How to bet pro basketball

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It doesn’t matter that the NBA is the hardest sport to beat next to the NFL. Nor does it matter that NBA lines are extremely sharp, or that some of the players in the league are among the most detestable in all sports.

We’re still going to bet NBA. So let’s at least try to make some money from it. To accomplish this we need to be aware of certain harsh realities.

Basketball is an eight-month grind similar to baseball. That means riding hot streaks and dealing with cold streaks. Money management is as important as handicapping.

Bet a little more when winning, but don’t ever let yourself get too cocky. This is a sport that slaps you down to size real fast by nature of its randomness and garbage-type finishes that often decide the point spread winner. If you’re losing you need to scale down your action until you regain your rhythm.

For the NBA is a rhythm sport. The lines almost always seem accurate. So face it, you’re rarely going to get value. Sometimes you will, but it’s usually just during the first couple of weeks. If you refuse to play unless you get a great number, you’re going to be sitting out a lot.

So don’t be afraid to get involved. Now, I’m not saying be undisciplined. No matter how much you like a side, you have to pass if the line is too out of whack. Rare is the time when you really love a side and are able to also take a great number on the same game. You’ll get bit a few times, losing by a point or two, but in the long run you’ll make more money provided you handicap right and play the game even if the betting line isn’t entirely to your liking.

Some gamblers disagree, saying you should never play unless you’re getting the best number. That’s fine in theory, but hard to apply in the NBA since a large part of handicapping pro basketball is situations, injuries, matchups and your own subjective feel rather than power rankings, statistics and coaching.

Basketball is a hard sport to get rich on. I’ve beaten the NBA five of the past six years hitting between 54 and 58 percent. Perhaps that doesn’t sound spectacular, but it’s solid profit taking into account there are 30 teams playing 82 games followed by the postseason. I would dare call a liar anybody who claims to consistently hit better than 60 percent over the long run playing a lot of games each season.

Having the right feel in the NBA is huge. The key question, of course, is how to acquire the right feel? It’s developed through experience, watching the games, analyzing players, understanding situational aspects, reading pertinent up-to-date material and talking to sources if you’re lucky enough to have good ones. And in the end, it comes down to trusting your own instincts.

Unless your whole life has been devoted to handicapping NBA, you have to make certain concessions. For instance, I don’t spend a lot of time pouring over statistics and compiling power rankings. These are factored into the betting line anyways.

The oddsmakers at Las Vegas Sports Consultants - the company that supplies the betting numbers to most of the hotels in Nevada - use power rankings to make numbers as other linesmakers do. I do make overnight numbers and compare them. But the oddsmakers’ numbers are solid and need to be respected. There’s no reason to try to improve on their time-tested numbers.

Betting totals is something else altogether. There are individuals and betting syndicates who are extremely proficient in this area. Las Vegas bookmakers were plagued for many years by one especially sharp individual in this area.

Bookmakers adjust totals much faster than sides. It’s my experience gamblers are either very good or very bad at over/unders with most having no clue how to beat totals. Over/unders are hard to get involved with unless you thoroughly understand what you’re doing. It’s difficult for both oddsmakers and bettors, for instance, to accurately gauge a total when a fast-paced team matches up against a half-court opponent.

If a team is playing its fifth game in seven days you figure that team is at a huge disadvantage physically and mentally. That’s easy to handicap playing a side. But when betting a total, would you know if that’s an advantage (tired arms making for poor shooting percentage) or a disadvantage (too tired to play intense defense)?

For reasons like that I find sides much easier to handicap. The business aspect is what makes the NBA so much a crapshoot when handicapping. The players make so much money and have so many games that you’re not always assured of getting a top effort from them. That’s not a concern in college because players usually play hard all the time. The NBA is more a marathon with players pacing themselves, picking their spots.

