ATS is sports-betting speak for "against the spread." Used in conjunction with playing football contests, it addresses an important distinction about whether picks are made considering the games' pointspreads or simply according to which teams will win, which is called picking "straight up."
Think about it and you'll understand quickly why it's much more difficult to pick winners ATS. In a given week, there may be several contests with big pointspreads involved. The Patriots might be a double-digit favorite playing at home against the Raiders, for example. And in a case like this, choosing the Pats to win straight up might have a 90% probability of being a winning entry on your contest card. When a few big favorites win as expected, you don't have to guess right on as many of the closer games to post a good record (and that's why there are often multiple perfect cards in the bigger tournaments). But if you have to lay the points, that probability drops down to about 50% (the pointspread is supposed to make each side equally likely to win the proposition).
The LV Hilton's SuperContest and others with high entry fees almost always pick ATS. While the inexpensive contests that attract less-knowledgeable players tend to pick straight up.
For information about this year's football contests, visit LVASports.com.
