Basketball Over Under Strategy

• Basketball Over Under Strategy
• Ncaa Basketball Over Under
• Basketball Over Under Strategy Definition

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.

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.

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

Advanced Basketball Betting Strategy One of the most exciting things about betting on basketball is there are an endless number of ways you can build a profitable betting strategy. While in theory, a perfect system exists to identify value, pick winners, and make money, we highly doubt it’s been discovered yet.

• The Best Betting Strategies For College Basketball. A betting strategy is a structured approach to betting with the objective of increasing profitability. The following are key strategies you can apply when placing bets on college basketball. Betting Tip #1 Consider Wagering Limits. College basketball limits are some of the lowest among major.
• Basketball betting using straight bets can be placed either over or under. Basketball over/under bets generally refer to the extent by which the total score of the games, after aggregating the individual scores of the teams, will exceed the predetermined total limit for the game. An over bet is when the gambler believes that the total score posted will be above the total score predicted for the games.
• The foundation of basketball betting online comes down to knowing rosters inside and out (including the role of bench players) and factoring in the noticeable effect of home court advantage. That foundation will put you on the right track to turning a consistent profit betting on basketball, but there are other basketball betting strategies that should also be implemented.

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

Basketball Over Under Strategy

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.

Basketball betting using straight bets can be placed either over or under. Basketball over/under bets generally refer to the extent by which the total score of the games, after aggregating the individual scores of the teams, will exceed the predetermined total limit for the game. An over bet is when the gambler believes that the total score posted will be above the total score predicted for the games. Conversely, an under bet is when the gambler believes that the total score posted will be less than the score predicted for the game.

Betting on Weakness

Understanding the weaknesses of the playing teams and their strengths are important to predict the total scores of the teams. Some people like to look back as far as the previous season or even the previous year to analyze the total scores scored by and against the teams. Teams’ relative performances in home and away games are also considered to predict correct betting odds.

Offensive vs Defensive Games

Basketball betting sites also use the total score to determine the pace of the game, whether it will be offensive or defensive. If a team has more points scored against it as compared to the points they have scored, the pace of the game is most likely to be defensive. Conversely, when a team enters into a game with lesser points scored against it, the game is more likely to be offensive. In offensive games, both teams would like to score more points. As such the totals will be bigger. In defensive games, both teams would like to protect their position. Hence, total scores will be relatively lower.

Over/under wagers hinge on projecting the correct total scores. Gamblers who choose this bet also need to understand whether the projected total scores are for the whole game or one of the two halves. While several popular online sportsbooks offer total final scores, there are a handful that project total scores for each half of the game.

Over/Under Betting Systems

A very popular NBA betting system is to bet the under in the game wherein the total posted is the lowest. This technique is relevant only when at least four games are played during a day. It is common gambling psychology to bet on over during a basketball betting opportunity because the onus is more on the teams to score than not. As such, gamblers will find lesser competition in the under bets, especially for the lowest total during a day. In the long run, this translates to better gambling odds and improved profitability.

The NCAA basketball betting scene livens up with the total bets offered by various bookmakers. NCAA games tend to be relatively low scoring due to the presence of a vast cross section of college basketball teams, unlike the professional NBA league. College games totals can be accurately projected only by studying the gaming styles and approaches of the two teams. Simply learning the points conceded and the points earned is not very helpful in college basketball games. Teams’ capabilities to make long shoots during crux points of the games, often reflected as three point percentages, are also key to projecting accurate over/under odds.

March Madness

The series of elimination games that happen during the NCAA basketball season is titled March Madness. Basketball over/under bets reaches a fever pitch during the March Madness season. Several bookmakers predict specific over/under odds for these games. The entire tournament involves more than 64 different college teams and literally, hundreds of games are played out. The NCAA basketball season presents plenty of opportunities for bookmakers to win money and place successful bets.

Some bookmakers like to extrapolate the total score for the game by analyzing the total points scored by and against the team in previous encounters. There are several online agencies that keep track of past scores of teams.

The Common Sense Bet

Ncaa Basketball Over Under

Many basketball betting enthusiasts would affirm that betting on over/under scores are probably a lot easier than any other bets. Over/unders a lot more logical and common sense based than other wagering products like parlays and teasers. A regular over/under bet would find the gambler risking $110 to win $100. In case the gambler risks an equal amount of money on over and under bets, he will be assured of making a return no matter what the consequence. While betting on basketball totals, the number can range between a lowly 120 to a massive 200 plus for more professional league games. Bookmakers often like to align the money line totals by 1.5 points to lure gamblers in.

Basketball Over Under Strategy Definition

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