Basketball Betting Psychology
by Predictem.com Staff
Before we get started, I’d like to note that this article pertains to every sport, not just college basketball.
I wanted to highlight somewhat of a trap that even the most astute of sports bettors can fall into at times. It falls somewhere in between feeling “jinxed” and/or superstitious.
I’ll use the 2007 March Madness tournament as an example since that’s what provoked us to write this article.
As professional sports handicappers, we consider ourselves to be somewhat astute at picking games. With that being said, we always try to stick with underdogs if we’re betting sides as we’d much rather be getting points than laying them. So, like every tournament, we’re sniffing around for the best dog value. We get down on a few of the better looking ones that we consider to be overlays and let it ride. The result early on was that the favorites were covering and covering easily. So, in day two of the tourney, we ended up liking a couple of strong dogs which were Winthrop and Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
After seeing some of the smaller schools get so buried so badly against the spread the previous day, we had some clouded vision when looking at Winthrop getting only four and Corpus Christi getting 14. Oh, but we liked them. But did we bet them? No, because we were scared off because of what happened YESTERDAY. (All the dogs got crushed)
Know the feeling? As another example we’ve seen all the early games in the NFL all go OVER the total and you’ll hear freaks in the Las Vegas Sportsbooks running around saying “all the early games went over so all the late ones will probably go over too!” As you probably know, this is about an asinine statement as one could possibly make.
Getting back to our college basketball issue, we allowed something totally unrelated to cloud our vision and it cost us. It cost us 2 units, both of which we handicapped accurately and both of which won easily as underdogs. But like morons, we fell into the trap and passed.
Don’t let this happen to you. When you lose a few games in a row your head may play games with you. Tune it out. Because it was cloudy yesterday doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be cloudy today. Often times the sun shines very bright. Handicapping college basketball games is no different. Each game is it’s own entity, somewhat like people. You can stereotype them, but more often than not, you’ll find that you should have judged a situation on an individual basis rather than tying it to unrelated circumstances.
So, the next time your roaming around in a sportsbook and you hear some clown saying something of the like such as quoting what has happened in the near past and it makes you get weird and allows your vision to get clouded, tell him to STFU. Oh wait, that clown was me lol.
The past is no indication of what the future will hold, no matter how much of a streak of bad luck you have just witnessed. Period.
Until next time, may all your bets be winners.