The Smart Sports Betting Journal
Welcome to our sports betting journal! We put action on games then use the power of hindsight to understand common betting errors, helping you bet smarter. The idea is not to recommend picks (if anything, you should fade us), but to get inside the mind of an everyday square and see what types of biases and mistakes we make when picking games.
11/2/21 - NFL Week 7&8 / Premier League
I greatly apologize for the delayed upload, but, boy, do I have a story for you!
I was in Tennessee two weekends ago for a wedding and guess what, much like Frank in PA, betting is legal! Because of this, I though “hey, let’s take advantage of some of these DraftKings promos!” So, I deposited $100, and started placing my bets.
So, I had to come back to school Sunday, and that is unfortunately in the illegal-to-bet state of North Carolina. Well, my $225 of free bets did not enter my account until Monday. All week I am trying to get friends and bosses alike to place bets for me in legal states, but DrafKings is smart and knows I am not actually there…
It’s Saturday night of the next week, my bets are expiring on Monday, I’m like “shoot, well I can’t just let $225 of free bets go to waste!” What do I do? Well, I drive to the Virginia boarder and hour away, duh!
It was so funny looking back on it. I started driving at 10pm when I was off work, drove on country roads for an hour, passed 8 active police cars on the way, parked in a church parking lot of all places, and returned at 12:30!
But it was definitely worth it! A nice $100 bet on Mo Salah to score and LIV to win… +200 found $200 in profits. Tennessee moneyline vs Chiefs, easy +185 hit. Wolves to beat Everton the following week at +130, some nice value there. Ultimately, I came out of that weekend positive by $290 from my free bets.
I’ll be honest, I did not have much time to think either. This was one of those instances where you are betting strictly on your sports knowledge and little else. I questioned my Salah bet all the way home… But I trusted myself. I know soccer. I know Salah and Liverpool’s recent form stacking up against the lack of Man Utd form. It was one of those cases where if it were my money to lose, I wouldn’t have hammered it that hard, but because it was risk-free, it was worth it in my eyes.
Now the part I am proud of and I want to portray in this section… I got out! I withdrew my money. I wasn’t going to do something crazy and drive to Virginia every week. I understand betting is entertainment, not a lifestyle. If I find myself in a state where betting is legal, I deposit more money at that time, but it makes no sense to keep that sum of money caught up in that account. So, from an $100 deposit, I found myself with a nice $318 profit. $100 of that will go to Frank to help towards our chronicles of our main account, and the rest will go towards paying rent and into smarter investments.
BET SMARTER!! Know when you have won. Know when to back away, don’t get greedy! If you need help, please visit our very first article. It talks about why you should not be afraid to bet, but more importantly talks about the philosophy of betting. If you find yourselves with a problem larger than smartsportsbet and online blogs, call 1-877-718-5543 to talk to a representative about a possible gambling addiction.
My name is Shea, and I hope you enjoyed this wild weekend of mine as much as I did!
10/18/21 - NFL Week 6 / Playoff Baseball
Shea here, taking over again! I found myself in Tennessee this weekend for a wedding and told myself, “why not look to take advantage of these sportsbook promotions?” So that’s exactly what I did, and found myself 2 units up with an additional $225 of free bets to play with, so it was a good weekend!
For two reasons, I stayed away from college football this week. For one, I had a rough start to my CFB betting career last week. And two, the wedding was Saturday and I was the best man, so I needed to devote all my time to that. No time for distractions.
So, let’s talk NFL, soccer, and baseball. Early in the morning I saw the line for Tottenham ML vs Newcastle at +125. While Tottenham have been up and down, there entire core is playing and whenever you can get plus odds on a “Top 6” club to beat a team really fighting for relegation year-in-and-year-out, you take it. The beginning and ends to the game were quite back and forth, with Newcastle scoring a goal in the 2’ and 89’ minutes, but Tottenham’s dominant first half allowed them to see a 3-2 victory through.
After that great start to the morning, it was time for NFL. We found ourselves rocking some favorites of Rams -7.5, Cowboys -3.5 and Steelers -4.5. We lastly had Cardinals +3. Low-and behold, 3/4 hit and we were one team away from hitting quite the parlay. Reasonings behind the bets include:
Rams -7.5 - NYG is quite the poor team, Rams have been cooking as of late. There was no way Stafford was going to be stopped with Woods and Kupp as weapons against a depleted Giants secondary.