It’s rare to find a team, for instance, playing well every game during a long road trip. The secret is to project when they’ll tank and when they’ll be on. Beating the NBA is difficult because you’re at the mercy of the different mood swings of various key players who can be just out of high school, have a ghetto background or have a name you can’t pronounce because they’re from somewhere halfway around the world.

Sometimes the point spread is decided in the final minute. Even though the outcome is evident, a point spread could be decided by a meaningless uncontested lay-up, an undefended jump shot or if the losing team decides to foul or not. It’s not nearly as bad as what occurs in college, when a hopelessly losing team keeps needlessly fouling, allowing the winner to cover a big spread and pushing the total over.

But often times the line is so solid that the game falls in the mix, where it could go either way from a point spread standpoint no matter how well or poorly you handicapped. I remember losing with an 8-point underdog a few years ago when the favorite had a 7-point lead with just seconds left and the ball. The underdog wasn’t going to foul, instead they started shaking hands and walking off the court.

Now when that happens, you can almost start counting your money because the winning team is just going to dribble out the last few seconds, especially when they were at half-court, as in this instance. However, in this particular case, the notoriously selfish J.R. Rider had the ball and sensing an easy way to pad his stats, made a mad dash for the open hoop dunking the ball with a second left. The announcers criticized Rider for being bush, as did other players, but the bottom line was the final score was a 9-point margin costing me a wager.

Always accept that a certain amount of games fall into the mix. The way to beat the NBA is to nail the games that don’t fall into the mix more often than not. Use proper money management and know how to take advantage of injury information.

Just because Chris Webber is out doesn’t necessarily mean the 76ers are a bad bet for that evening. It helps to know the players and backups so well you can correctly assess if the bookmaker made a correct line adjustment on an injury. Sometimes they over-adjust. I’ve played in Rotisserie leagues with deep rosters (12 teams composed of 15 players) for years to keep sharp on players. I’d recommend it.

Because of the long season, there will be short windows of opportunities to take advantage of inside knowledge such as a key player unexpectedly not being in the lineup either through injury, suspension or other personal reasons. The biggest NBA bet I ever won came a couple of years ago when 30 minutes before tip-off I received a call from a source saying Steve Francis wouldn’t play.

The books got that same information a few minutes before tip-off, but in that short interval before the house found out, I was able to bet against Francis’ team, which happened to be the Rockets at the time, while also betting the under. Both wagers easily won.

These kinds of dream spots don’t crop up too often, but they can prove profitable when they do. The bottom line with beating the NBA is to keep plugging; exploit hot streaks; take advantage of rare inside information when it appears; lay low during cold spells; and respect how tough it is to make a huge profit wagering on the sport. Keep things in perspective. The NBA can be beat, but not if you’re impatient and greedy.

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HOW NBA HANDICAPPING HAS CHANGED IN THE 66-GAME SCHEDULE

Normally the lines for the next day’s NBA games start trickling out by around 3 p.m. ET. But for Thursday’s three games - Nets-Pacers, Celtics-Bulls and Clippers-Trail Blazers - there wasn’t a single spread posted within 24 hours of tipoff.

Welcome to the jam-packed, 66-game NBA schedule.

Here’s how the NBA handicapping landscape has changed during the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season:

Fear of the unknown

Thursday’s trio of games was a perfect storm. Five of the six teams played the night before, making handicapping somewhat dangerous because of a potential big injury suffered Wednesday or a multiple-overtime result that would leave a team drained the next night. It's always been a danger when taking the early odds for the second half of back-to-back games, but it's even more prominent in the NBA this season.

Injury bug infestation

And speaking of injuries, there were some vital ones that would have affected the spread for Thursday’s game.

Indiana’s Danny Granger was a game-time call on Wednesday – he didn’t play vs. Cleveland – and obviously oddsmakers weren’t about to put a number on the Nets-Pacers game without knowing the status of Indiana’s top scorer.

Ditto for the Clippers-Trail Blazers spread because Portland’s LaMarcus Aldridge, the Blazers’ top scorer, sat out with an injury Wednesday. And while the Bulls didn’t play Wednesday, the status of Derrick Rose remained up in the air for the Celtics game after Rose had missed the previous three games with back spasms.

Depth is the difference

Sometimes those injuries can torpedo a team, like the Nuggets, who have struggled since leading scorer Danilo Gallinari went down. Sometimes injuries, however, can be the impetus for a surge. The Knicks’ Jeremy Lin wouldn’t be a global sensation and leading New York to seven wins in a row if the injured Carmelo Anthony was out there stealing shots.

Making sure a team has a solid second - and even third - option behind an injured starter is even more important as the season wears on and more ailments pile up.

Forest through the trees

Because there are so many games squeezed into such a tight schedule there is a lot more work to do each day for cappers to find value.

With less time in between games, inside info from local papers and beat writers is harder to come by, especially if you’re trying to take advantage of the early lines. In past seasons, you could get two days of coverage on a team in between games. But with the frantic pace of the schedule, there is less time to learn about your bets.

Three’s a crowd

Basketball bettors are getting the chance to handicap teams playing back-to-back-to-back sets this season, a situation they haven’t seen since the last lockout-shortened season.

You can find nice value in overnight lines because often there is plenty of movement from when odds are released to where they sit in the morning.

The most unusual three-games-in-three-nights result this year was from Feb. 12-14, when Miami won and covered easily at Atlanta, at Milwaukee and at Indiana. That’s two potential playoff teams Miami beat as well as a Bucks club that had the Heat’s number twice previously this season.

The Heat became the first NBA team in 33 years to win three road games in three nights.

Running on empty

Perhaps the top trend this season is that tired legs usually equal lousy shooting, which then leads to low-scoring games and plenty of unders - although books have certainly adjusted totals accordingly.

Shooting percentages are down more than a percentage point and around two percentage points on 3-pointers from last season. Last year, 11 teams averaged at least 100 points, led by the Denver Nuggets (107.5). This season, just three teams average 100 or more points, led by Miami’s 103.5 points per game. The Heat are just 14-14-2 over/under entering the weekend.

No team averaged less than 90 points a game a season ago but four are below that mark this year, with wretched Charlotte at the bottom at 86.5 points a night.

Paying attention to shooting slumps and how the schedule will impact a team's ability to fix them is becoming more important for NBA cappers.

How are the lines set?

While the odds makers do to try approximate the median margin of victory between two teams, they also try to reduce their exposure to risk by setting lines such that the public money will fall evenly on both sides of a game, so that they can offset the bets against each other and earn a profit on the juice (cut of winnings taken by the house, explained below) without exposing themselves to large potential losses. Thus, odds makers are often in the business of gauging public perception rather than team performance, and therefore the betting public actually sets the line. If Georgia is 4 points better than Georgia Tech according to my advanced metrics and analysis, but the aggregate public perception is that Georgia is 7 points better than Georgia Tech, then the posted point spread is likely to be closer to 6.5 or 7 points (public perception) than it will be to 4 points (the realistic difference between the teams). This makes my job as a professional handicapper much less daunting; not only can I exploit lines where the odds makers leave an edge, but I can also exploit the uniformed opinions of the general betting public.

Isn't gambling risky?

I don't believe that the term 'gambling' applies to what I do. I sell information to subscribers, with which they can take positive expectation positions in uncertain markets. With correct financial optimization and bankroll management, long term risks are nominal compared to the risks of investing in other, more conventional markets. Just as a single stock may go up or down in a day, any one team may win or lose a given game. But as long as the investor maintains a long-term perspective, understands variance, and doesn't over-extend themselves or bet more than they can easily handle, risk can be highly mitigated, and they can earn a very attractive risk adjusted return.

