NFL Player Props – How To Bet

By Brodie Wheeler Sunday, August 15th, 2010 | 2 Comments

At Sportsbook Veteran, we’ll give you our opinion about a game or fight but we aren’t selling you winners like some websites. We believe the old adage “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Obviously, we aren’t talking about fish but hopefully we can teach you ways to make some bets and make some money so that the sportsbooks won’t be calling you a whale.

Prop bets are probably some of the best ways to make cash sports betting, as long as you can get over the high juice and develop an eye to pick the winners, every Sunday you can finish the day with more money than you started with.

We’ve talked about it before but the sportsbooks talk about balancing the action but it’s not really a balance, it’s about finding an acceptable level of risk because typically the average bettor is predictable. The typical bettor, who makes up about 80% of the sports bettors, will habitually bet on the favorite and they will bet on the over. Basically put, they will predict the Yankees to score a lot of runs. For those of us that made our money on the sportsbook side of things, thankfully, the Yankees don’t win every game and they don’t always score a lot of runs.

That predictability serves the sportsbook well when they are setting their lines, that predictability, will make you some money by knowing how the books set their lines.

The sportsbooks set their lines similar to how you set your fantasy lineup in fantasy football.

Briefly, they take the average yards per game and then eliminate anomalies in the numbers. If after 8 games, a running back has an 80ypg average which is a total of 640 yards but he’s had a couple of huge games of 150 yards but the other six games he fell under the 80 yards a game average. The sportsbooks will adjust the line based on the opponents rushing defense and if it’s a strong defense, they will lower the total by 5-10 yards and the reverse is true for a bad defense.

So if the rusher is against a bad defense the Sportsbook will more than likely set the line around 75 yards and predictably the bettors will bet the over 75 yards.

In the above scenario, the running back averages 57 yards if you eliminate the two anomaly game, so 75% of the his games fell under the 80YPG average. It’s a good bet to bet the underdog on most props.

While a 75% chance of winning is a solid bet, there is a way to increase those odds. As we’ve said before, betting on the underdogs close to game time allows you to take full advantage of line movements. The same is true for betting on NFL Player Props.

When the lines are released, take notice of the number and watch the screen for rapid line movement, the best lines to bet are the ones that move quickly. The more the line moves, the better it is for us betting the NFL player prop underdog. When the line moves on a prop bet, the sportsbook will move the Juice. Otherwise, they need to take the prop bet down and create new prop if they want to move the number.

On big games, look for sportsbooks to take down and repost a prop bet rather than taking it completely off the board if they are getting over run with bettors.

Bottom line is

- Do you homework and determine where the biggest disparities between actuality and public opinion are.

- Look for early line movement to backup your claim

- Take advantage of the line after it has been moved to a plus money situation on the underdog.

- If the line is taken down and reposted at a higher number, look for more movement and repeat the steps.