The wealth of knowledge that online sportsbooks have at their fingertips to make their betting lines far exceeds anything that an individual bettor or group of bettors could possibly compile. It’s why wagering on the major sports is virtually impossible in the long run.
Betting on the NFL, MLB, college football, college basketball and the NBA is a tough grind. Everyone’s looking for sports betting tips and it takes a truly special handicapper to be able to have success over a large sample across those sports. That’s where prop betting comes in.
What Makes Prop Bets So Interesting
Sportsbooks do offer wagers where you can profit if you do your homework. Books release prop bets for individual games or as season-long bets, and this is where you can really make some good money if you’re careful and develop your own prop betting strategy.
Generally speaking, props are released because of interest. Unless we’re talking about the Super Bowl, you never see props on whether the third-string tight end will or will not score a touchdown on a team, nor do you see a prop for how many points the third man off the bench will score in a random NBA game on a Wednesday night in February.
Instead, you see props about LeBron James and Stephen Curry, Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw or Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
Why Smart Bettors Love Prop Betting
Sportsbooks simply don’t put the same amount of work into their props as they do into their main betting lines because there isn’t nearly as much action on the props. Limits are also substantially lower on most props as well.
Whereas most sportsbooks take action of up to $10,000 on an NFL game, props have limits in the $250-$500 at most outlets. The exposure isn’t there for the top sports betting websites, but they hope that there’s enough general interest on the props to give them some winning action.
The key for sportsbooks are setting numbers that are just high enough so the public bets on the over happening. This fits under the ideology that it’s easier to root for a man to score 20 points in a game or rush for 75 yards than it is to root against him doing it.
“YES” vs “NO”
But the reality is that unders and “NO” props cash significantly more often than overs and “YES” props.
For starters, injuries happen in games all the time. You never like to root for a player to get injured, but if he does, that’s the end of his opportunity to accumulate stats. Furthermore, books always shade their props towards higher numbers, knowing that the public is going to want to bet on the overs by nature.
That’s not to say there aren’t opportunities to bet on overs and “YES” props, but generally speaking, if you’re asking yourself how you can bet on the “NO” and the under, you’re setting yourself up to be a winner in the long run.
Prop Betting Tips
As a sports handicapper, you should be spending plenty of time analyzing all of the potential props on the board for a given game.
You might ultimately find that your best bet, more often than not, is to not get involved in a matchup that is likely to be a coin flip proposition, but instead get into some prop bets on betting websites that could give you a significantly greater edge.
Looking for new tips on how to win? Learn more in How to Take Advantage of Line Movement
