Click Away for Free Picks from the Nations Best   Betting Baseball While baseball may have lost its place to basketball and football in the heart of many fans it is still held in high regard by many sports bettors. Professional bettors eagerly await the start of baseball and its long season of pitching matchups, streaks and 10-cents lines. On the other hand sportsbooks dread the onset of the summer game because with it they operate on very small profit margins. While there are many keys to a successful baseball handicapping season the eight we will mention here will put the baseball handicapper well on the way to a profitable baseball wagering season. The keys are 1) Understanding the baseball line 2) Picking winners at a winning price 3) Making a Line Better than the linemaker's 4) Listing pitchers 5) Checking your tickets 6) Understanding line moves 7) Knowing your break-even price and 8) Staying on top of Record-Keeping and Statistics.  Any understanding of baseball handicapping must begin with an understanding of the baseball betting line itself. Las Vegas sportsbooks in the main use what is called a 10-cent line on baseball. A 10-cent line is a line in which the difference between the lay odds on the favorite and the take odds on the underdog is 10 cents.  For instance, on Opening Day when the Philadelphia Phillies played the New York Mets the price on the game was New York Mets -110, Philadelphia Even. A bettor wishing to wager on New York had to lay 11-to-10 while a bettor wagering on Philadelphia could have expected to receive back 10-to-10 (even money) for his wager if Philadelphia had won. Had this been a football game (Philadelphia vs. New York!) not only would there have been a pointspread but each side would have been asked to lay 11-to-10. Football and basketball bettors play into a 20-cent line which makes the house edge higher and more difficult to overcome. The fact that sportsbooks use a 10-cent line in baseball with its inherently smaller house edge is one reason astute players can give the sportsbooks a real run for their money during baseball season. One other attraction with baseball wagering is that there is no pointspread involved. If you pick the outright winner of the game itself you have the winner versus the spread as well. This is not always the case in football or basketball wagering where a team may win the game but not cover the pointspread. However, baseball players do well to understand the money line odds and to be sure not to be paying too much for their chance to pick a winner. As with horse-racing, dog-racing or other sports betting games involving a pointspread the key to a successful baseball betting season is not just picking winners but picking winners at a winning (or right) Words like value and overlay are as important to the baseball bettor as are the ERA's of the starting pitchers for today's game. Value and overlay mean essentially the same thing: that the potential reward for playing on a team or a horse exceeds the inherent risk. There is always risk in wagering on a sporting event or a horse race (thus such terms as "lock" and "cinch" have no place in the intelligent players vocabulary) but when the chance of reward (a win) is greater than the risk or cost of the play itself then there is "value" in making the play. Value can be found on any proposition at any price but is most often found in baseball wagering with underdogs or with lower-priced favorites. Once a favored team's price goes about -150 (7 1/2-to-5) it is difficult to justify making the play even if there is some apparent value. The risk of laying a large sum of money to win a smaller sum becomes too great and if something does go wrong it is too difficult for most players to recoup their losses when playing heavy favorites. How then does the baseball handicapper find value with his underdog plays and lower-cost favorites? He finds it most often by making his own line and then comparing it to the posted Las Vegas line to ferret out that one little edge. Making a line on a baseball game is a skill that comes with time and practice. No beginning handicapper will be able to make a line as good as the Las Vegas line.  With time and practice he might be able to advance to the point of being able to make a line "as good as" the Las Vegas line but that will still not put him over the edge into profitability. He will need to go one step further and be able to consistently make a line better than the Las Vegas line in order to be able to turn a profit each handicapping season.  Making a line on a baseball game involves most often making a line on the two starting pitchers so a knowledge of the pitchers, their statistics, their history versus today's opponent, and how they have performed both at home and on the road is a necessity. Because starting pitchers are so important in determining the outcome of a baseball game most baseball handicappers will "list pitchers" when they make a wager. For example, let's say San Diego is visiting St. Louis with Mark Langston on the mound for the Padres and Todd Stottelmyre on the mound for St. Louis. You like San Diego, but only if Langston goes against Stottelmyre. When making your wager you specify "listed pitchers." That is, you have a wager on San Diego but if and only if Langston and Stottelmyre both start the game. In the event one or the other (or both) do not start you have "no action" and your wager is refunded. You can also list you one pitcher (Langston must go no matter who starts for the Padres) or list against one pitcher (You will take whoever goes for San Diego against Stottelmyre). You list pitchers is to protect yourself in the event of a late pitching change. You go to all the trouble of handicapping a game based in large measure on the matchup of the starting pitchers and play a price that you believe to have value. You then do not want to take potluck in the event your pitcher injures himself during warmups and cannot start. You do not want your money riding on the arm of second-rate hurler even if you get better odds after the sportsbook adjusts its price to account for the new pitching matchup. The replacement hurler might even win the game but you do not want to trust your fortunes to might's and maybes. Another thing you can do to protect yourself and your hard-earned cash is to check your tickets at the betting window.  