Juice, and the power of 56%

Even though most sports bettors are losers in their own right (as a whole, bettors actually win an average of only 48% of their bets - less than they would expect to win if they just flipped a coin for every game), their losses are compounded by the fact that the house takes a cut of winnings, also known as the 'juice' or 'vig.' Most sports books charge a 10% commission on wins, which means that a bettor must actually win 52.4% of his games just to break even. (Wagering $100 per game, a bettor loses $100 with a loss and wins $90.91 with a win, so he must go 11-10 (11/21 = 52.38%) to break even). Recently, some online books have started to offer lower juice, betting exchanges and deposit bonuses, which reduce the house edge.

In order to beat the juice and win in sports betting, a bettor must employ a disciplined approach in their analysis of each game using methods that have proven to be successful in the long run. I discuss my math models and analytical metrics in my Handicapping Methods essay, but you must realize that only the best and most knowledgeable handicappers can win 55% of their games. In their 2007 two page article about my handicapping success, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "...fewer than 100 people can sustain (win rates of 55%) over time. Most of them belong to professional betting syndicates that hire teams of statisticians, wager millions every week and keep their operations secret." Even fewer bettors can hit 56-57% over a 20 year period as I have.

Touts often claim to be able to hit 60% or higher, but as I explain in my essay on Bayesian Probability, anyone who tells you that their long term expected winning percentage is higher than 60% is deluding themselves. For a bettor to claim a greater than 60% long term expected win percentage, that would be mean that Vegas would have to consistently release lines with egregious errors, and that simply just does not happen often enough for claims of greater than 60% long term expected win percentages to be caused anything other than blind, short-term luck.

I often hear amateur gamblers erroneously claim that winning 56% of games isn't even enough to beat juice. As demonstrated above, a bettor only needs to win 52.4% to break even, and a 56% bettor will be profitable in the long run if they pursue an optimal money management strategy.

Of course, as in any game of chance, there is variability in the actual results and just because you have won 56% in the past and expect to win 56% in the future doesn't mean that you're going to win 56% this upcoming season. There is variance in sports betting, as there is in most investments, and I calculate the standard deviation to figure out how much of my bankroll I can safely wager on each game during the season to accommodate potential negative swings while having very little chance of exhausting my bankroll. I have extensively quantified the variance that exists in sports betting, and use mathematical formulas to dictate the exact optimal amount to invest so as to maximize the ratio of profits to variance.

A football season with 56% winners (my long term percentage) on 400 units or 'stars' would on average yield +30.04 stars ( (400*.56) - (400*.44)*1.1 ). Even using a very conservative 1.5% per star (in the past, I have recommended 2%), that's an expected return of 45.06%.

A basketball season with 54% winners (my long term percentage) on 1,050 units or 'stars' would on average yield +35.7 stars ( (1050*.54) - (1050*.46)*1.1 ). Using a conservative 1.1% per star (in the past, I have recommended 1.5%), that's an expected return of 39.27%. So, despite a lower overall winning percentage, I expect a season's worth of basketball wagers to be almost as profitable as a season of football in the future. Over the last ten years, my basketball wagers have actually been more profitable than football, but I have done a lot of analysis this summer and I expect my football wagers to be even better next year than they have been in the past.

Units Won vs. Winning Percentage

Units Won vs. Winning Percentage

While both “Units Won” and winning percentage can be telling when evaluating a group of plays, the sample size (number of plays) is also an important piece of information to look at. Some bettors use a strategy that is referred to as the Wal-Mart approach. With this strategy, bettors are hoping to grind out a profit through a higher quantity of plays, which allows bettors to spread around their risk in the sports betting marketplace.


In the table above, Pinnacle has a lower winning percentage than Phoenix, but it also has a higher profit for the season due to triggering more than double the number of plays. Spreading risk around allows bettors to ride the highs and lows of the season and still turn a profit. This approach requires bettors to be steadfast with their betting amounts. At Sports Insights, we recommend using 2% of your starting bankroll for each wager. Fluctuations in your standard bet will most likely cause more damage during the lows than it will help during the highs.

Spreading the risk around in the sports betting marketplace is similar to building a diverse portfolio in the stock market. It lessens the damage done by a rough stretch in the market. If a bettor is starting out with a $100 bankroll, and decides to use $25 wagers, there is a good chance the bankroll would be decimated by an early cold streak. However, if that same bettor makes $2 wagers, he can withstand any early cold streaks to remain in the market and realize positive gains. For example, Sports Insights betting strategies will produce 5-10 plays on an average day with an expected 54-55% win percentage. Instead of betting two games at $50 each, we suggest you bet 2% of your bankroll on 10 plays.

Moneyline Sports vs. Spread Sports

Many bettors like to stay away from moneyline-based sports, such as baseball and hockey, due to the extremes in winning percentages, but they can be very profitable. Betting on the underdog in moneyline sports will likely give you a losing record, but the payouts for winners will be so much higher that your profits will increase. Below is a section of a results page for MLB Smart Money plays. Notice that five out the six books have losing records for the triggered plays, but that all six have significant units won due to underdog payouts.


The other side of the coin is betting on favorites, which will give you a strong winning percentage, but can still produce a loss in money. Betting on teams like the Yankees or Red Wings will consistently put your odds in the -200s or higher. If you average odds of -200, you would need that team to win 67% of the time to break even. If your average odds go any higher, you’ll need to win 70% or more to not lose money.

For example, if you wager on the Yankees every game of the season (162 games) and they average -200 odds for the season, you would need them to win 109 games just to break even. To turn any substantial profit you would need them to break the single-season win record (116).

How to win betting college basketball tournament games

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The regular season is over except for one Ivy League game and the automatic bids are starting to fill in part of the NCAA Tournament dance card, with many of the so-called mid-majors having their conference championships completed. This leaves the bigger and more well-known conferences, along with a sprinkling of somewhat smaller leagues to start filling in with their respective teams.
In order to win during ESPN’s Championship week, you have to follow somewhat different rules than the regular season in wagering this week. Here are aspects to remember.

1) Choosing the right pooch

In most conferences tourney’s, underdogs are an above average wager, as these teams generally have more motivation and likely need to win to get in the tournament. One thing to look for is underdogs that have lost to opponent by 10 or more points twice and are double digit dogs before the semi-final round. This is where an unfocused favorite is most vulnerable and likely will go thru the motions against opponent that has been coached up for this being “a brand new season”. This can be particularly true if the underdog has already won one game in first round of larger conference event and has built a little momentum.

2) Underdogs in the right range

Another situation to look for is an underdog that has lost twice to the same opponent but by five or less points in home and away situations in the same season. The scores tell us the difference between the two teams is not that significant, a shot here, a few missed free throws or late turnover could have been the difference. The underdog knows they are capable of beating this team; they just have to go out and prove it, which they are certainly capable of. This can be especially true if they have a lower defensive shooting percentage than their opponent on the season. Best bets are those at three points or higher.
3) Don’t get carried away with revenge

One of the most common mistakes I see and hear is sports bettors playing into multiple revenge situations. The two bits of information I just laid out do fall into revenge areas, but don’t get carried away. One such circumstance would be playing against a favorite, who defeated opponent by 15 or more points twice and in both cases the spread was single digits. In all likelihood, the oddsmakers will once again set a number below 10, making this a bad wager and here is why. If the underdog has been blown out twice and the oddsmakers is still calling for tighter game, something is amiss. The next step is to find if there is a matchup issue for the underdog, a player they can’t contain or maybe a style of defense they can’t solve. Old school handicapping would say bet the underdog seeking revenge, but today’s athlete is more confident to “work” opponent and is fearless knowing they can school foe yet again.

Another case would be a single digit underdog who lost by 25 or more with the teams meeting only one time and they were dogs by less than 10 points in previous meeting and have lost two of the prior three confrontations in past years. Basically the same scenario, the favorite cleans the clock of opponent and has history with many of the same players on the roster to do so yet again.

