2011 College Basketball and Betting Against the Public


Sports Insights, a leader in sports betting information, is happy to bring you this year's article on College Basketball and "Betting Against the Public."  In this article, we present a simple method of using Sports Insights' "College Basketball Betting Trends" (betting percentages) and "Number of Bets" to help select underdogs that can capture contrarian value.  This year, we also present a chart that shows how your winning percentage can increase with point spread.

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College Basketball Data

Sports Insights (SIs) has collected betting data for every major U.S. sport since the 2003.  We collect the opening and closing lines (and "line movement," for various sportsbooks) as well as final scores -- and perhaps most importantly, SIs' proprietary "betting percentages,"  Our research team also "cleans" our data -- to ensure our historical data is useful for our research articles and our Members.  Our historical  betting odds database for each sport is an important part of our research and value-added for our Members.  It is the backbone for our contrarian sports betting  methods and you can't find this kind of data and information anywhere else! 

Our database and contrarian methods are backed by tens of thousands of games across every major U.S. sport.  Data is available for seven major U.S. sports -- and may be purchased as a group -- or for individual sports.  Here are some notes on the Sports Insights NCAA Basketball database:

• Data for the past eight seasons (November 2003 through April 2011)
• Includes Sports Insights' betting percentages from multiple sportsbooks and actual point spreads
• Includes data from conference championships and March Madness
• Includes data on some 27,500 games!

Note that for the purposes of this article, we used data starting in the 2008-2009 season because we wanted the cleanest data for the "Number of Bets."  The results for this article are  based on about 11,000 games.

Thoughts on College Basketball

College basketball is a unique sport -- and presents both problems and opportunities for sports bettors and sportsbooks.  For instance:

• There are many college games on Saturday.  With so many games concentrated in just a few hours on Saturday's (especially with college football going on), there is a lot of risk for sportsbooks to manage.  This also means that there are also many potential opportunities for sports investors.  Just remember to limit your plays because it's hard to beat the "vig" that sportsbooks collect.   
• To manage risk, sportsbooks will need to move "point spreads" to balance their book.  
• "Smart money" methods work fairly well in College hoops.  That is, follow line moves -- especially when they are opposite the direction of the Public's betting.
• Using the "Number of Bets" can help you to hone in on the games that are most "heavily-bet" and can potentially yield more value for contrarian sports investors.

Sports Insights' Sports Investing Research and Tools

Over the years, Sports Insights has shown that "Betting Against the Public" can help give you an edge.  Sports Insights has also created innovative tools for its Members to track "Smart Money" as well as "Steam Moves."  With so many games concentrated in such a short amount of time (Saturday's!), it is good to use all the tools at your disposal to narrow the number of potential sports investing values down.  Please visit our recap of academic studies on sports betting as well as on football.   Here are some other thoughts on betting system development:

• Historically, games with a national "focus" or "audience" draw more interest from the general betting public -- and provides more of an edge for "value" sports investors.   
• Fewer parameters are better than more parameters.  However, if there is a logical reason behind a method, it could improve the information in your systems and ultimately, its results in the future.

The overriding theme of Sports Insights' philosophy is to find contrarian value.  If we can focus on "Public games" where we can "Bet Against the Public," research shows that we can improve our contrarian results.

Betting Against the Public: Focus on Public Games

Based on Sports Insights research over the years, we typically focus on several factors in addition to our key "betting trends" (betting percentages) contrarian indicator:

• In order to focus on "Public Games," we use Sports Insights' "Number of Bets."  More specifically, we filtered only games that were "more heavily-bet" than average -- so we filtered out about half of the games.
• In several articles, we have targeted the trend of betting on underdogs with some "material level" of point spread.  For the purposes of this article, we used underdogs of 10 points or more (for both home teams and visitors).
• The results provide a real edge for our Members.

Table 1: College Basketball & Betting Against the Public (on 10-point underdogs or more)

2008-2011 College Basketball Seasons (Public Games, or Heavier-Bet Games)



Betting Percentage, Point Spreads, and Winning Percentage

Our team of researchers has historically focused on betting against the public (betting percentages), and smart money methods as a way of adding value.  Over the years, we have looked at other biases and betting trends that may assist handicappers in improving their winning percentages.  In this section, we break the data out based on the 25% "bet-against" betting percentage and point spreads.

As our readers know, sharp sports bettors often find value on underdogs.  Our researchers have verified this bias as an additional edge in multiple sports, such as the NFL and 7-point dogs.  In this article, on college basketball, we focused on underdogs of 10-points or more.  How does point spread impact results with the other given parameters (including the 25% bet-against level, and heavier-bet games)?  Please take a look at the chart below to see how results vary with different point spreads:

Table 2: College Basketball and Point Spreads (Betting Percentage < 25%)

2008-2011 College Basketball Seasons (Public Games, or Heavier-Bet Games)

Point Spread	Winning Percentage
all games	50.1%
all underdogs	50.1%
underdogs more than 6 points	51.5%
underdogs more than 10 points	53.2%

Other Notes on College Basketball Results

• Using Sports Insights' "Number of Bets" helps to improve anti-public results by keying in on more "public games."  
• Picking underdogs of six to ten points or more -- in combination with "betting percentages" has been a good way to add handicapping value. 
• Results improve as betting becomes more lopsided.  
• An additional tidbit: visiting teams appear to be undervalued as compared to home teams. 

We hope you will use this information and other Sports Insights tools such as our betting trends to help you invest in the sports marketplace.  Our Premium and Premium Pro Members can access even more tools to help improve your sports investing performance.  

Disclaimer
We do not guarantee that the trends and biases we’ve found will continue to exist. It is impossible to predict the future. Any serious academic research in the field of “market efficiencies” recognizes that inefficiencies may disappear over time. Once inefficiencies are discovered, it is only a matter of time before the market corrects itself. We do not guarantee our data is error-free. However, we’ve tried our best to make sure every score and percentage is correct.