Everyone wants winners when it comes to betting.  I think most people that do this for a living, handicap the game, look for reasons to place the bet, see the result and move on.  If you want to learn to do this on your own and be self-sufficient, it may be worth looking back on why a winner was a winner or why a loss was just a bad bet.  In this series of articles, we will find bets and recreate the handicapping process to show you how it was done.  Done at least from my perspective.  If you want to be with the market, and pick more winners than losers, take a peak at how the sausage is made.

Monday February 5th 2024

Very few bets that you make in your life will be this easy.  Where you don’t even need to check the final score to know they covered.  New Orleans Pelicans -10.5 covered the spread by 26 and the under in Virginia/Miami 132.5 covered by 34.  Those that don’t take deep dives may just see this a luck.  Yes betting requires some luck, but I can’t say I’m that surprised with the results on these 2 games.  Let’s dive in.

Pelicans -10.5 over Raptors  AND Pelicans -6.5 over Raptors first half

Let’s start off with the betting splits.  The market was on the Pelicans in this spot.  Angle 1.  There was a line move from Pelicans -9 to this closing -10.5.  Angle 2.  New Orleans is 15-10 ATS at home compared to Toronto’s 13-13 road ATS record.  Angle 3.  The Pelicans have the best ATS first half record at 14-3-1 at home while the Raptors are 5-10 ATS on the road.  Angle 4.  And the best angle of them all, the Raptors just came off of a double overtime loss the light before and then had to travel to New Orleans.  Add these all up and you get the perfect storm for a blow out win by the Pelicans and an easy cover.

138 Pelicans-100 Raptors FINAL  67 Pelicans -50 Raptors HALFTIME

Virginia Cavaliers/Miami Hurricanes UNDER 131.5

Again we will start with the splits which favored the under.  And the public hates betting unders, so 59% is a decent split on this.  A line move from 132.5 to 131.5.  Virginia is an under team this year but especially as a home favorite in which they are 9-4 to the under.  Virginia had held opponents to 60 or less in 12 out of their last 14 games.  I can’t say I saw a lowly 38 points being scored by the Hurricanes in this one, but a very easy winner.

Conclusion

Not every case yields a win in sports betting.  But the more pieces you can add to make a good bet, great, the better chance you have at cashing a ticket.  All it really takes is one good bet a day.  Build your case and cash.