"middles" on football

I am new to sports betting, but recently I have been watching the lines for preseason football. There have been a few times when I felt the line movement was predictable. With good timing you could make money betting one side in anticipation of a line move, then the other side after the line move, hoping to catch the elusive middle. My question is how much of a line move do you need to make this type of play profitable? Is a single point enough to justify this type of play, assuming you must lay 11 to win 10? Would there be any value in attempting to middle a half point line change? Also can any one reccommend a good book on sports betting(football and/or baseball)? Many thanks to all who take the time to reply. Philip.

ive done alot of middle betting long ago but i think that if you are good enough to predict the line movement you should just bet on the overlay.

Thanks for the advice Mr. Zee. However in my case I'm not sure which team is the overlay! You see, while watching the 15 minute odds from Don Best Sports I sometimes notice the line begin to move. First just one or two books change it, if a few more change their lines (especially the big books) I will check with a few of my online sportsbooks. Often they have already moved the line as well, but not always. If the majority of books have moved their line, but mine has not, I will consider placing a bet. Usually they will move their line with in the next few minutes. I have three questions I'm really hoping someone can answer.


1. When you speak of betting the overlay should I assume that the opening line is probably "correct" and that the movement is caused by the bettors putting unwarranted action on one side?


2. How many points do I have to "middle" to make it profitable, assuming I must lay 11 to win 10? Is it ever profitable to middle for just 1 point or less?


3. Why do you suggest trying to just identify the overlay rather than middle? I am on a limited bankroll and it seems that middling would give me a very low standard dev. compared to betting sides. Would you find this to be true or false?

Football middling is fairly worthless. Unless you are around key numbers you aren't going to get much value and key numbers are moved very carefully by the books. Basketball middling is much more valuable and baseball is the best middling sport of them all since you can guarantee yourself a profit at times. In the past you might have seen significant opportunities but with the technology today no books let their lines get more than a point out of the consensus unless they really are in need of some balancing.

Yeah I agree baseball is the best for middles. But can anyone tell me how many points you would need to middle to make money in football. Are there any general guidelines? Is it worth betting a middle for one point if you can? I realize there are not that many good chances to bet middles these days, but I'm just curious. If I have action,and the line moves, at what point should I consider taking action on the other side?

"Sharp Sports Betting" in chapter 14 looks at this question and a related question, "When is it worth it to buy a half point?"


On sides in the NFL, if you can get a middle on the 3 (-2.5 on the fav and +3.5 on the dog) with -110 on each side you have about a 5% edge. This is nearly impossible to find as wild bill notes, books are very careful around the 3.


Middling the 7 (-6.5 on fav and +7.5 on the dog) is about a break even expectation and is also a rare find.


Any other number and you need more than a full point to get a worthwhile middle.


There are some good opportunities around these numbers for buying half points, however.


David.

A good rule of thumb I was taught many years ago is in NFL betting an unspecified "point" is worth about 3%. It goes up to about 5% for 2 points and around 7% for 3 points. Of course it matters quite a bit what numbers you are working around, but use that as a rule of thumb. The 5% edge middling 3 sounds about right, but might be worth a little less now with the 2 point conversions messing key numbers up slightly, I am not sure what time frame Wong used for his sampling. This means basically if you can get 3 points you have about a 53.5% likelihood of winning the bet, so that pretty much tells you unless you are working very close to 3 you have almost no edge in middling the NFL. Colleges are probably even worse since they tend to be higher scoring and have less outcomes on key numbers. However you can get some decent sized middles in colleges, just that 3 points is rather rare. With such rare occurences just best to leave football middling alone, your returns aren't going to be worth even bothering putting any focus on it. Your only chance is if you have friends that will take lines that are off for whatever reason.

Thanks for the great input on the subject of football middles. The overall opinion is that its not worth looking for, but if the situation falls in my lap it's good to know when and how to take advantage. In fact in the preseason games this week I found a few good bets and hit one middle!! Good luck to you Ray, Dave and Wildbill! Anyone else with good info on middles please post!! Phil.

Football middles are actually a very easy way to make big dollars with acceptable risk, especially if you have 10+ outs, or if you are VERY strong at line forecasting.


Example: I put out a play on sharpsportsbetting.com 10 days ago on Nebraska -27. I cited the closing line would be in the 30s, and it was a total "nobrainer" since you could always play TCU back "thirty something" and have a solid +EV if you wanted to bail out of the play, or some of it.


Or better yet, just stick with Nebraska and watch big Red destroy the doomed horned frogs and their new coach.


NEB 45. TCU 10.

Although a lot of people have been saying that getting middles on key numbers in the NFL is all but impossible, I found some good middles this week. I took Denver at -6 (opening line), this morning I bet New Orleans at +7.5. With a point and a half straddling 7 this play must have positive EV. Jacksonville opened at -3 or 3.5 and was around -6 at game time on Thursday. Jacksonville won by 5. Perfect! Cincinnati opened at -2.5 for todays game and were around 3 (3.5 at Mirage) at game time. Middling seems good for me right now, as I have a limited bankroll, but would I be better off in the long run just trying to bet one side? And why?

You are making a HUGE mistake here. What middling is has nothing to do with what you are talking about here. Middling is when you look at the numbers at any given time and find discrepancies. Middling is NOT betting one side and then at a later time betting it back the other way. For a beginner that is nothing more than GAMBLING!!! An experienced player who can sense some mistakes in the numbers can take shots at this if he sees a game that he feels has a bad line that will move. Good players that have been around awhile can hit this pretty effectively, but it takes a lot of skill to do. And even then the best at it miss a lot of games, making it a fairly insignificant part of their tool chest.


In the preseason there is always going to be a lot of line movement due to news coming out about who is going to play. The regular season generally sees line moves like this for the NFL only in 3 or 4 games a week and quite often the move is a result of a tout putting out a big play on the game. NFL lines just don't move a whole lot after the opening betting is taken care of by the end of business Sunday night the week before the games. A point here or there happens on games that aren't around 3, but we already discussed that isn't worthy of an edge anyways.


Why bet the sides? Well to be honest you should ask why bet at all? Do you really feel you have an edge? I personally play very small and conservatively on football because I don't think I have that much of an edge and I don't believe most people do either. People like to talk about football because its popular and you can watch most of your bets, but still an astute bettor generally shies away from the sport and focuses on the other sports as they are more profitable by a factor of at least 5. Bet football if you like it for entertainment, but don't ask why bet it for profit. If you are truly interested in doing this for a profit I would suggest football is the last sport you do it for, after you conquer the basic talents needed to beat sports in general. Other sports provide better training ground for that as you don't have 200 opinions on every game bombarding your mind. The best handicappers make their stands with no input from others and work to avoid the noise that exists for this sport. No other sport has such a betting focus, all the more reason to avoid it for other sports.

Thank you for the sound advice Wildbill. I do agree, football seems tough. I have had a great year in baseball, where there is really more easy money to be made. However, as football is just starting I thought I would give it a shot this year. (I didn't bet a single NFL game last year) What I have been doing in the preseason is simply watching the lines from Don Best Sports. If I notice a line is starting to change I check to see if any of the books I use have moved their line yet. Often they already adjusted their line, but not always. If the bigger books begin to change their line I will bet, and usually my book will also change thier line in the next 30 minutes. All I am really doing is taking advantage of books that are a little slow to change their lines. It seems to be working in the preseason, but I suspect that there will be fewer of these line moves during the regular season. Do you think this is a valid strategy to winning at football? Are there other sports that you feel would be well suited to this ( aside from baseball)?