With the start of the NHL, NBA, and NFL coming soon, as well as the Soccer season in Europe having just started, we are going to give you a low down on our top four tips for betting team total wins.
1. Know Your Teams
Okay, we might be stating the obvious here but it is going to be very hard to predict how many games any given team will win unless you know the team’s overall strength and roster at the very minimum. Ideally, you would like to know every team inside out. If you don’t know much about the teams, you better start your research.
It’s all well and good looking back over the previous three seasons and see for example that the New England Patriots won over 12 games the previous 7 seasons in a row, and this year their team total win line is set at 12.5, but this does not automatically mean an overs bet.
Why? Because maybe this season they have lost one or two of their best players, the replacements not be up to par, take time to fit in, etc.
Obviously, it doesn’t mean you then go and bet the under, because the past doesn’t determine the future, but you can get a much better read on the now, the coach, the players, the schedule, etc.
2. Get the Best Lines
What do we mean by this? Essentially, taking it back to the New England Patriots example, what if their win line has dropped to 11.5 because of the loss of two star players? This could be a perfect time to exploit what we would regard as a bad line, because nobody yet knows if the loss of those players will impact the team overall.
Obviously, each situation is different, and every bet is unique, maybe a weaker team losing two star players is going to weaken them even more, imagine you took the Cincinnati Bengals under 9.5 wins, then they lose two of their best players and the line is now 7.5, you beat the line.
Probably the most important part of any team total wins for a regular season is line shopping, it can come back to bite you in the behind if you get a bad line.
For anybody new to this we essentially mean, as an example:
- • Paul took the New England Patriots over 12.5 wins in the regular season.
- • His friend Ricardo took the Patriots over 11.5 wins.
Ricardo clearly has the better line here as he needs just 12 wins to cash his betting ticket whilst Paul needs 13 wins.
Now if we were looking at an under, then Paul would clearly have the best line over Ricardo.
3. Schedule Strength
Again, this one might be obvious but the strength of a team’s schedule or fixture list is very important to how the sportsbooks grade a team’s total wins.
In American sports, most teams play everyone in their division and conference, and then some inter-conference games.
This could mean a certain conference is stronger or weaker than the other.
Although it’s not the most important thing to look out for, but it does help to know if a team has to face a lot of strong teams one after another as opposed to spreading them out across the season.
4. Look Out For Sleepers or Outliers
This is where you’re going to separate yourself from the square bettor, not only does it feel amazing to win a bet that nobody predicted, but it’s very rewarding also.
The problem with this is the sportsbooks are on point and they have every single angle covered -well in the biggest sports and leagues 99% of the time they do- so you might have a small chance of exploiting them if you happen to know or have a hunch about a certain player, coach, whatever it may be. It could be someone nobody has heard of and you know all about them.
The lower league and sports are much easier to exploit as the sportsbooks don’t have as many angles covered, and frankly, they don’t need to because they will make even more money on losses from the bigger leagues than pay-outs on wins in the smaller leagues.
The other problem is it can be very hard to find team total wins on the lesser-known leagues and sports, and the sportsbooks may not even offer markets.
Final Thoughts
Understanding a team’s strengths and weaknesses, knowing who they will play in the upcoming season, and what their total wins line is, was, and could be are all vital aspects of targeting team total wins.
Go out there and exploit those numbers and beat the books.
