to make any money. This is do-able if you know what you’re doing, but quite difficult.

We however offer a little of every market available during the season. Generally we put up quite a few Player Props.

Now we were pretty good on the touchdown markets in games, they’re fairly self-explanatory.

• Anytime TD scorer – The selected player has to score anytime during the match
• First TD scorer – selected player has to score the first TD of the game
• First team TD scorer – selected player has to score the first TD for his team
• 2 or more TD, 3 or more TDs –  selected player has to score 2, or 3 or more TDs at any point during the game (our biggest single winner last year was Deon Lewis 2 or more at 55/1 (3 or more would have been 125/1 but we were’t that ambitious)

There’s is one other TD market that we played a fair bit last year, but it was only on Skybet – Both players to score – again, pretty obvious, but both named players must score TDs in that given game for the bet to be a winner. These are bigger odds, and a bit more fun, but are a lot harder to win on. – In fact in the review of the year I did, these markets were awful for us.

We also like other prop bets, like the Yardage markets – These are simple over/under markets, again, usually priced at around 10/11 on either side. E.g. Tom Brady to pass for over or under 325.5 yards. These are set at half yards so that there’s a result either way. If you bet over 325.5 and he gets 326 then you win, if he gets 325 you lose.

They are categorised still. Passing yards, Rushing yards, Receiving yards, sometime Rushing and Receiving yards (combined yards)

Also on player props you may find Total receptions, longest reception etc… again, you’ll figure them out, but Total number of catches a player makes, the longest catch a player makes etc.

These markets are worth looking around for, I generally do that for you and notice if there’s anything that stands out. E.g. On some sites you’ll find someones yards set at 320.5, whereas other sites may have it at 280.5 – This is obviously a pretty big discrepancy which you can use to your advantage depending on which way you plan on betting.

Something that has become popular is Request-a-bets (RaB) or similar. Not hard to figure these out, they’re bets that people have requested on twitter, usually requiring quite a few things to come to fruition for you to win them. Player X to score a TD and run for X amount of yards or something like that. Obviously they usually provide pretty good odds, but are difficult to land. On occasion Skybet will offer good ones at low odds which I used a few times last season. One bit of advice. Generally avoid anything from FootyAccums on there. They’re paid by Sky to offer “tips” – What they don’t tell people is that they’ll make money from people losing on them. It’s in their interest for you to lose, TeamFA (Footyaccums, The winners enclosure) as a whole made around £400k last year from commission from affiliate links from various bookies, people losing on accounts made from their links.

One market I was tracking last year was Team to score in every quarter – I actually did a spreadsheet for the first 4 weeks with which team had scored and conceded in every quarter of each game to see if there was any correlation. It worked ok. And it’s something I hope to carry on with this year provided I get the time. It’s a very time consuming thing!

Multiples or Parlays – A way of increasing the odds for yourself is to pick several games and put them together in one bet, an accumulator. They are generally pretty self-explanatory again, but just incase.

• Double – 2 selections, both must win (or be a push – e.g if you pick over 38 points and it finishes on 38 then it will be a push and void that selection.)
• Treble – 3 selections – as above all must win or push for you to win.
• Accumulator – 4 or more selections – you guessed it, all must win or push. – 1 loss and you lose.
• Trixie – This is 4 bets on 3 selections. You are betting on the doubles, and the treble on those selections. You will need at least 2 to win to get some money back. The bets are – selections 1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/2/3.
• Patent – As above but with the singles as well, 3 selections, 7 individual bets.
• Lucky 15 – Like the patent, but with 4 selections, as you can imagine, it’s 15 separate bets, singles, doubles, trebles and accumulator.

Thanks for reading.

 

Adam, @TouchdownTips on twitter.