Ticket writers do make mistakes and players make mistakes too as they call out the wrong number in the heat of the battle or the excitement of being at the betting window. There is nothing more disappointing than doing all your hard work, making the correct handicap on the game, seeing your choice come through, then looking at your ticket and discovering you have the wrong team! So check those tickets at the betting window. To return to our discussion of value and getting the best price there are some players who wait for a line to move and then  step in with a play on the other side figuring they automatically have the "best of it." The fact that baseball uses a 10-cent line means that the bookmaker is limited in how much he can move a game. With football or basketball wagering where a pointspread is involved the house can simply keep moving its number in one direction as long as players want to keep playing it. With baseball though the house is ordinarily limited to moving a game 10 cents else or else risk paying out more money than they are taking in no matter who wins.  One thing to remember about line moves in baseball wagering is that the lower the price is on a game to begin with the more significant each five-cent move in price is. In our Phillies-Mets example above if the price on the Mets goes from -110 to -115 it may look like a simple five-cent jump in price. However, the difference between a player laying 11-to-10 and laying 23-to-20 is nearly 5%.  Not only did the cost of the game for Mets players jump 5% but the percentage of winners needed to break even jumped nearly 2% as well. That is, with a price of -110 the player needs to win 52.38% of his bets just to break even while at a price of -115 he needs 53.45% winners to break even. On the surface it appears that 53.45% is 1.07% more than 52.38% but that 52.38% was the starting point (not 100%) and 1.07% is nearly 2% of 52.38%. On the Philadelphia side, the price rise on the Mets means the Phillies player is now getting back (potentially) 5% more on his dollar wagered. That is, rather than paying even money a Philadelphia wager will return +105 (21-to-20) in the event of a Phillies' win. The Phillie backers percentage of winners needed to break even has dropped as well from 50% to 48.78%. However, let's say that instead of -110 the price on this game was Mets -170. If the game goes to Mets -175 then there is not that much difference between laying 17-to-10 and 35-to-20; the five-cent change at the higher price range amounts to a chance of only about 3% in the cost of the play itself. In addition, the percentage of winners needed to break even climbs from 62.96% to 63.63%. That is real increase of only about 1% compared to the real increase of 2% at the lower price level in the example above.  The payoff per dollar wagered and percentage of winners needed to break even is very important in baseball wagering. You may pick 60% winners but if your average lay price is -165 you need 62.26% winners just to break even: you will end up in the red. Conversely, a player who picks but 51% winners at an average take price of +1.05 will end up in the black because he needs only 48.78% winners to break even at that price. All of this knowledge about prices, value and line moves will avail the player little if he cannot pick the requisite number of winners in order to show a profit. Since baseball is a daily grind from April to October the player will have to stay on top of his record-keeping, statistics and information on a daily basis for better than six months. This is not for everybody and explains why sportsbooks do have trouble showing a profit versus the committed everyday professional baseball handicapper. Daily action and the wealth of statistics available and involved with baseball handicapping can keep the player quite busy throughout the summer when baseball is the only game in town. When talking about statistics and baseball wagering what is most often meant is pitching statistics although team statistics can weight heavily in the handicapping process as well. The baseball handicapper needs to get and stay organized in order to have a successful baseball handicapping season. The best way to get and to stay organized is to have a notebook, workbook or computer on which to enter statistics on a daily basis and to do so. With the now 30 teams in the Major Leagues there can be 15 or more games in a day and 100 or more games in a week. The statistics pile up quickly and it can be impossible for the handicapper to catch up if he falls behind in his daily record-keeping. Plus, since baseball is played on a daily basis and in series form (that is, one team plays an opponent two to four times in a row) what happened yesterday can often have a bearing on what will happen today. The baseball handicapper who believes he will come out ahead at the end of the year does not object to the amount of work that goes into record-keeping and statistics. While these eight keys are not the only keys to a successful baseball wagering season they will have the beginning handicapper well on his way to a successful baseball wagering season as well as helping the more experienced player take his handicapping game to another level. The eight keys are 1) understanding the baseball betting line 2) picking winners at a winning price 3) making a line better than the linemaker's 4) listing pitchers 5) checking your tickets 6) understanding line moves 7) Knowing your break-even price and 8) staying on top of record-keeping and statistics.   Owned and operated by Alliance Sports Media  Any information furnished by this site is for information and entertainment only and is not to be used in violation of any federal, state, provincial or local laws - Privacy Policy Contact Servus - Picks2bet.com