A few weeks ago I wrote an article about getting ready for your first fantasy draft, kind of a primer for those engaging in fantasy football for the first time, or close to it. The following article is of a similar vein, for those entering the world of gambling.
A disclaimer (you knew this was coming): Gambling is not allowed in some states. No one should bet any more than they're willing to lose. And there are no guarantees. If any bet were a sure thing or easy money, we'd all be billionaires and the companies offering these bets would be out of business. Hopefully, we're doing this to make a little money and also have some fun.
(Also, if you're actually a player in the NFL, like Calvin Ridley, pictured, please do not place any bets on NFL games.)
There are as many different ways to bet on football as there are flavors of ice cream, but there are a few areas I tend to focus on, research, and write about in our weekly in-season publication, Index Bets. And bet on myself. They include daily fantasy sports (popularly, DFS, with FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesar's, and a couple of other big ones) and Sportsbooks (also available through those sites). I look most commonly for player and team prop bets: will they score or not, will they get more or fewer yards than a certain number (over/unders), will the teams reach a set point total or not. But I also enjoy survivor pools, casual wagers with friends, and any random little things that make watching an otherwise terrible Thursday night game a bit more interesting.
The beauty is that many of these wagers are built into our weekly fantasy football research. Each week we're looking for teams and players that will score the most points, rack up the most yards, and either dramatically exceed or underperform what the average NFL watcher or fantasy player expects from them. Guess what: you can bet on such things.
Getting started. Maybe you live somewhere where you're familiar with the local bookies. If not, which I suspect is true of most of us, you'll be looking to sign up online. I have personally used DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and Caesar's. If you're just getting started, make sure you take advantage of one of the sweetheart deals these sites offer to new customers. When I first joined DraftKings, the comically good deal they were offering was Deposit $5, get $200 worth of free bets. Why do they do this, you may ask. Well, it's because they know that most neophyte betters will quickly burn through their $200 worth of bets, but have so much fun/addiction, and rationalize that hey, I only actually spent $5, that they'll eventually deposit another $5, or more likely $20 or $50. Where was I? Oh yes. Take advantage of the initial deals while you can.
Start small and relatively safe. Maybe you're confident that your team, 10-point underdogs in Week 1, is going to spring the upset. You'll win big if you pick it, but a slightly safer bet (that can still pay off) is just to take the 10 points, and win if they spring the upset but also if they merely exceed national expectations, and keep things close. Betting the moneyline would be expecting them to win, but betting the point spread would just require them to not necessarily win, but just lose by less than 10 points.
Look for players and teams you think the average fan or football personality has too high or low an opinion of. Perennial winners (or losers) are good examples of these things. Take Kansas City a year ago. As defending Super Bowl champs, they were perennial heavy favorites. Ultimately, they went 11-6 during the season, and just 8-9 against the point spread. Most believe the Panthers will be horrible this year, and maybe they will be. But as a huge underdog in most games, there will be a lot of weeks they lose and -- I think -- lose by a smaller amount than what the sizable point spreads suggest.
Compare over-unders with projections by fantasy professionals you trust. Hopefully this is Fantasy Index, but no feelings will be hurt if you are instead a devotee of Matthew Berry or whoever else has put out their shingle as an expert. With us specifically, we project yardage totals and touchdown likelihood for each relevant player on each team. If Courtland Sutton has an over/under of 55 yards, and we're projecting him for 75 yards, that's the kind of disparity that catches the eye. If Josh Jacobs is Green Bay's only healthy running back and getting all the carries, and he's facing a team whose defense has allowed a league-worst 10 rushing touchdowns in six games, and we've got him with an 85 percent likelihood of getting in the end zone, Jacobs starts to look like a very good "anytime touchdown" wager.
What is a parlay? I am a sucker for parlays, and sucker is a good word I suppose. If I place 5 individual bets and win 3 of them, I come out ahead. But if I put together a 5-bet parlay, and win four of them but lose the fifth, I get zip. The appeal of parlays is that you can potentially win large sums of money with a small bet. If I place a simple bet of, say, Christian McCaffrey over 80 rushing yards, I typically have a 50 percent chance of winning that bet, so at best I'll double my money; a $10 wager can win $20. But if I put together a parlay, it will be multiple bets where if they all hit, I can win five to ten times (or more) of my initial bet. But you've got to be right on all of them. The odds are a lot longer, which is why the potential payoff is much greater.
My general advice with parlays, again, is to bet small sums of money, and balance those longer-odds wagers with single bets that you're more likely to hit on. So let's say I take $20 and make four $5 bets. McCaffrey over 80 yards, the Ravens to cover the point spread, Breece Hall anytime touchdown, and then a parlay on the Packers game where I need Jordan Love over 235 passing yards, Jayden Reed over 55 receiving yards, Luke Musgrave under 40 receiving yards, and Josh Jacobs over 2.5 receptions. If I can hit 2 of the first 3 bets, I've won my initial investment back and if the Green Bay parlay hits, it's all gravy (and because it's a four-leg parlay, it'll be very profitable). If not, I haven't lost anything, and I roll out some more bets a day or two days or a week later.
As noted earlier, we'll be talking about bets of these sort each week in Index Bets, a separate newsletter from Fantasy Index Weekly that can be purchased in the Fantasy Index Store. I hope this article has neither been too technical nor too simple for most of you; if you have any questions, please feel free to weigh in below and I'll try to answer as I see them.
Happy betting!