Finding Value in the Game within a Game

by: Nite Owl Sports

As we now are about to start the championship round of the NBA playoffs, it gets even harder to find value on either team, and moré difficult to go against their opponent, while for the most part, betting the full game over or the under is no easier, as shown in recently concluded Boston - Detroit series, with one game being a boring “brick fest” that easily goes under (games 1, 3, 4 and 6), while the next (games 2 and 5) is an exciting run and gun affair, where the final score makes a mockery of the low totals line, leaving those who took the under scratching their head, and those cappers who released a pick on the under feeling like Jeff Daniels and/or Jim Carey (take your pick) in the movie Dumb and Dumber. Moreover, based on the line for game 1 (Boston is –2.5 or 3 over LA in Boston), we can expect most if not all of the games in LA in this final championship round to be “priced” ATS in that hard to handicap point spread range which we call “no man’s land,” where the home team is favored by 4.5 to 8.5 points -- just like nearly all of the third round games, with LA priced at  –8 at home (and going 1-1-1 ATS in their three home games vs SA), SA at –4.5 or 5 in their two home games vs LA (and going 1-1 ATS in those games), Boston at - 4.5 to 6 in their three home games vs Detroit (and going 1-2 ATS in those 3), and finally Detroit at a similarly priced - 5 or 5.5 in their three home games vs Boston (and going 1-2 ATS in those 3), for a collective 4-6-1 ATS for the home teams in the third (Conference Championship) round, despite those home teams having won 7 of those 11 games SU (not much of an edge for either the home or road team).

 This upcoming situation also presents a dilemma for us as professional handicappers with clients, as we don’t want to force picks on these high profile games where we don't feel strongly enough about either the side or total in the game to have an official pick, but we know that our clients will be disappointed if they get nothing at all when we don't have an official pick for any of these games. However, we usually have some strong opinions and betting strategies to recommend to our NBA clients on these games, particularly involving some less “mainstream” types of bets like first half sides, teasers and individual team totals, even when we don’t have an official pick, and the fact that there are now so few NBA games (and that we are now concentrating our handicapping efforts exclusively on the NBA) gives us more time to scour the box scores of the participants’ recent playoff games (especially those against each other), as well as their regular season games against each other, looking for strong tendencies and scoring patterns, such as what we uncovered for the SA Spurs and (our subscribers) profited from, big time (more about that later).

We recently faced the above described dilemma last Wed night in game 5 of the Boston-Detroit series, where our strongest recommendations were individual first and second “quarter bets” on both the sides and totals, and two teaser recommendations, but we were not wild about either side or total, for the full game or even the first half. We settled on a one unit pick on Detroit (which won) as our “best” official bet, but also had recommendations in our write up of that pick for these quarter bets, as well as a strong recommendation to tease both Boston and Detroit to the Lakers in their game 5 the next night at home vs SA (and as you can see from the final scores of those games, both of those teasers won). We also had a somewhat similar situation in the following night’s LA-SA game 5, although we did have a fairly strong pick on that one, with under 194 for 3 units (also a winner).

We’ll use our betting “attack strategy” on that LA-SA game 5 as an example of how we have been approaching these games. First, we started the write up for our official one unit pick on LA by reminding our subscribers that if they had followed our recommendation to tease both Boston and Detroit to the Lakers, they would already have two “live” teasers on LA at  –3 for four units, and thus no need to lay the 8 points (the Lakers won by 8 and “pushed” ATS, but easily covered both teasers for +4 units). Next, we recommended that our clients play SA on the first half line at +4> for 3 units, also an easy winner, with Spurs being up by 6 at the half. This unofficial pick was based on our research having uncovered that (prior to game 5) Spurs were 11- 2-1 ATS vs FIRST HALF line in L14 meaningful road games vs playoff caliber teams, with average HT lead of 3 points in those games. But then we also recommended a second half bet on LA for one to three units if the first half was close enough so that the HT score and the second half line gave us an adjusted game line of -5 or less for Lakers (which it did, as the Lakers’ HT deficit of 6 and the second half line of –8 for LA gave us an adjusted game line of –2, which LA easily covered with their 8 point win, giving us another winner, for +3 units at that line). That second half recommendation was based on SA’s 3-11 ATS record vs the second half line (with average second half deficit of 15 points), which was as bad as their aforementioned first half numbers were good, and their not much better 4-10 ATS record vs the full game line (with average full game MOL of 10 points) in those 14 road games vs A teams. In addition, we recommended betting under for the second half if the first half had enough scoring to give us some value on the second half under, but with just 90 first half points scored, that did not happen, so there was no totals play in the second half.