Cowboys -3.5 - This was a prayer sent from above, as it was looking like the Cowboys were only going to win by a field goal. Thank god for a broken play at the end. The logic behind this pick was a potent Cowboys offense against a less than impressive Patriots offense. Granted, Belichick should never be ignored, but Mac Jones does not seem like the answer with their current weapons. Chalk this one up as a good bet that ended up being a lucky one.
Steelers -4.5 - This did not hit, and I was shocked. I am a Steelers fan, so I tend to overvalue how good PIT actually is, but I figured at home they would take care of a Russell Wilson-less Seahawks team with an atrocious defense and without there first and second string backs. They looked amazing in the first half, but always trust Tomlin to play down to his competition. I think 8/10 times the Steelers would cover this, the team just got sloppy at the end.
Cardinals +3 - I don’t care if the Browns are playing at home and I do not care how good of a second-string Hunt is. The Browns have a middle-of-the-pack defense and are without their offensive workhorse in Chubb. I thought Cardinals ML had great value. I ended up playing it safe with the underdog spread, but the Cardinals are a great team. A solid defense, with an explosive offense, I don’t see a world where they should be underdogs for the rest of the year barring a huge injury.
So this was how NFL played out. I was proud and glad we could make some money this week! I won’t spend a ton of time on my incorrect Dodgers -1.5. Basically, Scherzer is a top 3 pitcher, Ian Anderson, while good, has been inconsistent and injury prone this entire year (trust me, I had him in fantasy, I know). I figured the Dedgers would jump out big and stay there. Getting that run line at -105 I figured was a steal, but the Braves keep proving everybody wrong. I think Dodgers to win the series still has value sitting at +160, however know that playoff games are going to be incredibly close and run lines are VERY risky.
That’s all I have for you this week! See you next time here on SmartSportsBet.net!
10/11/21 - NFL Week 5 / CFB Week 6
My name is Shea, and I’m going to be taking over the blog this week. I am primarily a Premier League soccer bettor, however I have been known to dabble in the world of football and baseball. With domestic soccer on an international break this week, I thought I would play my hand in a few bets this week. Here is my hindsight analysis.
Rough start to my college football betting career
The first of my two key takeaways from the weekend is that if I aim to be profitable in college football, I need to study it better. With me not growing up with a college team I support, I never was incredibly interested in sports below the professional level. With this being said, I have recently begun to follow more closely with my Demon Deacons starting out 6-0. But this by no means makes me a pro.
I started off the weekend with two bets in CFB - Wake -5.5 vs Syracuse and Bama - 5.5 vs A&M. The logic behind the Wake was almost entirely based off of the previous week’s performance, which is not smart. I figured since we beat a strong Louisville team and Syracuse lost to a weak FSU team, that the differences in scores would cover that -5.5 line. I also saw that Syracuse had yet to play a formidable opponent this season, so I figured they would struggle against a potent Wake offense. They made a game out of it! At the end of the day Wake won by a field goal and it could have gone either way. I chalk it up to a tough beat, but kudos to the Orange.
Obviously, Bama did not perform how a majority of the country predicted they would perform. They lost to an A&M side that was coming off of a poor performance against Mississippi St. Alabama are normally cover monsters and come out firing right out the gate. Against almost any team in the country, I would say their starters are touchdown favorites for the first 15 minutes of games. It doesn’t matter if they start with the ball or not. No matter, they didn't cover, and this I attribute to the psychology of the game that analysts can’t really contribute for. Alabama had covered the 1Q spread in every game thus far in the season, so the obvious pick is them by a touchdown against a struggling A&M side. Again, the more I reflect on it, the more I figure I had the right bet at the wrong time.
Watch the line movement
This was my favorite bet of the weekend going into Sunday. Not simply because it hit, but because it was the most numerically backed. I bet Steelers ML over the Broncos. At the beginning of the week, the line started at the Steelers being favorites by 2 points. As I checked the sportsbook each day, I noticed that the spread was making a turn to favor the Broncos. This is a sign of DraftKing’s limiting their risk by evening the money pool on both sides to guarantee that they place on specific bets. Basically, as dogs, a majority of people were betting Broncos, so in order to even the outcome out, they needed to make the Steelers a more appealing option. No matter what, I see the Steelers as the favorites in this game… playing at home against an overvalued Broncos team. So getting them at a discount was that much more rewarding.
