A few types of NFL bets

King Yao is the author of Weighing the Odds in Hold‘em Poker, and Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting. He uses his experience from making millions in financial derivative markets and translates it into gambling. Since he left his trading position in 2000, he has been playing poker and betting on sports. He travels to Las Vegas frequently, especially during football season.

NFL teaser example

You like playing NFL two team six-point teasers. These bets have good value under the right circumstances and the right lines. (See Stanford Wong’s Sharp Sports Betting for more information on NFL teasers.) The edge in teasers depends heavily on the juice that you have to lay with the sportsbook. In Las Vegas, it is tough to find sportsbooks that will take two-team teasers at -110 anymore. With a line of -120, two-team six-point teasers are not nearly as attractive. A sportsbook willing to take these at +100 or -110 is a valuable asset as those lines allow you to make many positive-EV bets throughout the season. Finding sportsbooks that offer the nice prices is just as valuable as understanding which wagers have positive EV. Without a place to make your bet, you cannot execute your knowledge.

NFL futures example

Most Las Vegas sportsbooks inject a substantial amount of juice into their futures odds. If you convert the odds for all the teams into percentages, and add them up, you would get 100% if there were no house edge. Understandably the sportsbooks need an edge, so the sum will be more than 100%. The problem is that too many sportsbooks have futures odds that add up to a ridiculous amount, sometimes approaching 200%. In that unfriendly betting atmosphere, it is tough to find any value in futures.

A sportsbook that has a combined 125% on futures can be valuable. Knowing which sportsbooks are friendly means you can save time by visiting only them, and avoiding the unfriendly sportsbooks. For example, in years past, I learned not to bother spending any time checking Caesars futures numbers. The markup is way too high, and the limits way too low. Why bother wasting time on their properties? On the other hand, there are a handful of casinos I will visit every time I go to Las Vegas, just to see their futures lines.

College football correlated parlay

Sometimes two sport bets will have a connection to each other. If one event happens, then another event is more likely than usual to happen. When that situation occurs, the two bets are said to be positively correlated. Here is an example.

In college football, a powerhouse team is playing against a small school. The small school has no chance of winning, and has little chance of even scoring in the game. The point spread in the game is Powerhouse -50 and the total is 53. Each of the bets may have a 50% chance of winning, but if one wins, the other is highly likely to win as well. If Powerhouse covers the 50 points, the game is likely to go over 53. Thus Powerhouse in the point spread and the over in the total are correlated. Likewise the small school and the under are correlated.

If you find a sportsbook stupid enough to offer regular parlay odds on correlated parlays, then you have found a gold mine. Regular parlay odds are 13 to 5, which is equivalent to 27.8%. It is rare to find anyone willing to let you bet obviously correlated parlays like the Powerhouse/over example. The good news is there are other events that are related in subtle ways. The events have a connection where if one bet wins, then the other bet is more likely to win. The connection may not be as strong as the example used here, but as long as it is strong enough to beat 13 to 5 odds, then you have a positive-EV situation.

This is part of an occasional series of articles.

Excerpted with permission from the e-book version of Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting by King Yao, edited for this format.