Follow the Money...Sometimes

Common betting wisdom says: the “public” makes bad bets, so you should bet against the “public”. I don’t disagree.

Historically, this was easier to do. To find the public side of a bet, you went with the team that seemed more popular (like the Yankees or Cowboys), or if you had access to betting data, when one side of a game had lots of tickets (individual bets) for small amounts of money, you’d presume that was “public” betting.

You’ll see betting “influencers” preach that when the percent of money on one side of a game exceeds the percent of tickets, that indicates the sharp side of the bet (“sharp” being the opposite of public).

That wisdom is out of date. So much information is readily available now, that to capitalize on the idea of betting against the public, you need to be smarter in assessing trends to find the right opportunities.

Today I’ll talk teach you how to find winning opportunities against the public. I’ll introduce you to a tool, Juice Reel’s Sharpmush^TM , that has a cutting edge approach to identifying smart money. Finally, we’ll build on last week’s “Bet of the week” success and make some immediate NFL bets. Let’s go.

What bets tend to be public?

First, let’s figure out where to look for public betting.

In short, the public bets on favorites. It’s human nature to want to risk your hard earned money on teams and players that have been winners and stars.

This is especially true when betting on the money line (choosing the winner of the game with no point spread involved). For example: the biggest point spread in the NFL last week had the Baltimore Ravens, at home, favored by 8.5 points over the Las Vegas Raiders. The money line for the Baltimore was -400, meaning you’d have to wager $400 just to win $100.

While some people could fathom the Raiders playing tight in Baltimore, and staying within 8 points, almost no one thought Gardner Minshew and company could actually win.

Want proof? Let’s quantify it.

According to this SI.com piece, Baltimore had 96% (!!) of the moneyline tickets bet on them.

Juice Reel bettors showed similarly extreme trends with 2,979 bets for $185k on Baltimore, against a paltry 105 bets for $3.5k on the Raiders.

Aligning Our Bets With the Sportsbooks

To understand why this creates a betting opportunity, let’s look at the Ravens vs Raiders game from the perspective of a sportsbook:

When Baltimore wins the game, the book loses $46k to the Baltimore bettors ($185k paid out at a -400 line) and wins just $3.5k from the Raiders bettors for a net loss. When the Raiders win, the book wins $185k from the Baltimore bettors and pays out just $11.4k to the Raiders bettors, for a very large win.

The book is clearly rooting for the Raiders, and when the Raiders shocked everyone last Sunday afternoon and won this game, books collected a windfall.

Sportsbooks know that they’ll blindly take heavy money on favorites to win in cases like this.

In order to exploit casual bettors’ tendencies and make themselves more money, books can skew the moneyline, in cases like this, to offer a weaker return on the favorite than their true probability of winning would justify.

The only reason books don’t overdo that exploitative practice is the presence of professional bettors making large wagers on the underdogs.

Our goal is to align our betting, and our financial interests, with the pros and the sportsbook.

The best times to do that, are in cases where only one game is being played, and therefore attracts a LOT of casual betting money. In these games, the volume of public money is so great that professional bettors playing underdogs cannot bet enough to put sportsbooks at risk.

According to ESPN, Thursday Night, Sunday Night, and Monday Night attract 3x the betting handle of a typical Sunday NFL game because they face no competition in their time slot. Those are prime opportunities.

Juice Reel’s Sharpmush^TM - An Unfair Advantage

We’ve already gotten pretty smart about identifying cases in which betting against the public could be a winning opportunity. But I use a Juice Reel feature no one else offers that allows me to further home in on the best bets to make.

Juice Reel sees billions of dollars of betting data because their users regularly sync their betting activity. Juice Reel knows who is a winning bettor, and who is not.

With the Sharpmush^TM feature, Juice Reel analyzes that data, and allows users to explore which side of a game the best bettors are playing, and which side the worst bettors are playing. Here’s an example from tonight’s Patriots vs Jets matchup, let me walk you through it:

When looking at moneyline betting in tonight’s NFL game, we can see that the top 20% of bettors (top bar graph labeled Best Bettors) are taking New England 31% of the time. The worst bettors (bottom bar graph) are only betting on New England 12% of the time. This indicates that smarter money is disproportionately going toward the Patriots.

Pretty cool, huh?

Currently, Juice Reel doesn’t have enough data on sports like tennis and soccer to make this feature useful in all cases, but as their user base continues its rapid growth (download the app if you haven’t already), it will become a more and more critical part of my selection process.

Bets of the Week

Last week, using the line shopping strategies covered, I took UNLV +7.5 against Kansas and won. In fact, they won the game outright! Let’s try and keep rolling.

To recap what we learned today, our criteria for a good bet against the public includes:

1. An extreme skew of bets/dollars on one side (likely the favorite)

2. A game with enough interest that sportsbooks will set a line to try and exploit the public (ideally a standalone NFL game)

3. A Juice Reel Sharpmush^TM skew that shows winning bettors going disproportionately against the public.

Do we see an opportunity in the Jets vs Patriots game tonight? Let’s go through the list:

Heavy moneyline wagers coming on the Jets? Check. 

They’re getting more than 8x as much money as the Pats so far.

A standalone game in primetime? Check.

A Sharpmush skew that shows winning bettors on New England? Check.

Let’s do it, I’m betting one unit on New England’s money line. The best value I see is at +230 on BetRivers or BallyBet in New York. I’d recommend this bet at +220 or better. 

Keep in mind, I’m betting less to win more here, so I don’t expect to win this bet more than 50% of the time. I do, however, expect to win it more than the 30% of the time required to be profitable.

Next week, we’ll go deep on betting frequency, and how to balance the fun of having action on a game, with the discipline that supports being a winning bettor. We’ll also find some more attractive NFL or college football bets to keep the party going.

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