Moral of the story, watch line movement. Unless a significant news story breaks that effects one of the teams throughout the week, any drastic line movement is looking to even out sportsbook revenues, ultimately creating steals. Heck, if you had bet Broncos ML on Monday when they were dogs, and then bet Steelers as dogs later in the week, you could have hedged and guaranteed yourself a profit.
Continue learning. I know Frank and I certainly are. Look for our updated blog next week here at smartsportsbet.net!
9/27/21 - NFL Week 3 / College Football Week 4
“We’re back, baby!”
Well does it feel good writing this update. We didn’t shoot the moon like last week (we weren’t perfect either), but we did win 5 out of 10 bets. Normally we wouldn’t place 10 wagers in a single weekend, but turns out that DraftKings incentive ($200 in free bets) wasn’t simply free money; we were given 8 free $25 bets, and they expired on Sunday the 26th, so we had to get involved. And that leads us straight into our first lesson:
Lesson 1 - Understand Your Incentive
Nobody likes to read the fine print, but when you’re counting on a big incentive then it helps to understand it. We aren’t upset that the $200 incentive was controlled the way it was, but it might have impacted how we managed our initial $100 bankroll in Week 2. Thankfully, the free bets weren’t restricted to a given market (we could bet them on any games in any sporting league, so we took a flyer on an English Premier League under that busted) but if they were, that would have been something important to know.
We also got a few other incentives from DraftKings, like a risk free parlay that also busted. A secondary lesson here goes beyond simply understanding your incentives, but also being strategic with them. For our $20 risk free parlay, we packaged four of our favorite NFL bets to chase a 10x payout. Smart? Maybe - it is risk free. But if our goal is staying in the game for as long as possible, maybe taking one (or even two games) off that ticket could have given us a better chance at hitting. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but you should think about it in terms of your own season-long goals.
Lesson 2 - Being Smart About Moneylines
We bet 2 moneyline games this week: the Rams and the Falcons. Why would we bet the Moneyline vs Spread? In the case of the Falcons, a 2.5 point underdog to the Giants, we figured if they were going to cover 2.5 points they’d probably win outright, and we could get better odds on the Moneyline, which we in fact did: our $25 free bet paid out $32.50.
We also bet the Rams moneyline, which in retrospect might not have been an ideal bet. They were underdogs, hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and initially +3.5 underdogs. Both teams were showing -110 odds, meaning that we’d only win about $22.75 on our wager after the hold percentage. And the moneyline was +100, essentially even money. The Rams won by 10 points, so we hit our bet, but unlike the Falcons game it only paid out $25.
In retrospect, was the even money payout worth the risk of giving the points? Maybe; we won after all. But hindsight is always 20/20.
9/20/21 - NFL Week 2
“Are we qualified to run this site?”
I got this text from our lead editor around 5pm Sunday. We had just lost 3 of our 1pm game bets and were looking at the specter of going 0 for 5 on the day. Shooting the moon is never fun, but there’s an odd feeling of success considering how remarkable it is to lose 100% of your bets.
Statistically improbable wound salting aside, by the time Lamar Jackson defeated Patrick Mahomes in Sunday Night Football, we had indeed lost all 5 NFL wagers. Let’s take a look at our bets and see what we can learn from them. But first, the good news. We made a $100 deposit in DraftKings earlier in the week, hooked by one of their promotional deals offering $200 in free bets with any wager on an NFL game (find all the latest sportsbook promotions here). With competition high among the various sports books, bettors are wise to go bargain shopping and take advantage of these incentives while they can. You may very well wish to have multiple betting accounts, not just to shop lines but promotions and incentives as well. Personally, DraftKings is the third betting app I’ve used since I started betting on sports when Pennsylvania made it legal (BetMGM and Barstool Sportsbook being the others).
Mistake 1 - Fast Money Doesn’t Last
Easy come, easy go I guess. We wanted to get some bets in to kickstart this journal, so so we scanned through the lines and picked out a few we thought we might like and put $20 on 5 games, our entire bankroll (less the $200 in free bets we’d qualify for through the DraftKings incentive). For shits and giggles, I parlayed all 5 games with the $4.28 I’d won on the Carolina alternate line from the night before (see below).
We didn’t do any analysis at all, simply traded a few texts and compiled a bet slip that I don’t think anyone felt great about. We were caught up in the excitement of sports betting, figuring we’d at least hit 2 out of 5 and have some additional principle on top of the $200 in free bets coming our way. We were wrong, and the lesson here is don’t bet for the sake of betting.
