How to Choose an NFL Handicapper

An NFL handicapper is responsible for picking winners of football games. But this is not where their responsibilities end. They must pick winners often enough that they can make their clients a profit. This means, with a typical -110 line on spread bets, that they must be correct 52.8 percent of the time or more. This is much more difficult than it sounds. Spread bets are 50 / 50 wagers, and the house has an edge because you must pay more than $100 to win $100. In order to win $100, you must bet $110, thus giving the sports book an edge, and a profit, over the long term.

Putting the difficulty of selecting winning spreads aside, an NFL handicapper has many other responsibilities. The best handicapping professionals will help their clients to allocate their funds in a way that maximizes profit. Just as a financial planner helps their clients maximize savings, a handicapper gives their clients advice on the best approach to wagering their money.

This can be done a number of ways, the most prevalent being a diversification of wagering money. This is another concept borrowed from the world of investing. Just as a savvy investor will diversify their portfolio to minimize risk, a good sports bettor has a number of different betting strategies that allows them to maximize profit and minimize risk. This can be done by looking at the different types of wagers that sports books offer. Money line bets on favorites are the least risky of these wagers and multi-team parlays and teasers are the riskier bets. Because these riskier bets include the outcome of several different events, and will only pay if you are correct with each and every selection you make, parlays and teasers are the riskiest of the wagers that you will make.

Just as you would allocate funds in a smart and efficient manner when it comes to the stock market, you will want your NFL handicapper to do the same for your betting capital.

Most of your money should be going to the less risky, and therefore lesser paying, wagers. Spread bets and money line bets should account for the majority of your betting, just as you would invest in blue chip stocks and government bonds. But as you know, this is not enough for smart bettors and investors. You want to have the potential for large gains as well. So in addition to the safe bets, you will want to have the sports betting world's equivalent of developing nation stock market investments. As stated earlier, this comes in the form of parlays and teasers. These should account for only a small percentage of your betting capital because you will not win these bets very often. But one or two big wins per NFL season will more than likely be enough to make these bets worthwhile. Your NFL handicapper should be able to steer you in this direction.