NFL Football Betting: Fundamentals That Are Easy to Forget
By Loot, NFL Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
As we become more advanced in our pursuits to wager on football, it's easy to lose sight of the more-basic principles. This can happen for a variety of reasons. We may start to think we're above those things. Or we just get so swept away in the madness of football betting that all good sense just leaves our bodies. Whatever the case, it never hurts to go over a basic checklist to make sure we're not getting away from the basics.
Getting Loaded: A lot of us have different ideas on this. Most experts will tell you to not combine drinking with gambling. That's especially true in NFL football betting, where our decisions and judgment are being used so heavily. In some forms of gambling, you could maybe even get away with it. Not in sports betting.And definitely not in NFL football wagering.
But some bettors stray from the principle that drinking is hazardous to their wealth. Before they know it, drinking and betting on games combines into one singular activity. The last thing we want to do is tell people how they should live, but since we're in the business of offering football betting advice, it's only fair that we acknowledge this very common pitfall. If you already made your bets and want to have some cold ones when watching the games, that's one thing. But handicapping games or placing bets when under the influence is a recipe for losing.
Betting When Feeling Strong Mentally: Sometimes, it doesn't take intoxicating substances in order for our mental faculties to be compromised. Any number of things can do the trick. An argument with a loved one can leave you in a compromised mental state. Receiving some bad news in your life can cause you to be in a reduced mental condition. Heck, sometimes you just roll out of bed and things aren't firing for whatever reason.
That's normal. We have good days and bad. The real key is in acting accordingly and only betting when we feel crisp. We're not saying your life has to resemble the opening to Three's Company in order for you to place bets. But when forcing matters when not feeling up-to-par, your results will likely suffer and could lead to some long-lasting ill affects.
Actually Handicapping the Games: We need to make sure that even as our knowledge of NFL football gets to a high level, we need to do the hard work of handicapping the game. A lot of bettors start off with the noblest of intentions and put in the long hours hunting for an edge. Then, for whatever reason, they start to slack off.
Usually, we start to rely to heavily on intuition and instinct, which is just an unconscious excuse to avoid the toil and drudgery of handicapping. Especially if we start winning, there is a real danger of hubris setting in, which results in us getting away from the very things that allowed us to go on a winning streak in the first place. We are sometimes our own worst enemies and when making a case for not doing the hard work, we're just conning ourselves. Winning at NFL betting takes hard work. You might get lucky here and there by throwing stuff on the wall to see if it sticks, but over the long-haul, there is no substitute for hard work.
Selectivity: This is another area of betting that tends to erode with the passage of time. We start betting, placing bets that meet a high level of standards. But as time goes on, we start loosening our criteria and pretty soon we're betting on cricket matches from Zimbabwe. Maybe it's because the action is addicting or that we've just allowed our opinion-making capacity to run amok. Whatever the reason, we need to monitor ourselves to make sure we're not letting our standards slip.
Shop Around: When making a lot of bets year after year, it really makes a ton of sense to have several different active accounts. One of the main reasons you want to have different options is because it allows you to get the best odds on your bets. When restricted to one book, you pretty much have to swallow whatever they feed you. With multiple accounts open, you are afforded the luxury of shopping around for the best price.
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Will it make that much difference over the course of a day, week, or month? Maybe not. But over the longterm, a lot of bets will have results that fall into that gap between the best price and the price you received. We need to remember that an alarming few percent of bettors succeed at this over the longterm. The ones who do take every single edge they can get. So, if you want to be serious about NFL betting, being able to shop for the best odds is key. It's an edge you can get that really doesn't require any extra work or mental energy.