Mistake 2 - Not Valuing the Bankroll
Is it smart to play your entire bankroll in one week? If you’re a casual bettor looking to have a good time with bets, probably not. If we didn’t have the $200 in free bets, Monday morning would feel significantly worse knowing we’d just busted flat. Smart bettors always want to leave something in the tank so they can keep enjoying sports betting. Sharps will tell you that bankroll management is the second most important skill for professional bettors, after handicapping games. We’re not sharps here, but it’s still important to understand why: you can’t bet with $0 in your account, and that’s no fun.
Even that $4.28 (rolled into a hail mary 5 game parlay) could be useful in a last stand bet on Sunday Night or Monday Night Football, especially when you consider betting incentives like risk free bets that books will throw your way. Not to mention, one more bet equals one more day of betting excitement and the potential for a big redeemer. Not to mention, putting all our eggs into a Week 2 NFL basket is really bad timing. It’s still early in the season so every team is fighting hard and generally healthy. The books know far more about team rosters and statistical advantages than you do, so you’re already at an informational disadvantage.
Betting 5 games and all of our money, in hindsight, was a very bad mistake.
Mistake 3 - Making Bad Picks
Not every one of our picks were bad, some were downright putrid. I had a notion the Dolphins could cover +3.5 hosting the Bills. They lost by 35 points in a shutout. Granted, Tua went out early in the first quarter, but a Bills team with that much talent facing an 0-2 start had a lot to play for. We thought Jameis Winston and the Saints would easily hit the over of 45 against the Panthers, but didn’t even come close. That one on paper seemed easy, but that’s why they call it gambling right?
Mistake 4 - Ignoring the Hold
This is literally sports betting 101, and the thing that separates easy money from smart. Vegas always wins for a reason, and that’s because the house always has an advantage. Statistically speaking, after hold percentage calculations for most bets, you (the bettor) need to win approximately 52.38% of the time to break even, because even on a winning bet, the sports book takes their cut.
Calculating the hold is a bit intimidating if you aren’t mathematically inclined, but it is a crucial data point that you should consider when you bet on sports. Bets with higher holds might signify a more favorable bet (because the book minimizes their risk by “holding” a higher percentage of your initial wager), but you don’t win as much. A lower hold is better for you, but what does it mean? Probably that it’s a riskier bet, and the books are enticing you to take it by holding less juice.
Mistake 5 - Not Considering Opening Line Movement
Watching how lines move is critical to finding smart sports bets. Because we had made our deposit just two nights before, we hadn’t been following DraftKings lines throughout the week. Keeping tabs on opening lines is a smart betting strategy, and Bovada has a handy resource on when odds are posted across the popular revenue sports. Write down a couple early bets you like, and then wait a few days (this is easier for football, when lines have effectively 5 business days to move).
Did the spread on your game move significantly in one direction or another? If so, that’s cause for re-evaluating your bet, especially if it moved in an unfavorable direction. This usually means that professional gamblers are hammering the other side because the opening line was incorrectly set. At least in their view, which can be based on intel or their own statistical analysis. Either way, do you really want to be on the other side of the sharps? Not unless you really feel great about it - but waiting to place that bet could give you an extra half point or two that makes you feel even better about it.
Of course, this can work in the other direction. If a line moves down (for instance, you like Tampa Bay -3 on Tuesday, but by Friday it’s down to -1.5), you miss your chance to get a more favorable wager. However, you can’t lose money on a bet you don’t place, so give yourself the consolation prize of recognizing a good bet when you see it, and try to think about why you liked that line in the first place. The more you consider your own instincts, the better bettor you’ll be.
That’s it for our week 2 takeaways. Stay tuned for our week 3 recap, where we’ll have $200 in free bets to roll!
9/18/21 - New App, Who Dis?
Carolina +1.5 (-350) v. UVa
The bet that looks too good to be true, usually isn’t. I think I heard that somewhere. Either way, it definitely applies here.
The bet I thought I was placing, Carolina +1.5, seemed like a sure thing with a +125 juice (meaning I’d actually get more money back than my bet, as opposed to -125 which would reduce the amount of my potential winnings; more on this in our juice explained blog). In actuality, the bet had negative juice of -800, meaning that I would win significantly less on my bet than the principle amount.
