NFL Week 5 Odds

Thanks again to BETUS.com for supplying the odds ...

below is a pic of the odds for week 5.

lets break this down a bit and differentiate the +'s and -'s:

One strategy to Sports Betting is to look at all the possible bets available, and pick the ones that you think will happen AND generate a decent profit.

but ....  

How do you know if you are getting a decent profit?

The purposely chose the colors green and red for the 2nd chart.  Green means for every dollar you bet you will get more than that back (ex: a 2 dollar bet will return 2.01+ dollars).  What gives it away is the + (which I can't depict due to using Microsoft excel).  Red means that for every dollar you bet you will get less than what you bet back (ex: a 2 dollar bet will return 1.99 and less dollars.  

Now: What are the different types of bets and how do they work? 

I am going to cover straight bets this post and cover Point Spread bets, Moneyline bets, Total Points - Over & Under, and Team Total - Over & Under.

The Point Spread is the difference in points the picked winning team needs to win by in order to collect on the bet.  It is not enough for the team to win they need to win by that many points ... so if the San Diego Chargers win by 3 points then you would lose your bet that picked them to beat the point spread (spread for short).  

The Money Line is a bet that a team will win period.  It doesn't care by how much and is my favorite type of straight bet. 

The Total Points is a bet on what the total number of points for the game so ...

NY   8

Chi  6   

would mean that the total points for the game would be 14.  Now you cant pick the number you think the total score will be (maybe you can - but i haven't seen it ... if you know where pls comment!),  but you can make a bet as whether the total points scored will be over or under the number the bookmaker picks.  

Team Total is the same thing as a Total Points bet only with a specific teams performance.  

Interested in learning more before I get to it?  Check out: