Playoff Betting In 2010

The National Football League's playoff season is upon us and even though the playoffs are among the most hard games to predict, many fans, including some who don't typically gamble on sports, will be getting in on the action. Playoff betting introduces some fresh factors that don’t come up through the regular season. Some more important points:

- playoffs offer a limited schedule - not as many options for Teasers or Parlays
- Weather is a more pronounced factor - make sure you are very careful about playing a warm weather road team going to a cold environment.
- The Home Effect

In his examination about late season home dogs, Richard Borghesi of Texas State University found that there was a statistically noteworthy number of wins by home underdog teams to give reason for a winning formula. In studying NFL games from 1981 to 2000, he found that late season home dogs (weeks 15-18) beat the spread by an average of 4.46 points. You do have to keep in mind that there aren’t a ton of games to pick from so the sample size is relatively small, but there were enough samples to justify a statistical trend. In the playoffs, the home dog won by an average of 11.3 points (again small sample).

You may wonder how this lines up against weeks 1-14. On average, visitors win by .09 points when taking into account all of the games (damn those odds-makers are good). In weeks 15-18 however, home teams win by an average of 2.06 points, and home teams in the playoffs win by an average of 2.86 points. betting late home underdogs was lucrative in each of the 5 year increments studied from 1981-2000.

Borghesi also found some interesting trends about cold weather teams and weather’s effect on them. In August-September, cold weather teams lost against the spread by an average of 1.3 points. In October, they won by .84 pts against the spread. By November, they were winning by an average of 1.49 points and by December-Jan it was up to 1.93 points.

Just some interesting numbers to consider as the playoffs begin.

Article Source: http://gamblingarticlessite.com

Rich Allen is owner of the Sports Betting Professor website www.sportsbettingprofessor.com. 2 years ago he hired an actual PhD Statistician to develop a quantitative system to win consistently betting on American Football, NBA Basketball, College Football and Major League Baseball. His results have been stellar. The Average Guy, Can Learn The Secrets Of His Sports Betting System And Propel To Unthinkable Winnings For Life!"

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