Betting Football to Win

Sports Betting Secrets and Football Handicapping Tips from a Sports Betting Pro

Published by Sports Betting Secrets

ISBN: 978-1953-006-271

Copyright © 2022 by Mike Winsmore

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. The information contained in this book is for entertainment purposes only. The author and publisher assume no responsibility whatsoever for any loss incurred by any person or business in connection.

Part One

Basic Football Handicapping

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Welcome to the Winner’s Circle

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Congratulations! You hold in your hands a book that is guaranteed to help you win more and lose less at the betting window. How do I know that? Because my football email readers have been using the methods detailed in this book to win money consistently year after year for well over a decade. You can do the same.

In order to win, you may have to change some of your sports betting beliefs. You may have to alter your approach to handicapping. Don’t worry; it’s a piece of cake. I’ll walk you through it.

Here’s the secret: The key to winning is math, plus common sense.

Math is required to identify key numbers, to make your own line on every game, and to take advantage of betting odds that are in your favor. If math isn’t your forte, don’t fret. You don’t have to be a genius at it. But you do have to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Common sense is needed in order to sift through all of the betting nonsense currently being promulgated across the internet. Believe me, there’s a ton of it floating around.

Common sense also comes into play when analyzing games. At least five times every season, a game comes along that makes absolutely no sense; a game that the vast majority of sports bettors fail to capitalize on because they fail to apply common sense. The Week One game between Jacksonville and Houston to open the 2021 season is a good example.

Jacksonville opened as a 1-point road favorite and the game was quickly bet up to -3. What didn’t make sense was that Jacksonville had both a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback. Neither had ever won an NFL game before, and Jacksonville’s rookie quarterback had yet to throw his first NFL touchdown pass. Under those conditions, you’d expect them to be underdogs, not field goal favorites. The point-spread was asking Jacksonville to not only win the game—something neither their head coach nor their quarterback had ever done in the NFL—but to also cover the number. In addition to that, Jacksonville hadn’t won a game on the road for over a year. They went 0-8 on the road the previous season, yet here they were laying points as a road favorite.

Can you see how absurd that situation was? It made absolutely zero sense. Yet sports bettors bought it. Money poured in on Jacksonville like there was no tomorrow and it wasn’t just public money either; the so-called sharps were on Jacksonville too. Everyone involved with the game, both sharps and squares alike, threw common sense out the window and bet the game like it was free money.

Meanwhile, my football email readers and I took Houston as one of our top games for Opening Day and they won by a score of 37-21.

So math and common sense are your top two requirements when it comes to betting football to win.

A little psychology doesn’t hurt either. Players and coaches are human. As such, they are prone to making mistakes and they are capable of both high and low emotions. Knowing how to recognize when players are apt to make mistakes and when they are not; when they are apt to play their best football and when they are apt to play their worst comes in handy at the betting window.

A good example of an emotional spot like this that has served my readers and me well over the years is a system I invented called Win One for the Gipper. (Perhaps it’s incorrect to say that I invented my Win One for the Gipper system. But I did discover it, in the same way that Columbus discovered America.)

A Win One for the Gipper game occurs when someone close to the team passes away. Occasionally, it’s a player or coach, but most often it’s an elderly owner. When that happens, watch out. The players proceed to dedicate their upcoming game to their fallen friend and play at a very high emotional state. Two excellent examples of this occurred during the 2018 season.

In Week Eight, the Seattle Seahawks traveled to Detroit as 3-point road underdogs. Seattle was 3-3 at the time, but all of their wins had come at home. On the road, they were 0-3 SUATS.

Detroit was also 3-3, but they were 2-1 SUATS at home and riding a two-game winning streak. Because of that, both public and pro money came in heavy on Detroit. What everyone overlooked was the passing of Seattle owner Paul Allen only days before the game.

The Seattle players dedicated their game at Detroit to Allen and from the moment they made that decision they were almost guaranteed to win. As I wrote to my football email subscribers: "When a team is in Win One for the Gipper mode, they become almost impossible to beat."

Seattle played their most complete game of the year and won easily by a score of 28-14.

In Week Nine, the exact same thing happened with the Houston Texans. They were 2-point road underdogs at Denver. Similar to Seattle, their long-time owner, Robert McNair, passed away. McNair was loved by his players and his death came as a shock. The Texans responded by dedicating their game at Denver to Mr. McNair. Then they went out and won by a score of 19-17.

Win One for the Gipper is one of the best football betting angles I’ve ever discovered and possibly the strongest football betting system you’ll ever come across. To understand the psychology behind it, consider that the majority of NFL players and coaches have been playing football since they were small children. They’ve dedicated their lives to the game and that has led them to an unbalanced life, a life far different from those experienced by normal children and teenagers. During their formative years they’ve been told to always be tough, told to be a man, told to never cry. As a result, they’ve suppressed many basic human emotions. The majority of players have also grown up without a father and most often without a single positive male role model in their life, outside of their coaches. Thus, they look upon their teammates as brothers and cousins, and upon their coaches and owners as father figures.

When one of those father figures passes away, the players are now given permission to feel and express the emotions they’ve been suppressing all of their lives. All those years without a father, all those years of loneliness and abandonment now come bubbling to the surface and are let loose on the field. That’s why I tell my readers when a team is in Win One for the Gipper mode they are almost impossible to beat.

So we’ve talked math, common sense and psychology. Is there anything else one needs in order to win money betting on football? There is a final factor and it just might be the most important one of all: emotional poise. Emotional poise consists of maintaining a calm emotional state no matter what the circumstances; never feeling too high and never feeling too low. Especially too low.

If you’ve ever suffered a bad beat—a devastating, last-second loss in a game you feel you should have won—then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Such losses can stir up a hornet’s nest of emotions, among them a burning desire to immediately recoup your money. That often leads to chasing and plunge bets.

Emotional poise is closely related to money management and we’ll discuss that in detail in an upcoming chapter. Basically, if you’re not practicing sensible money management, then the odds are likely that a bad beat or two will send your equilibrium spinning and negatively influence your ability to handicap.

We’ll cover all of those topics, plus a whole lot more in this book. Are you ready to start winning? Great! Turn the page and let’s get started!

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Your information is very helpful and a must-have in every handicapper’s arsenal.... In the end we all make our own picks, but I would not have hit 51.5 winners in the Westgate SuperContest without your help.–N.G.

Football Betting Glossary

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I assume everyone reading this is familiar with common sports betting terms, such as favorite and underdog. If not, you shouldn’t be reading this book. Here I’m going to list some of the lesser known terms that sports bettors use.

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Arbitrage: Betting both sides of the same game at different odds or lines in the hope of winning both bets. See Middles.

ATS: Against the spread. When you read that a team is 10-4 ATS, it means that they have won 10 times against the spread and lost 4 times.

Bad Beat: Losing a game by improbable means in the closing seconds. Sports bettors love to recite a litany of their bad beats.

Chalk: The team that is favored.

Chasing: Making desperate bets in an attempt to recoup losses.

Dime: $1,000. A person who bets a dime on a game is betting $1,100 or less to win $1,000.

Dollar: $100. Someone who bets a dollar on a game is betting $110 or less to win $100.

Fade: To bet against. To fade the 49ers means to bet against them.

Hedging: Betting both sides of the same game or future bet in an attempt to insure a profit or to minimize a loss. For instance, someone who has bet $100 to win $1,000 on a four-team parlay and has already hit the first three legs can now bet $550 to win $500 against the remaining fourth leg. If the fourth leg wins, the bettor collects $1,000 on his parlay minus $550 on his hedge bet for a profit of $450. If the fourth leg loses, the bettor wins $500 on his hedge bet minus $100 on the parlay for a profit of $400. There are right and wrong times to hedge, with parlays being one of the worst times to hedge and future bets being one of the best. There’s now an actual company set up to help sports bettors hedge future tickets. I haven’t used them, but if I was holding a futures ticket that paid $10,000 or more, I wouldn’t hesitate to hedge my way out of it and ensure myself a profit.

