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How to Beat the Pro Football Pointspread: A Comprehensive, No-Nonsense Guide to Picking NFL Winners
How to Beat the Pro Football Pointspread will set bettors on a confidence-building path lined with high-priority realities which for decades have flown under the typical football bettor's radar. Smith emphasizes that pure football knowledge must be absorbed, then applied to the world of pointspreads. He teaches his readers to look at the game with the bettor's eye instead of the fan's, and explains his theories on reasonable statistical expectations and how to challenge the oddsmakers. He also discusses the implications of coaching styles, stadium locations, and even the weather on each bet made throughout the season. With years of football betting under his belt, Smith has written a key resource for anyone wagering on America's most popular sport.
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 22, 2017
This book is mostly full of fluff with a few nuggets that may help you in creating your own lines (which he does not advocate).
Fluff:
- You don't need to find "value" in the lines. Your goal should be to find and bet on the games that end up far from the predicted spread (no real insight on HOW to do this). Also, no discussion on how much of this discrepancy is due to variance versus something predictable.
- He touts his sports betting service probably a dozen times throughout the book. No apology for shameless promotion.
- This book lacks any mathematical proof of his claims.
Nuggets:
- Look at the coaches on a team's staff and see if they have any knowledge of specific teams from their previous coaching jobs. For example, Dan Quinn and the Falcons stuck it to the Seahawks last year in part because he had intimate knowledge of their defense as their former defensive coordinator.
I would not recommend this as an intro book for anyone. If you follow his prescriptions you are more likely to lose than win.
Fluff:
- You don't need to find "value" in the lines. Your goal should be to find and bet on the games that end up far from the predicted spread (no real insight on HOW to do this). Also, no discussion on how much of this discrepancy is due to variance versus something predictable.
- He touts his sports betting service probably a dozen times throughout the book. No apology for shameless promotion.
- This book lacks any mathematical proof of his claims.
Nuggets:
- Look at the coaches on a team's staff and see if they have any knowledge of specific teams from their previous coaching jobs. For example, Dan Quinn and the Falcons stuck it to the Seahawks last year in part because he had intimate knowledge of their defense as their former defensive coordinator.
I would not recommend this as an intro book for anyone. If you follow his prescriptions you are more likely to lose than win.
August 4, 2021
Author doesn't offer a magic formula except to tell the reader that s/he needs to do their homework. A little dated: kinda funny to read how to use Google and Wikipedia and to see web addresses written out.
December 4, 2017
All lot of advice on what to look for but does not provide a system to weigh all the variables and make a choice.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews