NHL Underdog Betting System Articles | Gambling

By: Richard Bleuze

NHL (Hockey) Underdog Betting System

Hockey is not as popular as the NFL, NBA, or MLB.  However, it is a sport where you can make lots of profits because hockey is bet on the money line instead of a point spread.  This thus means that every bet on an underdog pays you more than you bet every time you win – this is why I use underdogs as my NHL betting system.  This is an incredibly powerful thing.  If you like to bet heavy favorites on the point spread, which is very common when betting the NFL, then you would need to win about 55 percent of your bets to make a profit.  Betting heavy favorites on the money line, however, requires a massive winning percentage if you want to make a profit.  However, by betting underdogs, you can win less than 50 percent of your bets and still make a profit.  It really is not that hard to pick an underdog, especially when betting on hockey!

There are several reasons why I believe that betting on underdogs in hockey is the best way to go for an NHL betting system.  A few reasons why betting on underdogs is the way to go are: 

1. Winning percentage - As I have already mentioned, betting underdogs requires a lower winning percentage to be successful.  To understand the significance of this, all you have to do is look at an example. If we made bets with an average price of +150 (we make a profit of $150 when we bet $100 and are correct), we only need to win 40 percent of our bets to break even. Anything above that is profit. If we were to switch to betting favorites at -150 (we have to bet $150 to make a profit of $100 if we are correct), then we have to win 60 percent of our bets just to break even.  That is a huge percentage difference! 

2. Home team bias - Linesmakers in hockey, unlike other sports, love the home team.  Occasionally the linemakers will make a road team a favorite, but it is not that  common - you will rarely see it more than a couple of times a day on a busy day.  Thus, the betting public, and therefore those that set the lines, give a huge amount of credit to the impact of home ice advantage.  Since the favorites are usually the home team, and home teams obviously do not win every game, a sound betting strategy is to look for situations where the road team is in a good position to win.  If you can find situations in which the road team should be favored in your eyes but is not then you have hit the definition of value - a situation where the potential return significantly outweighs the risk involved.

3. Psychological benefits - If I have bet on five underdogs and won two, though, then it is quite possible that I will have broken even or even made a profit then if I had bet on five favorites.  Depending on the prices involved, I can bet on three games in a day and break even or make a small profit by winning just one.  Long term betting success is about maintaining a positive mindset.   Going back to the earlier example, let us say that we flat bet three games at an average price of -150, and we won all three games.  In that case we would have bet a total of $450 - $150 per game - and made a profit of $300.  That is a return on investment of 67 percent compared to if the games we had bet on had an average price of +150, though, and we won all three then we would have bet a total of $300, and made a profit of $450, that is a return on investment of 150 percent, which is much higher!  The mental boost of a payoff like that can be significant.

4. As a general rule, the public is not particularly sophisticated when it comes to betting - As a general rule, hockey bettors are fans of three types of teams - those with big stars, Canadian teams, and the Original Six teams.  In addition, it is well known that when the public likes a team they tend to bet on them.  This then means  is that because the public will tend to give those teams a disproportionate amount of support, the possibility exists to find extra value in games where the visiting team playing one of these teams is already attractive.  Thus, if you handicap these games properly, you can have a very profitable hockey betting season!  

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