Over Under Basketball Betting Strategy

Are you getting bored of simply betting on who will win the game each time? Change it up and bet on the total instead. Total betting is essentially a 50/50 proposition on whether the total points scored by both teams will go over or under the bookmaker’s posted total.

• Over Under Basketball Betting Strategy Tactics
• Over Under Betting Lines

• How To Bet NBA Over Under. Given its high scoring nature, another popular NBA bet type is Over Under basketball betting, also known as point totals, or just totals. What is a NBA Over Under bet? While point spreads can be a little confusing to the unintiated, Over Under betting.
• Check (And Double Check) The Starting Lineup. As you know, a team’s starting lineup is.

Also known as over/under betting, this type of wager is available on almost any sport you can think of: football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer to name a few. Hockey, as we explain in this article, is perhaps the best sport for profitable totals betting, as it’s the easiest one for handicapping totals. That doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made by betting the total for the other sports mentioned though.

CBSSports.com's NBA expert picks provides daily picks against the spread and over/under for each game during the season from our resident picks guru.

In this article we cover how to price betting totals, and provide a number of other strategies for using this type of wager effectively.

If you’re not yet familiar with how this type of wager works, please see our beginner’s guide to totals betting.

Pricing Betting Totals

Again, we’ll point out that it’s much easier to handicap totals betting in hockey than with any other sport. This simple formula should be enough to help you make a rough prediction for how many goals will be scored in a hockey game.

For baseball, all sorts of other factors come into play. The starting pitcher, how batters have performed against pitchers with similar stats, today’s lineup and the bullpen all have to be considered. Technically, when it comes to baseball there’s a lot more useful data to work with, which means making more precise predictions is a strong possibility. However, interpreting all of that data correctly in order to make valid judgments is easier said than done.

A challenge we face for football betting is that there are simply not enough games in the season to get an accurate figure using points scored and points allowed alone. For this, the first adjustment required is to use medians not averages. Looking to this set of numbers: 3, 7, 15, the median is 7 and the average is 8.33.

How do you apply this to betting football totals? When calculating points scored and points allowed, place each into a list in ascending order. The number in the middle is your median, and you can use that number in conjunction with the league average to find your estimated points scored in a game.

Here are the calculations required to do this.

The problem here is that this model is far too simplistic to yield long-term profits. No matter how simple the sport, you’ll need to make other adjustments.

Of course, if handicapping totals were easy then the market would dry up and there would be no profit left. So, if you’re ambitious, the fact that they are hard can be an advantage for you.

Alternative to Pricing Totals

Rather than learning how to price totals, a good strategy for the ambitious beginner is learning predictive modeling.

There’s a good article on this in the book shown here, Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street by Elihu D. Feustel. This book can be purchased on Amazon. It’s the perfect read for those interested in advanced fundamentals.

Now for those who don’t want to wait for the book, we continue with more helpful advice on total betting.

Understanding Key Numbers

When projecting betting totals, it’s important to understand key numbers. For example, in NFL football, the most common total points scored, in order, are as follows.

• 41
• 43
• 37
• 44
• 51
• 33
• 47

Knowing this we’d be far more likely to bet over 41 when our model predicted 41.3 than we would be willing to bet under 41 when our model predicted 40.7. While 40 is still a rather common outcome, 39 and 38 are very low probability totals. Over 41 gives us a push on the most common outcome and a win on the second and fourth most common outcomes.

Off Market Prices & Bonuses

With the information just given, there’s a relatively straightforward way to profit from betting NFL totals. The goal is to take advantage of sports betting bonuses and off market prices simultaneously.

What you need to understand is, as mentioned in our article on how to handicap the market, there’s two distinct types of sports betting sites. Sharp books, which are betting sites friendly to professionals, and square books, which are betting sites that target recreational bettors.

It’s also important to understand fan bias. NFL fans typically prefer to bet in favor of something happening rather than against something happening. In other words, betting the over is a lot more fun than betting the under. This leads to recreational betting sites often padding the total an extra 0.5 points, thus making the line worse for bettors wagering on the over.