4) When in doubt go Under

Totals become a greater focus in college basketball this time of year, even for those that don’t play them a great deal during the regular season. Conference tournaments are about familiarity and coaches have more than enough film to understand tendencies of whom they are about to play and the pace slows considerably. This is not a revelation, as those setting the numbers are keenly aware, however they can’t deviate too far off the performance chart of how teams have played and all season, low-balling a number they might prefer, but than being slammed with a high volume of Over money, leaving them susceptible to being middled.

5) Road Warriors are safe bet

Always know the road record of matched teams in any meeting. Teams that have success on the road are less likely to give a bad performance as a favorite or underdog if they understand how to play away from home. It wasn’t a coincidence that William and Mary made the Colonial final, despite having no pedigree do to so. The Tribe entered the title game 12-6 and 11-6 ATS as a visitor. It’s worth watching Southern Mississippi who is 12-3 ATS away from Hattiesburgh and Richmond this week, who posted 10-6 and 11-4 ATS mark on the road.

One word of caution, don’t follow spread records exclusively, know the score. A team like East Carolina that might look attractive at first glance at 1o-5 against the spread when out-of-town, but are they a good bet say at +8 or less when they lose on average by more than 10 points a game?

6) Numbers don’t lie

By now, most every team has played around 30 games or more and as former NFL football coach Bill Parcels said, “you are who you are”. If a team is around .500, yet has won five in a row, study the numbers to understand what has changed and look up information on the team. Maybe a change in the lineup sparked a hot streak or if this team was underachieving until recently and finally started playing up to level most suspected they should all year, that would be reason to look beyond the numbers.

Otherwise, don’t presume a team like North Carolina, who has surrendered 78 points per game away from Chapel Hill, is suddenly going to be a defensive maven and win the ACC Tournament because they decided to turn it on. Can it happen, of course, is it likely too, not really.

7) Follow coaches, just carefully

This past week, I was reading thru several different forums and at least on 20 occasions from a variety of bettors, they were all going to play Creighton to beat Bradley in Arch Madness, for first game for both squads because of the coach’s history. Dana Altman is a proven X’s and O’s coach, and has won The Valley tournament a number of times and had success in the NCAA tourney as well. One big thing to remember, he did this with better than average to very good teams. He came into matchup with Bradley, with a boring 16-14 club that was 3-12 and 4-11 ATS away from Omaha. The Blue Jays were four point favorites and were scalped by the Braves 81-62.

It makes sense to back a coach with a solid March history, but only if he has the players capable of maximizing his skills.

8) Need to know info

This is a bit self-serving, but Steve Makinen of StatFox worked his tail off in finding some of the finest information you will discover anywhere about particular conference tournaments. It’s on the site, so make sure to read it and keep it handy this week in making decisions. For me personally, I picked up two winners that I was on the fence about and dropped two games that would have been losers, because of this information.

One last case to remember. Just because a team hosts a conference tournament does not make them a lock to being champions. There have been ample times this has occurred, however they can also fail. Already this year,Mercer made the championship game on their home floor and came up short as an underdog to East Tennessee State and top seeded Coastal Carolina failed as a favorite in title tilt as a home favorite to Winthrop.

Make certain to follow these tips and you too can become a consistent betting winner during championship week.

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Baseball Betting - How to Bet on Baseball

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Baseball Betting - How to Bet on Baseball
Many longtime sports bettors will say that baseball is the easiest of the major sports in which to show a profit, yet it's one of the least wagered on sports around.