We also recommended teasing LA down to -3, with the under (teased to 198>), for two units, just in case the HT score and second half lines did not give us value on Lakers or the under for our recommended second half bet(s) on same (as it turned out, while there clearly was value on LA in second half, there was no value on the second half under, with a low 90 first half points). In any event, that teaser also won, for another two units.

Last but not least, our strongest recommendation for the LA-SA game was to bet SA under 93 on the individual team totals line for 4 units, as we believed this SA under play gave us better value than either of our official plays of Lakers at –8 or under 194, since it gave us the ability to isolate on SA's frequently poor shooting and scoring (especially in the second half) whenever the Spurs were playing on the road vs "A" teams like the Lakers. This pick resulted in another 4 units won for our clients, making us 6-0 FOR +16 UNITS on our unofficial recommendations for this game!!!

Just to recap the results from our above example (last Thursday night’s LA-SA game), although we had a fairly normal two "official" picks for 4 units combined on that game, going 1-0-1 for +3 units won on them, our above described six "unofficial" betting recommendations (SA first half, SA under 93 on individual team totals line, LA for the second half, the LA-under teaser, and the two progressive teasers from the previous night, of Detroit to LA and Boston to LA) all won, for +16 additional units, resulting in a total of 7-0-1 WITH + 19 UNITS WON for our full betting "attack strategy" for that one game. If you would like to read full write ups for our picks and recommendations on last Thursday night’s LA-SA game, or any of our other recent NBA picks, we invite you to go to Nite Owl’s “home page” page on the Top Ten site and go to our “past picks,” where you will also notice that we are 6-0-1/+10 units in our last 7 ”official” NBA picks.

So as you can see above, we don't just do a "pick or two" with a brief explanation on these games -- we give our subscribers a full betting "attack strategy" for the game, which results in more play options to choose from and more profits to be made, especially if all of our recommendations are followed. In other words, our picks and write-ups give our clients lots of "bang for their buck" -- while most cappers offer just a steady diet of “meat and potatoes,” we offer a full course gourmet meal, complete with appetizers, soup, salad and dessert, in addition to the main course, our official pick(s) on the game.

So whether it’s our new reduced rate of $79 for the remainder of NBA playoffs, $35 for our typical one day NBA pass, or $50 ($35 early bird price) for our 13 unit one day combo pack for game 1, featuring our picks for the game 1 money line and ATS sides winner, our totals picks for the first half and the game, and our predicted series winner between LA and Boston, you simply  can't find better value in a sports handicapping service than Nite Owl Sports for the rest of the NBA playoffs.      

Nite Owl Sports Past Articles

Exposing Bogus NFL-X Systems - Part 2
In an article published in the Top Ten newsletter last week, I explored a few of the more common systems used for betting NFL-X, particularly in week ... read more

Exposing Bogus NFL-X Systems
Anyone who has bet sports for any significant amount of time been exposed to numerous systems through the years, all claiming to be the key that unlocks ... read more

Getting Value Out of Heavy Faves in MLB
By this point of the season, anyone who bets MLB on a daily basis has probably already seen > 100 games where they look at the match-up of teams and ... read more

Going Under the Radar in AFL and WNBA
Now that the NBA playoffs have ended, many amateur sports handicappers simply "pack it in" until football season, not wanting to get involved ... read more

Betting Ugly on Under in NBA Playoffs
While it varies from year to year how well (or poorly) the overs or the unders do in the NBA playoffs, the one thing that is more consistent is that most ... read more

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MLB Baseball

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Arizona Diamondbacks @ Los Angeles Dodgers Friday September 5, 2008 10:05 pm
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WNBA Basketball

LA Sparks @ SA Silver Stars Friday September 5, 2008 8:05 pm
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WNBA Basketball

LA Sparks @ SA Silver Stars Friday September 5, 2008 8:05 pm
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WNBA Basketball

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College Football

Navy Midshipmen @ Ball State Cardinals Friday September 5, 2008 7:00 pm
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College Football

South Carolina Gamecocks @ Vanderbilt Commodores Thursday September 4, 2008 8:30 pm
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MLB Baseball

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