Recreational sites often have total disregard, or might even be unaware of, the implication of key numbers. Remember the most common total points scored in NFL games we mentioned earlier? If you were to shop a recreational site against a square book looking for spots, here’s what you’d probably find: the sharp book offering a 47.0 betting total and the recreational site offering a 47.5 betting total. You’d quickly see that the under bet at 47.5 is close to neutral expected value.

When you’re lucky enough to find a near neutral EV bet while also having a bonus, chances are high that you’ll be able to make considerable profits by betting totals.

Please see our article on sports betting bonuses and rewards for more information on the extra value you can get at online betting sites.

Making Correlated Wagers

One way to gain maximum value when total betting is to consider if there’s a correlation between the total bet you’re making and a game’s point spread. For instance, let’s say you’re betting the under based on the fact that Ben Roethlisberger is playing with less than 100% health, and you believe the Steelers will run the ball and eat the clock.

Now, if the Steelers are -7.5 favorites in the game, then maybe your opinion that the game will go under also means their opponent is more likely to cover the +7.5 point spread. When this is the case, we suggest betting the point spread and the total together in a parlay bet.

Odds or Evens

To state what to many is probably obvious, in certain sports, even and odd number totals make a huge difference. This relates to low scoring sports such as baseball, hockey, and in certain cases soccer. Keep in mind that in baseball and hockey, if a game ends in a tie, it keeps going until the tie is broken. Since ties always represent an even amount of points, it’s clear to see why an odd total outcome is more likely to occur than an even total outcome.

How does this relate to soccer? In some circumstance, like elimination tournaments for example, soccer games aren’t allowed to end in a tie. In such matches, a total betting line of 2.5 has only four ways for the under to win. These are 0-1, 1-0, 0-2, and 2-0.

Notice that the only way for the under bet to win is for a shutout to happen. We’ve actually found occasional arbitrage bets (bets where you can bet multiple sides of a game to guarantee a win) just from taking this into consideration.

Totals wagers placed on soccer matches where a tie must be broken often only take the first 90 minutes of normal time into account. In that case, there would actually be six possible scorelines for the under to win. 0-0 and 1-1 would also be possibilities.

Avoiding Suckers Bets

We can’t stress enough the importance of avoiding sucker bets. For example, making teaser bets on totals is a long-term losing proposition that is better off avoided. What else do suckers do? They forget to shop around for the best lines.

Remember, as mentioned earlier, recreational betting sites will often shade lines or adjust odds to make things worse for those wagering on the more popular selections. This is to trap “fish” – the bettors that tend to lose frequently because they DO make sucker bets.

If you don’t want to be a fish, please check out our article on sucker bets and how to avoid them.

As one of the most popular sports to bet, sports bettors have been making
money on basketball for years and show no signs of letting up anytime soon.
While the sport itself is simple and the bets on the sports are also simple, the
strategy can sometimes be a bit confusing knowing where to start. Ultimately,
you will probably develop your own strategy to beat the books, but we can help
by giving you some tips to get you headed in the right direction to “making some
serious coin.” It’s our understanding that is how the cool kids say making
money.

The best way to utilize these strategy suggestions is to use them as a guide
for developing your complete betting strategy. While most of them are meant to
be taken literally, it’s important to remember that they are meant to be a piece
of your overall strategy, not the entire strategy. These tips should work
hand in hand with your own strategies and should help to direct the way your
mind works to develop your strategy. Basically, don’t let one tip below be the
only way you pick your bets. Use them as pieces of a more comprehensive betting
strategy based on your knowledge base.

Points in the Paint vs. 3-Pointers

Paying attention to how a team makes most of their points can be important
when looking at consistency. A team that relies heavily on 3-point baskets is
great, but it’s a lot easier to go cold on shooting 3-pointers than it is on
posting up and driving to the basket.

Keep this in mind when looking to pick game winners as well as if you are
making bracket bets for the tournament in college basketball. The winning team
in the NCAA tournament is almost never a team that makes most of their points
from beyond the arc. Those teams are great to look at for upsets, but not for
long-term consistency and deep runs.

