Here's the latest installment of "Fezzik Fridays", where LVASports.com's handicapping guru tackles a different one of your sports-betting-related questions each week, for the duration of the football season.
I didn't mean to give that impression. My aim with last week's answer was to convey that there are lots of opportunities early in the seasons of all sports, and that alternatives to the ever-more-efficient big-market NFL should be considered. It's simply far more difficult to beat "settled" football lines in November than in September, the best evidence of which is that the huge line moves on sides that occur early in the NFL and college seasons just don't materialize in November (the mid-week numbers are pretty much right). But that doesn't mean that opportunities don't exist in both. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that every sport is beatable -- at least to some degree -- every week of the year. Here are some examples for the NFL.
With the weather worsening, if you can get advance weather reports of, say, windy conditions, it's pretty much a slam dunk to fire in an under bet with confidence that the number being dealt didn't have that key information to take into account. Further, opening numbers, while more accurate at this point in the season, will still have a few glaring mistakes, as will some "look-ahead" one-week lines. Consider that Tennessee was +3 at Miami on the look-ahead line last week, and +2.5 on this week's opening line. As I write this, the Titans are -1.
And the best may be yet to come. There's a good case to be made that week 17 is the single most beatable week in the NFL, as some teams mail it in while they rest their starters. The sharp NFL handicapper pours over playoff scenarios immediately after week 16 to get a handle on which teams that have incentive to win to make the playoffs or get better playoff seeds are playing teams that won't even get off the bus in week 17 (the Indianapolis Colts, for example, are notorious sandbaggers late in the year). A key reason I was able to win the Las Vegas Hilton's SuperContest the last two years was that I made selections like Carolina laying a touchdown against the eventual Super Bowl Champion Saints (who dat that wanted to just "Hop on the bus Gus" and get out of town?).
Finally, one of the great opportunities of the season always comes when the proposition bets for the Super Bowl are released (and to a lesser degree, the props in the playoff games that precede it). Putting out lots of prop bets has become a primary goal of many books, and when you have to make that many lines that fast, there will always be mistakes. We'll be all over them on the LVASports.com message boards. No doubt.
To get in on the action at the LVASportsboards member-only forums, it's only $24.95/month -- you'll find over 300 serious sports bettors, including the best brains in handicapping, sharing their knowledge and picks, but you have to be a member to take part.