Chalk it up to using a new app (DraftKings) and rushing to get something in before kickoff (which shouldn’t really be a factor anymore, given how many books offer in game betting), but I made a cardinal mistake in this bet: not factoring the juice. It would certainly be “too good to be true” to earn positive juice on a bet where I take a heavy favorite (Carolina -8 in the game line) and turn them into a 1.5 point underdog (the +1.5 line I bet on). Why would a sports book want to offer this action?
It’s called an alternate line, and I got caught up in the rush. It’s not a terrible bet per se; if I believe Carolina is a lock but don’t think they can cover 8 points, I might be willing to wager $100 even though my winnings would only come out to about $20. While I could be out $100 if UVA pulls off a big upset, I only need Carolina to not lose (or lose by less than 2 points) to win some cash.
Is it a great bet? A smart bet? It’s always in the eyes of the beholder. But alternate lines are definitely worth a look, and they can sometimes be sources of value if you know how to analyze them. The more lines a sportsbook offers (especially prop bets and alternate lines), the more they open themselves up to error. That’s because they don’t have the same market forces working behind them.
Each week, market-making sportsbooks offer their opening lines on games, and sharps are paying attention. If a line is off, it usually gets a lot of early action, and then sportsbooks react by moving the line in the opposite direction. Alternate lines usually don’t get as much action, since they’re not as popular to bet and there are generally a lot of them for a particular game. So there aren’t as many bettors taking them, and thus fewer data points for books to react and change their structure
So you can find value in alternate lines, but make sure you factor the juice. If you think you’ve caught them sleeping (especially if the juice is worth the squeeze), then an alternate line can be a great bet. Let’s see what happened in our Carolina +1.5 at -800 juice.
Crystal Clear Hindsight Check-in
Carolina gets up early in the first half and we’re feeling great about this bet. But not thrilled that we’re staking a bet and will only earn a fraction of that stake. This point is underlined when Virginia takes a lead in the 3rd quarter, and we start thinking about the other side of this bet. We would really be sweating if we’d bet heavy, and now are having second thoughts.
Why didn’t we just take UVa at +8? That bet would have likely paid positive juice (probably +110), and we’re having that moment of crystal clear hindsight vision that all bettors feel at various points during a game.
Ultimately, Carolina pulls away and wins by a 20 point margin, 59-39 (hello over 66.5!). A bet on UVa would have busted, and our alternate line hit, but since we only bet $15 we won a paltry $4.28. It’s still a win, but we could’ve won more by taking Carolina giving 8 points.
So is it a bad bet? A dumb bet? No win is ever dumb, but maybe we could’ve been smarter.
9/10/21 - Week 1
BUCS vs Cowboys in the opening game. I’ve got Prescott in my primary fantasy league, so I’ve already got action. This morning I decided to bet on the game. I chose Dallas (who I have in my pick ‘em league) and the under.
Sometime during the 2nd I realized I had made a huge mistake. Dak is on my team with Mike Evans in another!? I’ll be wanting to see touchdowns all night. And as of this writing, the over busted on Dak’s last TD pass to Cooper.
They’re 2 down and now my pick ‘em is in play. In retrospect, the over was the obvious bet from a personal enjoyment perspective.
While I realized I hadn’t covered all of my angles, there is an alternative way of thinking to this method: perhaps I hedged? Perhaps in rooting against offense in this game, I was limiting my loses on the fantasy side.
Nonetheless, lesson learned. I was in a hurry and betting fast. I realize, now, I must ponder what I want to root for and determine if a hedge is worth it. Because let’s be honest, many bets are placed to bring meaning to an otherwise meaningless game. So if you already have meaning, why take out the enjoyment by hedging it out. In that case, two bets negate your enjoyment, and that is not what betting is about.
In this scenario, I wish I’d have bet the over and I wish that I would have thought more carefully.
The better bet, the smarter bet, might have been to drop the parlay altogether and just bet the cowboys to cover. This would’ve covered all of my angles, but for the fact that my winnings would’ve been a good bit lower, however, given all the chips I had on the table, it still would’ve been a great night. Instead it’s just a good night, but I’m out $10.
And as Succup (also owned) nails his game winner, I lose my pick em, lose my parlay, but am happy about Dak, excited about TB skill players, but out $10 and down 1pt in pickem. Oh well. It was a great night of football, but I could’ve bet it smarter.
