Years ago, the college game was actually much more popular than the NBA, and a lot of sports bettors were not taking notice. That has all changed, and now the school basketball scene is actually worth betting on. Each season the vogue changes, as the players become more athlete then human, and the games that were once unpolished now are very polished and seem to attract top talent.
The college game also attracts a different type of bettor. The big time bettors tend to gather around the first Saturday in October, when the top 25 teams start to play. If you are looking to make money betting on college basketball, you need to be looking towards the Washington DC, as this is the day that the panels start to feature key games.
The day usually follows a local TV station and a major sports network pick, meaning that most of the top 25 teams are covered, and often the mid majors and newly discovered teams are pushed onto the main ticket.
Once you have learned the local TV station for college basketball, and the teams dominating the betting world, it is actually a very simple matter to bet on basketball, especially since so many different sorts of bets can be placed.
The three most common bet are the point spread, the money line, and the total. With the first two, you are simply choosing a team to win or lose, regardless of the point spread. With the money line, your team has to win or lose by a certain amount to your bet. And with the total, the team you choose has to win or lose at the specified total.
Because the first two bets tend to be safer, unless a huge number of points are scored, there is a greater chance of them actually winning. Because of the shooting percentage that is higher in the colleges, the safer bet on the first two games is actually the bet on the favorite.
Because of the variety in the ways teams can score, the safe money bet on a favorite is actually the bet on a team with a better Even Money Margin. This is -110, or you bet $110 to win $100. Therefore, to bet on a favorite, you only need to win $100. If they win by $100, you win $110, and of course the person that loses $100 to the favorite does not have to lose their $100 as well.
Because the favorite is likely to win the game, the opposite is true for the least favorite. If the least favorite wins, the person loses the $100 bet on the favorite, but wins $110 on the least favorite. However, if the least favorite loses, the person loses the $100 bet on the favorite, but wins $110 on the least favorite.
Simply put, the more games a team wins, the more money they will make for the person that bet on them. The person that has a +120 against a team with a -150 is making money, while the person with a +120 against a team with a +120 has lost his bet, for the $100 he has invested, he will get $120 back, while the person who has -100 against a team with a +150 loses his $100 bet, for the $150 he has lost.
Favorites in the NBA:
The -110 determines the amount that you must bet the favorite in order to win $100. If the -110 is bet, you will win $100 as long as the team does not win. If the favorite wins, however, you only lose the amount you bet.
Most people are unaware of what the -110 calls, for the amount of money you win if the team wins as well. Betting on the underdog in the NBA is always +110, which means you will lose the amount of money you bet (plus of course your profit, of course).
If you only ever place bets on the favorite, you will never see any profit.
Favorites and underdogs in the NBA are approximately a 60-40 favorite, or as a rule, 60-40 in the NBA. Don’t be fooled by the point spread, since it only refers to the money line, not the actual odds of the game.
With money lines, it’s always the best option to bet on the underdog, no matter what the spread may be.
Reading the Odds
Read the odds, and you will see that the -110 calls for a bet on the favorite, -150 on the underdog, or there about a 3-1 spread in the NBA.
Granted, the -110 calls for a larger payout, but when you are already getting paid 3-1 on the bet if your team wins, isn’t it better to have a 35-1 payout on the bet than a -3-1 payout?