4 Simple Tips to Betting Football Like a Professional

We created our site for moderate to advanced level sports bettors. That means that you already know how to shop around for not only the best bonuses offered by online sportsbooks but the most achievable ones as well.

You know that you definitely have to hold accounts at multiple sportsbooks so you can always get the best betting lines. And you know that betting with your heart is never a smart thing. Like you, we have been betting on sports for years. Long before the Internet came around. So when the World Wide Web presented us with the ability to legally bet on sports 24/7 from the comfort and privacy of our favorite smartphone, tablet or computer, we were ecstatic.

We have since become industry analysts because of our years of experience betting sports online. And we want to pass on some strategies and tips that will make you a better football sports bettor. Keep the following things in mind the next time you place NCAA or NFL football wagers, and your bankroll will be richer for it.

1 - Know Your Break Even Point - 52.4%

You know all those services that brag about consistent 69%, 76% or 81% winning picks? Sure, the pros will hit those kinds of numbers from time to time, but absolutely no one, and we mean no one, knocks down those kind of winning numbers on a consistent basis. Since the typical football odds are offered at -100, you need to win just 52.4% of your bets to break even.

The 10% juice means you're 47.6% losing percentage is multiplied times 1.1. That comes to 52.36% losing, against your 52.4% winning picks. So how do professional gamblers make a consistent living of six and sometimes seven figures a year by knowing this?

Because they are happy to win 56% to 59% of all their bets over time. The professional football bettor knows that he is smarter than the point spread most of the time. So he may place 300 NFL and 300 NCAA college football wagers per season.

If his average unit is $500, he makes 171 winning bets and 129 losing bets at a 57% winning rate on 300 bets. That leaves 29.1 x $500 or $14,550 profit, and that is just for betting roughly 18 to 20 games a week, which professional football bettors do. Double that if you play both the NCAA and NFL seasons, and you can see why the big boys simply want to win between 56% to 59% of the time over the long-term. That is a very achievable number, even for you and I.

The Pros Bet More Football Games Than You Do … A Lot More

Professional football bettors, like in the above example, will wager on 20 to 25 or more games each and every week on NCAA football. Even though the field is smaller, they will still make 15 to 20 spread, parlay, teaser and other types of bets on NFL football every week. They start out with a much larger sports bankroll than you or I do in most cases.

At the beginning of the season, they divide their bankroll by the number of bets they're going to make each week. Every week after they have won or lost, they recalculate. As we discussed above, they know they are going to win better than 55% of the time over the long term. And that is all they are trying to do.

By using large numbers of bets and a larger bet-per-game amount, they are simply cashing in on that difference between the breakeven point of 52.4% and the 56% or 57% number they can maintain over time. We are certainly not telling you that all you have to do is bet 20 times a week on NFL and NCAA games to become a professional.

The pros spend dozens of hours each and every week during football season crunching numbers, studying statistics and odds, and creating their own mental spread before the numbers come out. They then respond accordingly. But you can definitely exercise the next step to become a more responsible, and therefore successful, football sports bettor online.

Understand Smart Money Management

The typical football bettor thinks like this. "I have $10,000 to start the season with. Week 1 in the National Football League, I like 7 NFL games and 5 NCAA football contests, so I will bet $100 per game." Unless that bettor is very, very lucky, this is an unmanageable and unsustainable strategy.

No respectable professional football bettor would ever risk 12% of his bankroll (12 bets at $100 each in this example) in a single week of action, unless he saw something so statistically perfect that it only comes around once every couple of years.

Smart money management means dividing your bankroll at the start of the season, before you place the first wager, by the total number of bets you will make all year.

If you routinely make 12 bets each week during the NCAA and NFL football seasons, that is 156 NCAA regular-season and 192 regular-season NFL wagers. So with a standard $10,000 starting bankroll, your average wager per game to start the year would be $28.74. This is what the pros do so they can weather any bad luck run, or miscalculation of the statistics and odds on their part. In that scenario, you can certainly bet more than $28.74 per game if you like. Just understand that if you're placing 12 bets each week on NFL and NCAA action and you do not win at least 52.4% of the time, your betting will be over long before the season is.

The Pros Pounce with Lightning Speed When They See Some Statistical Anomaly

Professional football bettors do a lot more math and number crunching than Joe Public. That's why they are consistently successful. But they also know how to take advantage of a good thing quickly when they see it.

In the 2014 NFL preseason, weeks before any games were played, National Football League officials announced they were going to be much harsher on defensive players regarding "defensive holding", "illegal use of the hands" and "illegal contact" penalties. The average sports bettor took no notice. But the professional gambler began salivating and was ready to take advantage.

After the second week of preseason NFL games, the guys in the stripes had thrown 104 flags for defensive holding, 70 for illegal use of the hands and 55 for illegal contact.

That amounted to a ridiculous 229 first downs that offensive units were given in just 32 preseason games. Give even the worst NFL offense an extra 7.1562 first downs each and every game, and the scoring is going to go up. Professional gamblers knew this, and they began pounding the "over" on the posted total weeks 1 and 2 so hard that something happened which has never occurred before.

Week 3 of the preseason sportsbook number crunchers posted every single game's point total number over 40. But it was too late. The estimates were that in Las Vegas alone, tens of millions of dollars were made just because intelligent sports bettors noticed this anomaly and took advantage. The average bettor did not. Do your math, read and listen to every bit of NFL and NCAA news, even regarding the zebras, and move swiftly when opportunity presents itself.