FOOTBALL BETTING BASICS
FOOTBALL BETTING BASICS
Welcome to the first in a series of articles that will examine
some of the finer points in sports betting for newcomers to the
idea of trying to get the edge on the bookie. Many of the ideas
will be applicable to other sports, but we’ll be focusing on
football. Much of this stuff will be old-hat to old-timers but I
hope many people will get at least a few ideas from the articles.
***This series of article was written for Bettorsworld by long
time contributor “Shawn”.
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This Week: Q & A ABOUT “THE LINE”
1. “What the Line means – and what it doesn’t.”
Suppose you have a local bookie who lets you bet the line
printed in your local newspaper’s sports section. On the
Wednesday before the NFL season kicks off you open the paper and
under “NFL Lines” you see:
(Favorites listed first, home team in CAPS)
JETS 6.5 Patriots
OK so what does this mean? This means you can call your bookie
and bet $11 on the Jets. If the Jets win by 7 points or more you
get the $11 back plus $10 more. If the Jets win by 6 or less, or
the Patriots win, you lose the $11. Or, if you like the
Patriots, you can bet $11 on them. If they win, or lose by six
or less, you cash in, getting your $11 back plus $10 more. If
the Jets win by 7 or more, your money on the Patriots is gone.
Of course you can bet more than $11 to win $10. You can bet $55
to win $50, $110 to win $100, or more. Generally you risk $11
for every $10 you want to profit…that’s the standard and it
varies little.
A line is also called a “point spread” or “spread”.
So what does it REALLY mean? The number 6.5 is the head start in
points the line-maker gives the Patriots. He thinks, and your
bookie is very much hoping, that if that’s the head start given
the Patriots for wagering purposes, half of the bookie’s
clients’ dough will be bet on the Jets and the other half on the
Patriots.
Why is this important? The smart bookie doesn’t want to
gamble-he wants a sure thing: a guaranteed profit from his
customers. Consider the simplest case where a bookie has just
two bettors, you and me, and this number of 6.5 does its job.
You bet $11 on the Jets and I bet $11 on the Patriots. One of us
wins. Let’s say it’s me…I hate the Jets. I get my $11 back,
plus $10 of your money. The extra $1 you put in stays in the
bookmaker’s pocket as his small, guaranteed profit (it’s called
“vig” or “juice”).
What does the Line NOT mean? It does not mean, under any
circumstances, that oddsmakers think the Jets will win by about
6 or 7 points. It’s your job to predict who will win and by how
much…the line-maker doesn’t want to do your job for you. He
works for the bookies. He and the bookies don’t care who wins or
loses or by how much-they just want the same amount of cash on
each side so the bookies can get juice. The line-maker tries to
come up with the handicap of points that will put half the
public’s money on the Jets, and half on the Patriots. As long as
the money is split evenly, the bookie “wins” in his own way, and
the result of the game is of no importance to him.
2. “Whoa. The Line is different today from yesterday. What’s
with that?”
So the next day in the paper, it’s now
Jets 7 Patriots
instead. Now if you like the Jets they’ve got to win by 8 or
more for you to cash in. If you like the Patriots, they can win
or lose by 6 or less and you’ll win. (If the game lands on a Jet
win by exactly 7, anybody who bet while the line was 7 just has
their money refunded…you get the line at the time you bet,
even if it changes later.)
The Line moved because the line-maker consulted with some big
sports books and the money wasn’t balanced when the number was
6.5-there was more coming in on the Jets than the Patriots. So
the line-maker and bookies changed the number to try to
encourage more bets on the Patriots to even things up and get
that juice.
(Line movement is complicated and these are only the basics.
Detailing line movements and other things a bookie can do to
“even up” the betting would take pages. One thing that the
bookie could do instead of moving the line is to say “It’s still
6.5 but Jets bettors have to lay $11.50 to win $10 and Patriots
backers can lay only $10.50 to win $10.” This is called “moving
the money instead of the line”. Think about this one. It’s
especially common when the line is exactly 3 points, a football
winning margin that actually occurs a lot.)
3. “Why do different places have different Lines on the same
game?”
Suppose you have access to several bookies (this is a good idea
and we’ll talk about it in a later article) and you find they
have different lines, like:
Bookie A: Jets by 6.5 (from the Newspaper)
Bookie B: Jets by 6
Bookie C: Jets by 7
Canbet: Jets by 6.5
Victor Chandler: Jets by 7
Bowmans: Jets by 6.5
Everybody but the bookie who blindly follows the paper is trying
to balance the Jets bets with the Patriots bets. Maybe Bookie B
is in Boston so he is a little lopsided on people betting for
the Patriots — so he’s trying to entice Jets bettors to step
up. Maybe Bookie C is in the Bronx (so he has too much money on
the Jets at 6.5), and maybe Victor Chandler’s clients bet
favorite teams a lot instead of underdog teams, so they’re
looking for more money on the Patriots right now.