In the book "Sports Betting: A Winner's Handbook" Jerry Patterson states, "More big scores have been made betting on baseball than any other proposition."
The most common assumption on why sports gamblers don't wager on baseball is that they don't know how. There is no point spread and the odds used for baseball wagering look foreign to them. But it's actually quite easy.
The first thing prospective baseball bettors need to do is understand how the money line works.
Smart bettors and professional gamblers will seldom give odds greater than -140 when betting on baseball and always look for a reason to bet the underdog. If you bet nothing but underdogs you can win less than half of your bets and still come out ahead in the long run.
The Run Line
The run line is essentially a combination of the point spread and the money line rolled into one. Don't worry, once you see it in action, it's not nearly as confusing as it first sounds.

The run line uses a constant spread of 1.5 runs, although on very rare occasions you may see it jump to 2.5 runs. The team that is favored on the money line will also be the favored team on the run line.
Let's use an example of the Royals playing at the Red Sox. On the regular money line we may see odds like:
Kansas City Royals +165
Boston Red Sox -180
As you remember from your reading on the money line, what this means is that Red Sox bettors are asked to risk $180 to win $100, while Royals bettors will risk $100 to win $165.
But when betting with the run line, we would expect to see the same game looking closer to:
Kansas City Royals +1.5 -125
Boston Red Sox -1.5 +105
Now, those people betting on the Royals are risking more money than they will win, in this case $125 to win $100, but they are receiving 1.5 runs. Even if the Royals lose by one run, those betting Kansas City on the run line will win their bet because of the 1.5 runs.
Looking at another game, this time where the road team is favored, we'll choose the Padres at the Giants. For our purposes, let's say the odds on the game were:
San Diego Padres -115
San Francisco Giants +105
On the money line, Padres bettors will risk $115 to win $100, while Giants bettors will risk $100 to win $105. Using the run line, however, we would see odds resembling:
San Diego Padres -1.5 +135
San Francisco Giants +1.5 -155
The reason the odds didn't change as much for the Padres (-115 to +135) as they did for the Red Sox (-180 to +105) is because the Red Sox are the home team and will not bat in the bottom of the ninth inning if they lead by one run or they will stop batting in the ninth inning if they go ahead by a run, even if the bases are loaded and there are no outs, unless they score by home run.
The Padres, as the road team, will continue to bat all the way through the ninth inning even if they're already ahead, or if the Padres take a one run lead in the top of the ninth, they'll continue to swing away and try to add to their lead.
Betting the run like makes sense when you like a big favorite and can get them at reduced odds by giving the 1.5 runs.
It's also wise to consider the predicted amount of runs scored in a game when looking at the run line. Obviously, 1.5 runs is more meaningful in a contest where the oddsmaker is predicting a total of 7 runs to be scored than it is in a game where the predicted total is 14 runs.
How is the predicted number of runs figured? Simply by looking at the oddsmaker's over/under number on the game. If you don't know anything about over/unders, you're in luck, as that's our next topic.
Baseball Overs & Unders
If you're completely new to overs/unders, more commonly referred to as totals, a good place to get started is here.

Baseball totals are just like the totals for any other sport, in that you're betting the total number of points (runs in this case) is either over or under the bookmaker's predicted total.
The one difference is that in many cases you will have to risk more than the standard -110 used in football and basketball totals when you place a baseball totals bet. On the positive side, there will be cases where you receive favorable odds, such as +120 when you place a toals bet in baseball.
Using our earlier game between the Padres and the Giants for total purposes, it's quite possible we would see a totals proposition of:
San Diego Padres OV 8.5 -130
San Francisco Giants UN 8.5 +110[
What this means is that bettors wishing to wager more than 8.5 runs will be scored will have to risk $130 to win $100, while those wagering on the under will risk $100 to win $110.
For wagering purposes what happens in extra innings counts, both for totals and run line bets.
As a general rule, strikeout pitchers typically perform better in night games and may be solid under plays, while off-speed pitchers who don't register too many strikeouts are usually good over plays when they are pitching in the daytime.
There you have the basics to betting on the National Pastime. Bet wisely and remember that it's a long season and you might be the next gambler to be singing the praises of baseball wagering.