If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably grown accustomed to my daily tweets about NBA average combined score trends. If you’ve followed through on the advice and placed some bets, you’ve also grown accustomed to winning money. As of this writing (March 26, 2018), the bets have gone 27-11, good enough for a winning percentage of 71.05.
Breaking that record into dollars, a $100 bet on each game equals out to $1,354.57 in profits, or a more modest bet of $20 per game equals $270.86. That’s enough money to either buy a really crappy car or a set of crappy tires for a really crappy car. Or, something good, if you’d prefer. How you spend your profits is none of my business but feel free to buy me a beer if we ever meet.
Many have reached out asking me to explain the strategy. It’s an incredibly simple way to identify bad totals lines and should only take you a few minutes to calculate.
How the NBA totals betting strategy works:
- Find a team that’s trending heavily toward either the OVER or UNDER — a simple trend such as the total has gone UNDER in 10 of the Pacers’ last 11 games or the total has gone OVER in the Heat’s last six road games. None of this the total has gone OVER in seven of the Knicks’ last eight games on the road vs non-divisional opponents crap. KEEP IT SIMPLE.
- From there, you’ll determine what the average combined score of the games are for the trending team.
Using the examples above:
- The total has gone UNDER in 10 of the Pacers’ last 11 games. These games had an average combined score of 199.09.
- The total has gone OVER in the Heat’s last six road games. These games had an average combined score of 223.67.
- Then, take that average combined score and compare it to the total for that day’s game. So:
- The total has gone UNDER in 10 of the Pacers’ last 11 games. These games had an average combined score of 199.09. The total for Pacers vs Pelicans is at 221.
- The total has gone OVER in the Heat’s last six road games. These games had an average combined score of 223.67. The total for Miami at Sacramento is at 208.
- You should be looking for a discrepancy of at least 15 points between the average combined score and the total for that day’s game. Both of the above examples were winners that I tweeted out.
A few additional guidelines:
- Be strict about the 15-point discrepancy! I’ve played a few in the 11-14 point range and they weren’t very successful. So don’t force it and don’t get greedy!
- Always consider the opponent. In a recent matchup, for example, the UNDER once again looked like a favorable option for the Pacers, but they played the Clippers, who had been involved in many high-scoring games that went OVER in the past few weeks. With opposing trends, this contradicts the strategy, so we don’t play it.
- There’s usually just one or two of these spots each night. Luckily, I do the work for you and post them on Twitter.
- If you want to do the work yourself, all the information you need — recent totals trends and game logs — can be found on our NBA matchup pages. Just find yourself a calculator or mathematician.
So that’s it. It almost seems too easy, but it also makes sense that occasionally — once or twice a night — oddsmakers set a bad line or two out of the hundreds of games they take action on. If you’re interested in playing along, check me out on Twitter and as always, KEEP CHASING THAT PAPER!
