Click Away for Free Picks from the Nations Best   THE TINDER BOX by Tom Scott 3/28/2002 The Tinder Box takes it's name from the Steam Sheet, my football/basketball newsletter, and it's steam engine logo. The tinder box on a steam engine was the place where fuel (mostly wood) was kept before it was tossed into the engine's boiler. The material you will read in this column will be YOUR fuel to keep you OUT OF THE BOILER. Keep in mind that those guaranteed selections are the best we have to offer. AN NBA AMBUSH We know how hard it is to win on the road in the NBA and we also know how hard is to cover the spread when you lose the game. In this angle, we looked at teams who covered the spread on the road in their last game. As always, we hoped to find a path to a winning angle and we did. After weeding out the road favorites (490-501), the home favorites (1066-1173), and the road underdogs (1129-1091), we focused on home underdogs for the study and found little difference between that record and the others. Still believing that the home underdog was the way to go, we looked at every possible road/line combination for the opponents. We discovered that road favorites who were off a SUATS win as a home favorite were the best targets. We start, then, with a home dog who covered the spread on the road in his last game and who is now playing an opponent who won and covered as a home favorite in HIS last game. That starts our angle at 73-65 in favor of the home underdog. If our team has a WL% of .300 or better, the system improves to 56-36 for 60.8% winners. We found that as the line on our home dog went up, so did the win percentage. Taking only home dogs who were +4 or more increased our record to 38-19, a solid two-out-of-three angle. We eliminated all opponents who were on a winning streak of two games or more and brought the angle to its current position at 16 wins in 20 tries, a 80% win record. HERE'S THE NEW ANGLE: PLAY ON any NBA home underdog of +4 or more if he covered the spread on the road in his last game, has a won-loss percentage of .300 or higher, and is playing an opponent off a SUATS home favorite win ONLY IF that opponent is off exactly ONE win. Record since 1990 = 16-4 for 80%. 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