Football Betting   by Daniel B. King From about August onwards Football Betting (NFL) becomes big business for the sportsbooks. There are plenty of winners and losers over the course of any given season - pros and recreational bettors join in the action for what has become the biggest sport in the US in terms of betting. So how can you improve your football betting this season... Point or Unit betting: You've may have seen the touts advertise NFL Sides or Totals picks across the internet -"grab our 5 star blow out game tonight.." or "get our 100 star double header.." The advantage of one team over another in the sides and totals (over/under) market is small - cetainly not enough to justify betting 100%, 50% or even 20% more stake money on one team in a match up as against another team in a match up. Try to keep stakes the same. When the odds are longer say in futures betting - you can increase or decrease stakes to a degree. You would not necessarily want to bet the same on a 250/1 outsider as you would a 5/1 favourite. 2.    Standard Deviation: This has proven to be the ruin of many a good sports bettor. The problem is that he did not yet know he was a good bettor - he gave up before he found out... Basically it takes a lot of bet samples, especially in the sides and totals market where the odds are short, to know if you are a profitable bettor or not. Quite often a bettor can have a bad losing streak to start off with. You may go 4-9, then 5-8, then 2-12 - but this might not necessarily mean that you are a poor gambler. It is just standard deviation at work - fundamentally you are hitting a bad streak, yet well within the laws of probability. Most good bettors still lose about 4.3 bets out of 10 on average but they could easily lose 7,8,9 or 10 out of ten for a period of time. You need many hundreds of bet samples to know if you are profitable or not and you can hit the losers first quite easily. If you are badly down after 300 bets or so - then you may need to re-evaluate your methods. Solutions: All you can do is bet when you think your likelihood of winning is around 55 or 56% depending on the odds. Try to bet a lot, as long as you bets are value, so that you get some kind of representative results. Bet value lines at the sportsbooks: Bonuses help of course but they are really a one off on sign up. Long term good value lines are a key factor to success. You could try these: Pinnacle Sports VIP Sports Group Gameday Sportsbook All of which are reputable and established. About the Author