In the above example if you like the Jets you’ll take your
business to Bookie B because if the Jets win by exactly 7 you’re
a winner, and if the Jets win by exactly 6, it’s the only shop
at which you don’t lose. If you like the Patriots, in this
example Bookie C or Victor Chandler are the places to play
because the Patriots get more points as a head-start there. More
on line-shopping in a few weeks.
Bettorsworld.com
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-gambling-articles/football-betting-basics-3195.html
I need to know HOW to set up my Nikon D300 to take the best football action pictures–have18-300f2.8VR lens!?
I have the Nikon D300 book-not enough TECH. SKILL TO FIGURE OUT MY MISTAKES!(Have been reading…a lot) lighting seems adequate. many pics are blurring. Some players are a blur-background kids seem in focus, so I know that is my fault and will adjust my focus on subject. I leave it aperture priority/trying iso 1600-3200 due to low lighting.3200=grain. What about the focus? point,matrix etc,? Also what about going in to menu and setting the ISO SENsitivity to ON?hmmm? I need a BEST BET solution because I’m running out of football games! Any sure bet settings to better pics? be as specific as possible THANKS ( this is too much camera for me, but I have signed up for classes. I only know the basics of ISO, aperture, shutter speed, etc.,–I should have bought the D90 but liked growing into the D300) I took NASCAR pics whch were great…last high school football game photos were honestly terrible! HELP!
High ISO = high noise, not grain .. grain is a film issue
Second, I use a D300 to shoot sports all the time. Sometimes I use the 18-200 mm VR lens, but not in dark venues.
High school fields are not usually lit well, so no matter what camera you use, lighting will always be a problem
Here is what sports photographers do. They get meter readings of the field lighting and then with that reading, shoot using the camera in the manual mode.
The settings I use when shooting pro basketball, I shoot at ISO 1600, with balance at 3140 Kelvin 1/250th at f/4 or 1/500th at f/2.8 The lighting on school fields are not that bright, but if you can shoot at 1/250th @ f/2.8, the blur will be reduced and if you shoot at the peak of action, the blur will be further reduced.
References :
Editorial and sports photographer
18-300VR? You must have paid a lot of money to have that one custom-built!
Anyway, relax. Leave your aperture as wide open as possible, as you’re clearly looking for speed, so just leave it at f/2.8 and shoot with the lowest ISO you possibly can. If the images are a bit soft (I don’t know what lens you’re really using), close the aperture to f/3.2 or so, but I can’t see that being an issue.
As for your focusing, leave your D300 on spot-focusing. If you’re shooting single people just leave it in the middle. At f/2.8, your subject will be nicely isolated from the crowd without being half in and half out of focus. In my experience with the D300, the autofocus isn’t particularly fast enough for action with the big rectangle.
I don’t know what you’re planning to do with your pictures if you really need to go beyond ISO 1600, find the high ISO noise reduction and set it to HIGH. It’ll soften your pictures a tiny bit, but that’s okay. It’s better than grain.
Anyway, just leave it on f/2.8, focus with the middle focus point and work out your shutter speed/ISO limitations from there. Hopefully it’ll be bright enough for you to shoot at a lower ISO. If you’re shooting things at a distance, you’ll probably have to go faster than 1/125 or 1/160 second to stop it blurring.
References :
I would shoot in either shutter priority or manual. You need to set the shutter speed to something fast enough to catch the action. I would start at at least 1/250, probably 1/500 is more universal. Since the lighting is a problem, set the maximum automatic ISO to 1600, less if you can get away with it. In shutter priority, the camera will pick the aperture. If the lighting varies, you may need to go to manual and set your own aperture.
Blur background can be caused by you panning the camera. If you are moving the camera to follow the action, the background will be blurred, learn to like it.
Automatic focus is your best bet. Matrix because of the movement.
ISO sensitivity to ON because of the varying light, but limit it to 1600. Also experiment with various fixed ISO’s.
There are no sure bets. Taking many pix and varying the settings gives you the best chance. Try using Live view. It will give you instant feedback on your pictures.