Check the Team’s Schedule

Fatigue plays a huge role in the success of teams in basketball. Unlike
sports like football, teams play a lot of games and their schedules vary, often
with multiple games throughout the week. Take a look at how many games the team
has played recently and if they’re on a long road trip or something like that.
If a team is playing their fourth game in five days, you can bet that they’re
going to be tired which means they’ll be slower and less likely to perform well.

Looking at the location of these games is also important as away/road games
will definitely take a bigger toll on a team’s energy. Also, look at how far
they have to travel for their games. If they are going cross country back and
forth for every game, the travel is going to wear on them even more. You should
also take a look at what point it is in their season as the effects of this
don’t usually start coming in as heavily until after the first quarter of the
season. The later in the season it is, the more this is going to be an issue and
the more opportunities it will create for you.

Road Favorites After a Blowout Loss

A popular betting strategy is to take a look at teams that are favored in an
away game after getting blown out in their previous game. These teams are
clearly strong enough in talent to be still favored on the road after a big loss
which means they have a lot of actual talent and substance that the oddsmakers
still like.

These teams are also going to be fired up after getting embarrassed.
Teams that have been blown out by 15 or more points and are still road favorites
in their next game have covered the spread over 60% of the time in the last 10
years.

Big Home Underdogs

No one likes to lose at home in front of their own fans. This seems to be
true when it comes to basketball as well. Teams have a strong tendency to cover
the spread when they are big underdogs (10+ points) at home.

A lot of this has
to do with the emotional desire to impress at home, and a lot of it has to do
with the other team usually letting off when they’re up quite a few points.
They’ll put in second stringers and rest their big names because it only matters
to them if they win, not by how many points. Even though we care about the
spread, teams playing the game do not. A win is a win, and a loss is a loss to
them.

Watch for Moving Lines

One of the best ways to dominate sports betting of any kind is to recognize
that there are experts out there who are practical geniuses at sports betting.
If you’re one of them, this won’t affect you as much, although it always helps
to know what the other experts are doing. If you see a line moving one direction
after the public has bet heavily on the other side, you’re probably witnessing
the experts taking advantage of the uneducated public.

Historically, the general public has not been very smart when it comes to
sports betting. They bet with their heart instead of their head way too often
and are too eager to jump on trends that don’t mean anything. There’s a reason
sports books are so profitable. This creates a lot of opportunities for the
expert bettors. Here’s what we mean with an oversimplified example.

Let’s say the Orlando Magic are -6 points to win a game and they’re playing
the Knicks. All the sports outlets and the media start talking about how great
and underrated the Knicks are, and the public starts betting heavily on them.
The line moves quickly to the Magic -3 reflecting all of the public betting on
the Knicks. If you start to see the line moving back the other direction, like
back to Magic -4, you are probably witnessing the smart money taking advantage
of the public’s over-eagerness to get on trends. When you see this, you should
bet with the experts.

If you see a line moving one way and you think it’s way off because the
public is betting based on their hearts and popularity, definitely bet the other
direction. You may still want to wait a little bit to see if it moves any
further in what you think is the wrong direction. For example, in the above
example, after the public starts betting what you think is incorrect, the line
will move from Magic -6 to Magic -5. You could bet it right then if you think
it’s now a great bet or you could wait and see what happens. If the public keeps
betting it, the line will move further and further in your favor making your bet
much more attractive. The worst thing that can happen is the line corrects back
to its original point, and then you just don’t bet on that game. You can also
bet the game at -5 and then bet it again if it moves further if you think
they’re both good bets.

Finding the perfect timing to jump on moving lines is an art form and one you
will have to perfect as you go along. We also want to make sure to point out
that just because a line moves does not mean you have to bet on the game. You
should really only bet on the game if it fits with your strategy and you think
it is a good pick. You also want to be careful to make sure that the line
movement is from the experts correcting bad betting by the public, not the other
way around. The sportsbooks are great about putting out good lines, but they do
make mistakes. If they put out a bad line, the experts will start betting it
immediately, and it will correct quickly. Don’t confuse this with the public
incorrectly moving the line.

To make this all easier, here are some quick tips to go along with this
strategy.

• Know WHY the line is moving. Don’t just bet because it moved.
• Only bet if you think the new line is a good bet. Don’t just bet because it
  moved.
• You don’t have to wait to jump on a bad line, but timing and waiting can be
  beneficial as well.
• Sportsbooks are wise, but they still make mistakes too.
• Sometimes the public will be right.

