The Beauty of 1st Half Football Money Line Betting

The vast majority of football bettors, whether they bet the NFL or NCAA, use the point spread for their bets. A typical example might be a bet on the Dallas Cowboys at home against the Green Bay Packers. If the line is Dallas -6 (-110) they can take either Dallas -6 points or Green Bay +6 points. Regardless of which team they take they immediately put themselves in the hole. The reason is the 10% vigorish (-110) or commission that bettors have to pay. They have to win almost 53% (actually 52.38%) of their bets just to break even. That may sound easy, but it's not.

My interest in betting on sports is strickly to make money. I don't want the book makers to have an advantage. The solution is to bet on money line underdogs and forget about point spread betting altogether.

Taking it one step further, there is an incredible amount of value in betting the underdog for the first half of a football game on the moneyline. This is what I specialize in when I make my plays.

The handicapping criteria I use is different because all I am looking to do is to have my team ahead at the half. I'm not worried about smaller offensive lines or running backs getting tired in the second half or a myriad of other things that happen late in a game.

I'm just trying to sneak in a first half lead. It is statistically significant that underdogs tend to lose games towards the last part of a game. My goal is to take advantage and try to bet on underdog teams that have at least a 50% chance of being ahead at the half.

If we use the Dallas - Green Bay example, the first half point spread line might be Dallas -3 (-110) or Green Bay +3 (-110). However, on the money line, Green Bay might be +150. That simply means that if Green Bay is leading the game at the half $100 bettors will have won $150. If they lose they will only lose $100. Points are taken out of the equation. Green Bay just has to be leading.

Now, think about this. One field goal can make the difference between losing $100 on this bet or winning $150.

All of the sudden, you only need to win 40% of your bets to break even. A winning percentage above that is profitable. As a matter of fact, if you are getting +150 on your first half bets, and are leading 50% of your games at half time, a $100 bettor would be ahead $2,500 over a span of just 100 games.