Key Numbers: Margin of victory numbers that the final score of a game frequently fall on. In the NFL, key numbers are 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 14 and 17, with 3 and 7 being the most important. Key numbers for game totals are 37, 41 and 51. Understanding key numbers is essential for anyone who wants to make money betting on football.

Lock: A bet that can’t lose. There is no such thing.

Middles: Betting both sides of the same game at different odds or lines in an attempt to win both. For instance, if someone bets $110 to win $100 on Team A at -3 and the line rises to -7, he can then bet $110 to win $100 on Team B at +7. If Team A wins by 3 points, the bettor pushes that bet and wins $100 with his bet on Team B +7. If Team A wins by 7 points, the bettor pushes his bet on Team B +7 and wins $100 with his bet on Team A -3. If team A wins by 4, 5, or 6 points, the bettor wins $200 on both bets. Any result outside of Team A winning by 3 to 7 points, results in one bet won for $100 and one bet lost for $110 for a total loss of $10. In this example, the most that can be lost is $10, while the most that can be won is $200. Thus, a middle that hits pays odds of 20-1. At -105, a middle that hits pays odds of 40-1.

Miracle Cover: Winning a game by improbable means in the closing seconds. The opposite of a bad beat. Sports bettors talk endlessly of their bad beats, but rarely mention their miracle covers.

Nickel: $500. Someone who bets a nickel on a game is betting $550 or less to win $500.

Overlay: The difference between your line and the official betting line. If your handicapping indicates that Team A should be favored by 6 points, but the official betting line has them favored by 3 points, that is an overlay of 3 points. Overlays of 3 or more points are generally good betting opportunities.

Plunge Bet: Betting an extraordinarily high amount of money on a single game in an attempt to recoup losses. In the NFL, this occurs often in the Sunday night and Monday night games when sports bettors who experienced losses in the earlier games try to get even.

Public Dog: A term invented by losing sports bettors to describe an underdog that they believe is being heavily bet by recreational bettors. The betting public tends to wager on favorites, so when it’s believed that they are differing from their usual behavior and betting on an underdog it gets this special label. We will discuss public dogs at length in a future chapter.

Push: A tie. A wager in which the final score or result is equal to the betting line, thus resulting in a tie for the sports bettor.

Reverse Line Movement or RLM: A term invented by losing sports bettors to describe a line move that they believe has occurred opposite to the betting action. For instance, suppose a team is favored by 3 points and is believed to be drawing the bulk of the betting action. Normally, that would result in the line moving to -3.5 or higher in order to attract more money to the underdog. If, instead, the line drops to -2.5, a move in direct opposition to the assumed betting action, losing sports bettors will call it Reverse Line Movement or RLM in the mistaken belief that while the majority of money is coming in on the favorite, sharp money is coming in on the underdog. They will then bet the underdog at +2.5 and say they are betting with the sharps. Nothing could be further from the truth. For more on this, see Taking the Worst of It.

Rittenhoused: A team that gets blown out in humiliating fashion, looking dead and lifeless in the process. Named after American folk hero Kyle Rittenhouse.

Sharps: Handicappers who apply intelligent analysis and usually win. Many of them are professional bettors. They are called sharps because they use sharp pencils to do their handicapping.

Smart Money: Games bet by sharps.

Squares: Recreational bettors. A few are winners. Most aren’t.

SU: Straight up or an outright win. A team that is 10-4 SU has won outright 10 times and lost outright 4 times.

Taking the Worst of It: Betting into a line that has moved against you, such as betting a team at -9 when they were -7 earlier in the week. Sharps almost never take the worst of it. Recreational bettors do it all the time without a second thought.

Tank: To lose a game on purpose. Tanking is popular in boxing, but nonexistent in professional football. At least that’s what I used to think. Former Miami head coach Brian Flores is currently suing the NFL and alleges that Miami team