They might be a wiseguy? How to spot your sharper players
If the wads of cash you hand over to these guys every Tuesday isn’t enough indication, there are some ways to watch out for sharper sports bettors – wiseguys if you may. There are certain markets, bets and practices that informed bettors follow that make them stand out from just the average Pay-Per-Head customer.If you notice one of your clients showing some of these traits below – don’t panic. One of the most important things about becoming a bookie is to know how to handle the situation. You may just have a wiseguy on your hands. You can use thebestperhead.com’s daily in-depth reports to sort the sharps from the squares.
The smaller the school the bigger the bets
You may have noticed the same guys banging away at those mid-week MAC football games or shunning the big-name Top 25 matchups in favor of the Sun Belt or Mountain West Conference on Saturday afternoons.
In general, sharper players like to find value in the lesser-known small conference. And there are some reasons why. 1. The small conferences aren’t followed as closely as the Power 5, so not every announcement or injury shows up on the radar, allowing those in the know to get an edge over the oddsmakers. 2. The betting action isn’t as big or as frequent on those small conference games, so line value tends to stick around longer than it would in a Top 25 matchup that is constantly drawing bets from your client roster.
This is only going to show up more with college basketball tipping off in less than a month. There are far more college hoops teams that football squads, and most of those claim residencies in a mid-major league. Wiseguys love to study up on these little programs so that they can get one past the bookies – especially in the early non-conference schedule that takes place in November and December.
If you are booking these mid-major NCAA basketball games, be sure to mind your limits and keep close tabs on just who’s betting them.
It’s all in the timing
Sharper bettors are looking to get action down whenever and wherever. Unlike most of your casual sports bettors, who like the bet games within the 12 hours before the start time, smarter players will often be very aggressive with the opening lines the second those hit the board. They’ll bully those numbers with action, forcing movement to balance liability. And sometimes, once those moves are made, they’ll bet even bigger on the other side – manipulating the lines to get the number they were after.
Sharp players will look for movement past key numbers, especially in football. With the way scoring works in football, spread like 3, 3.5, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 10 and 13.5 are very common. Wiseguys will wait for a move off or to one of these key numbers, rather than betting just any old line. If they don’t see the line they want, they won’t wager on it. Most casual players just like to have action down and will settled for any spread.
Total giveaway
Spreads get a lot of the attention from the betting markets and are the primary wagers for sports like football and basketball. Totals, on the other, aren’t as popular and often have a higher degree of difference when stacked up against the actual final score.
Smart players do tend to bet more totals than the casual guy, knowing that there is more value. Most NFL and NBA totals are pretty solid numbers, but college football and basketball Over/Under wagering is a market ruled by the wiseguys. Oddsmakers are normally very quick to react to early action on totals, respecting the opinion of those sharp players.
What they wager
Sharp guys aren’t making parlays or teasers, and they sure as hell aren’t tying up their bankroll in season-long bets like Super Bowl futures and props. They may play some season win totals, if you offer them, but for the most part the wiseguy is sticking to game-to-game odds. And if a wiseguy is placing a parlay bet, there’s a good chance that it’s a correlated parlay with the side and total in the same game.
