Throughout football season LVASportsboards host and back-to-back Hilton SuperContest winner Fezzik will be sharing his tips and expertise in a regular "Fezzik Fridays" QoD. Be sure to send in your sports-betting questions. This is the first. Fezzik writes:
For Recreational Players:
Here, basic strategy is pretty simple: Play all the free ones. This strategy is off the charts good since you risk nothing to win what can be a substantial amount. There's no real opportunity cost, since if an emergency or a conflict comes up, you simply don't put in your picks that week. No big deal. The beauty of this is that you also get free gambling entertainment out of all of the contests, as you have "action" on the games without risking a dime and now can enjoy Sundays rooting for your teams to win, with no chance of getting financially nicked.
As for the playing strategy, if the contest is picking against the spread (ATS), just pick the team you think will cover and enjoy. Spend as much time as you want on the picks, but remember that the randomly picked entry will succeed almost as often as the one that's been exhaustively researched-it's hard to pick ATS winners.
If the contest is pick the straight-up (SU) winners, a great basic strategy to maximize your expectation is to pick 2-4 upsets in any week. This gives you a shot to win, and if you do win, you'll likely take the prize without chopping it with dozens of others.
Check the LVASports.com list for location and details about free contests.
For Gambling Pros:
Wow, this gets complicated! The freerolls discussed above are great, but the opportunity cost of putting the entries in (and grading them) is likely huge -EV. Sure, you can make maybe $5-$20/hour in contests, but it will cost you way too much time and effort to do so.
You should gravitate toward the mid-level buy-ins, where you put up $100-$2,500 to play, but be careful. If you enter only one, you can give it full attention, always put in your picks in optimally at the deadline, and arguably have a 100%+ EV situation. However, each contest you enter puts a strain/tax on you. Enter five of them and now all of a sudden you have five deadlines looming each week. And you really want to put in your picks close to deadline or you will get stuck with some bad plays when your QB gets reported out after you submit your plays, but before the deadline.
Bottom line … play too many contests, and now you have a J-O-B, and that can lead to your being exhausted and frustrated.
Based on this consideration, I'm playing the LVH Contest this year (widely recognized as the "Main Event of Sports Handicapping"), along with the $5,000 Cantor Football Showdown, and that's it. I'd love to play all the others, but I have to focus on my handicapping and betting, there just isn't enough time to do everything.
