Fourth in a series of the basics of football betting written by "Shawn"

As the NFL season prepares to kick off, we look at the resources  available to the smart football bettor.

If time is money to you and you'd rather spend your time making money than reading this article through to its conclusion, I'll sum things up in a single word for you: Sasquatch!! Just kidding...it's actually "INTERNET". For everyone still reading, here's the detailed scoop:

Before the days of the World Wide Web, bettors lived in isolation. People would get together in bars (well, my friends and I were in the parking lot at the local high school... the only place we could hang out until we hit the magic "18") or cafeterias, lunchrooms and diners, comparing notes on the upcoming weekend games. You'd read the newspaper, and if you were lucky you got ESPN or something like it. Maybe grab a magazine. That, friends, was it.

The utterly devoted were always looking for edges. I'm reminded of an older friend scouring Logan Airport in Boston for out-of-town sports sections of newspapers before he caught his flight home for weekends. Now and then he'd find crumpled papers that let him read what the beat writers in other cities said about their teams. If he won big the week before, he'd blow $5 at the airport kiosk on whole, brand new papers.

Another guy I knew was trying to develop a primitive form of power rating on his computer, a Radio Shack machine he affectionately called his "Trash 80".

Today these people would just seem a little quaint. The Internet and new, sophisticated spreadsheets can do all this work for us. Check out the following:

MEDIA PAGES

Almost every major newspaper in the US has gone online. Further there are collected lists of links of online addresses (BWORLD has such at list...it's at "The Newsstand" off Handicapping Central which is off the front page). Here, in an hour or two, you can read what every beat writer is saying about every team. No lurking around airports either!

There are also many good sites that cover the NFL as a whole. The NFL's official website, www.nfl.com , has official injury lists as they become available – but don't expect a weekly column from Mr. Tagliabue saying he "really likes the Eagles plus the points this week". The NFL still officially dislikes gambling, even if that's the reason the TV ratings are so high.

DEVOTED NETWORK PAGES

Of somewhat more use are the dedicated NFL pages off the main pages of the networks that carry the NFL. The best is espn.com , but foxsports.com and cbssportsline.com are also good. ABC, which only covers Monday Night Football and a couple wildcard games, has a ho-hum information site of its own off ESPN.

Where ABC is the equal or the better of its rivals is in its college coverage, particularly in relation to any team with even a remote shot at appearing in a BCS game. ABC "owns" the BCS for the next while, and they cover, in depth, the games for all the marbles (well, last year, it was for all the Tostitos). Find it off abcsports.com . Fox isn't involved in broadcasting the college game nationally at all.

HANDICAPPING PAGES AND FORUMS

Better still are the web pages devoted to winning money at betting football. These of course vary widely in quality-- from the joker who's eating up perfectly good bandwidth that rightfully belongs to fans of the TV show "Webster", to top notch handicappers and handicapping forums.

BWORLD's "Handicapping Central", "Bookies Hell" posting forum,  is a  great places to look for all the dirt. These information pages and forums, and pages and forums like them elsewhere, are great resources for overall betting strategy (which we'll start discussing next week) and specific info on specific games.

As with anything else on the Internet, be careful about evaluating the information you read. Like picking stocks or forecasting the weather, nobody's right all the time...and some handicappers are far superior to others. (If you think somebody knows his stuff, track his picks.) Even in the better forums, thanks to the democracy that is the Internet, each season without fail a few schmucks will appear and promise to hit 65%, 70%, 80% of their picks against the spread. Well, you know how in "Romeo and Juliet", amongst all the killing and warring, the minstrels or the wet-nurse and Mercutio would show up intermittently to lighten the mood and give everyone a few laughs? Well, this is sort of the same deal. Nobody hits 80% consistently, period.

Which brings us to a related matter: We'll discuss this in-depth later, but for now just take my word for it: DON'T pay for picks. Some pages and many phone services require a fee to get their "information". Leave these scamdicappers to feast on suckers...don't you become one! (There are a few "touts" who do try hard for their clients; there are a few that are not crooks. I respect a couple, but these folks are few and far between.)

ANY OTHER IDEAS?

Well, I do have one non-Internet (but somewhat technological) one that melds nicely with the "guys just sitting around comparing notes" theme:

A group of friends I know have invested in expanded college FB coverage and "NFL Sunday Ticket". Each armed with two VCR's (some are top-loading, 40-pound stone-age machines), they divvy up bunches of games to tape. They then watch and analyze the games on Tues./Wed nights. With remote clicker in hand ready to hit fast-forward between plays, the boys can watch a whole NFL game in 40-50 minutes and a college game in 45-60 minutes...less if it's a blowout and the first string leaves.

This whole exercise lets them see, with their own eyes, if a team really did stuff the run last weekend or the other team just chose (or was forced) to be pass-happy. Is the O-line that good or was the defense always dropping eight guys into coverage? These guys know.

(Incidentally, these lads hit 61% in 1996, 53% in 1997, and 59% in 1998...enough to pay the TV bill, buy a drink on Thursdays after making the upcoming week's picks, and take their strangely understanding spouses out to dinner on Fridays.)

ONE FINAL ITEM..."THE SCREEN"

Maybe you've seen the ads on this site or elsewhere for the Don Best Line Service screen. What is this thing, and do you want it?

The Don Best Feed gives your computer live line updates from sportsbooks in Las Vegas, the Caribbean, and Central America. The premium service costs $500 US/mo. While the scaled-back "Island Express" service, which features fewer books, is $99/mo.

This lets you compare odds on the same game at different shops at a quick glance. Like the Giants this weekend and see that WWTS has them at -2.5 where everyone else has them at -3? I know where you're betting! (To take advantage of this, obviously you need accounts at as many of the screen books as you can get.)

It also lets you watch lines move as big action ("steam") on a single game hits the books within a short time period. This is most dramatic in baseball and in hoops totals, a little less so in hoops sides and in college FB, and least in the NFL. But you don't even need accounts at the screen shops to cash in on this:

Suppose you opened this morning's paper, reviewed the lines, and liked the Cornhuskers this Saturday at -2, and you've got a local guy that lets you bet the newspaper line. Well, if you see the line go from 2 to 2.5 to 3 to 3.5 at every shop on Don Best this afternoon, you better get that bet in TODAY before tomorrow's paper shows it to be 3, 3.5, or even 4 points.

Is the steam always "right"? Of course not. Sure, maybe the Cornhuskers will win by 14. They could lose by 7. But in the instance they won by 3, you cashed in largely because of the screen. Similarly, even though you like a team, you could watch the steam come down on the other team–so you'd know to let things settle down before you bet to get the best line possible.

[Check out the Oddswiz Rants & Raves forum and do a search for more detailed discussion of steam. I could go on about it for pages. Weather at ball yards in the first half of ‘99, for instance, was "steamy" indeed.]

Next : Basic Betting Strategy, Part 1

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