Watch Out for Your Favorites

We mentioned a few times above that we can find opportunities to take
advantage of the betting public’s willingness to bet with their heart instead of
their head. The obvious caveat to that is that we don’t want ever to be the ones
that other people are taking advantage of. The best way to do this is to be
careful when we
look to bet our favorite teams and be careful who we get news
and advice from and how we choose to interpret it. Let’s look at each of these
briefly.

We all always want our favorite team to win. Because of this, our brains work
to find the ways that it is possible, even if it is not probable. This is great
when you are being a fan because it gives you hope and can make the game
watching experience much more enjoyable. As a sports bettor, though, it can
spell impending doom. This improbable hope can cut into your profits if you let
it bleed into your picks and strategy. The best advice is probably to avoid
betting your favorite teams unless you are sure of something with your strategy.
It’s tough to be unbiased, and there are usually a ton of other games to choose
from.

The second thing we mentioned is being careful who you get advice and news
from and how you choose to interpret it. The public loves to glamorize stories
and underdogs, and they are professionals when it comes to hyping up games that
might not actually be as close as they say it might be. It’s important for
you not to get caught up in these stories and let it affect your betting
strategy. The best way to protect yourself against this is to be careful of
where you get your news and information from and make your picks as independent
of other people’s opinions first. After you have made your pick, you can reach
out to others and read other opinions and see if it changes the way you have
chosen to bet. Just don’t let it control you and don’t become a member of the
dreaded “general betting public.”

Cherry Pick Your Games for Value

It is no secret that the odds makers are good at what they do. Most of the
lines they put out are going to be spot on and will make finding value a
challenge. That doesn’t mean that value does not exist. When there are lots of
games going on, it’s much more likely that you might be able to find some lines
with mistakes in them. Smaller games in popularity are also going to have less
time spent on setting their lines. There really is no secret to when to try and
find bad lines. The key is to have a strategy in place that helps you spot these
lines and take advantage of them.

Over Under Basketball Betting Strategy Tactics

One of the best ways to do this is to set up a system to where you determine
what you think the line on the game will be BEFORE you actually look at the
lines. Then you can bet on the games that look to have value to you. For
example, let’s say you are going to be betting NBA games and you want to bet
three games. You pick the following games

• UNLV vs. Gonzaga
• Florida vs. South Carolina
• Miami vs. Duke

Now, BEFORE you look at the lines and point spreads on these games you work
your strategy and try and figure out what you think the spreads should be. You
determine the following:

• You think UNLV will lose by 6 points.
• You think Florida will win by 4 points.
• You think Miami will lose by 2 points.

So if you were the odds maker, you would set the lines at:

• UNLV +6
• Florida -4
• Miami +2

When you check the actual lines at the sportsbook, you see the following:

• UNLV + 8
• Florida -4
• Miami +1

In this situation, you would do the following:

1. Bet on UNLV because they can lose by eight points according to the
   book instead of the six you think they’re going to lose by. You think that
   UNLV will do better than what the oddsmakers think.
2. Don’t bet on the second game because you think the line is correct.
3. Bet on Duke because they only need to win by one point instead of the
   two that you think they are going to. You think that Duke will do better
   than what the oddsmakers think.

The point here is to determine how you think the teams will do and what you
think the spread should be before you look at what the book has posted. This
will protect you from being influenced by what they predict and will also make
it much easier to spot value bets.

Over Under Betting Lines

Check the Lineups

This is a fairly basic tip that unfortunately is ignored way too often. When
you’re betting on games, make sure to check injury reports and rosters before
you make your wager.

Let’s say you see the Golden State Warriors
are playing a game and are only -2 to win against the Knicks. You think this is
an incredible value and can’t believe the book would post such an awful line.
What you forgot to look up, though, is that Steph Curry, their star player, is
out along with two other starters. This happens a lot especially with long
seasons and a lot of games to be played.

Make sure that the players you are
banking on to help you win your bet are actually slated to play in the game. It
only takes a few minutes and can save you a lot of money in the long run.