References :
For football: Really depends on the outdoor weather conditions. Generally, I go with a shutter speed of 150 ( let the camera computer hash out the f-stop). Shutter speeds of 150 tend to give moving subjects some blur–that viewers perceive as fast motion. I’ve tracked a kid on a Big Wheel, with a shutter speed of 60 with an f-stop of 4.8—and got back a picture that had the little girl looking like she was doing 100 mph!!
You get the idea here. Your particular Nikon model should allow you to choose the shutter speed, while IT chooses the correct f-stop.
Now…..if you want those "frozen in time" shots of a moving subject, go with 500, 1/1000 ( a second )–or higher IF your camera supports such.
Don’t kick yourself hard if pictures come out "fuzzy" or "blurred"; remember—it’s the SECOND PERCEPTION you see in a picture that may show ART instead of a mistake!!!
References :
Hahahaha, is this a hoax? 18-300 f/2.8VR? If this lens existed, not only would it cost something like $300,000 but it would be the size of my Honda Accord.
Your problem is that you bought a camera that is too high above your skill level, and you are getting bogged down by the settings. I also would like to add that you are paying for a ton of features that you will never use. If you want to get better, then step down to a Nikon D40 or D3000, and use the preset setting mode for sports. Growing into the D300 is a bad idea. I came from 8 years of film SLR experience, work for a newspaper, got a personal SLR Nikon D40 that I periodically used for jobs, and I STILL took over a year and a half to feel like I outgrew Nikon’s most basic camera! (That camera by the way is Nikon’s best low-light camera, it has been on the sidelines with me at games that were being broadcast on ESPN). You are going to continue being a poor photographer until you start with something more of your skill level. Race car drivers don’t get F1 cars and Ferraris as their first car and get told "It’s ok, you will grow into it!" They get Civics and Miatas and go-carts until they understand enough of the basics of their craft to move up to a more professional car. I could give you Lance Armstrong’s bike, but you would never "grow into it" or win the Tour de France. Same thing with the camera. Use the D300 all you want, just understand that it is hurting you, rather than helping.
The bluriness is not caused by your focus, it is caused by your shutter speed. As a quick fix, put your camera on "A" mode, and turn the dial all the way so that the lowest aperture number is displayed. Take a test picture, and if the kids are still blurry, then turn up the ISO. If you can’t get the kids to stop being blurry by ISO 1600 or 3200, then you don’t have a good enough lens for the job. Time to go to the camera shop. The 70-200 f/2.8 IS costs about $2,200 and the 300 f/2.8 costs like $8,000. Happy shooting!
References :
The 18-200VR is an f/3.5-5.6 variable aperture lens, so all those folks that want you to leave the aperture at f/2.8 are out of luck.
I would assume that you are shooting at the 200mm end, so the maximum aperture you have to work with is f/5.6, which is not particulary good at a high school football game. Not a disaster, but not good.
If the bleachers on the far side are clear, but the players are blurred, your shutter speed is too slow. Just setting the shutter speed to go faster is not necessarily a solution, as you get less light into the camera with each increase in shutter speed. You get darker images, to the point where there is nothing recorded at all. If you can do it, panning the shot will improve the image. Panning means you have the camera in motion, following the movement. You take the shot while moving the camera. In this case, the players would be (mostly) clear, while the far side bleachers would show the blur. It is something that has to be practiced to get even close to good at, but it isn’t that difficult. Cars are a good thing to practice on.. they go fast.
Turn off all that auto stuff… shoot the camera in manual mode. Set your ISo to 1600 to start, and use 3200 if you have to. Set the aperture as wide as possible, so f/5.6 and leave it there. Sports requires fast shutters, but give it a start at something like 1/125th and see what you get. Bump it up as much as possible, if you can get to 1/250th, you are good to go. If those images are too dark at that speed, back down one notch at a time until you find something acceptable between exposure and image quality.
This is why many people mention those f/2.8 lenses. A 70-200 non-VR (doesn’t help with sports anyway) from somebody besides Nikon can be had for as little as $700. The Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR just went up in price to $2,100. The advantage of any of them for sports is that you automatically get 2 more full stops of shutter speed over that f/5.6 lens you use now.
References :
Try to shoot with these minimums in mind
Night Games:
Aperature Priority Mode
ISO 3200 or HI 1
aperature as big as possible (smallest number)
Shutter speed faster than 1/250
White balance custom
Day games:
Shutter Priority mode
ISO auto or 200 to 800
white balance auto or sunny
Shutter speed 1/500 or higher
Bottom line is if your night football pictures are bad with these guide lines buy a 70-200 f2.8 VR, 80-200 f2.8 or 300 f2.8 lens or take pictures in the daytime.
References :
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