Bill Ordine, who writes about sports wagering for Gambling.com Group, chatted with PressBox about how new bettors can familiarize themselves with sportsbooks, the best way to get started with football betting, the futures bets he likes and more.
PressBox: There are five sportsbooks in Maryland. What should be the plan for someone who walks into a sportsbook to bet on football for the first time?
Bill Ordine: Get there early, because these are going to be really popular places come September. If I just wanted to have some fun, I would actually consider going to whichever sportsbook is your preference for a preseason game and just see what it looks like. Most of the wagering, surprisingly, will be done on kiosks. It is a good idea to get there a little early or even get there during the middle of the week. If you want to go for a preseason game, go during the middle of the week. Check out the sportsbook, check out the seating, check out the menu, and also, have someone explain to you how to operate the kiosk because that’s how a majority of the wagering is going to be done. You’ll certainly have the opportunity to go to the counter and place your wager with a human being sitting behind the counter, but you’re going to find it much more convenient if you learn how to operate the kiosk. The best time to do that is when they’re not busy.
For game day, getting there early is going to be important because depending on where you go, there will probably be different levels of seating, meaning that some of the seating is going to be for regular customers or high rollers — that very well could be the case — or some of it may be premium seating that requires a certain spend on food and beverage. It’s a good idea to figure out what kind of seating is going to be available to you as a customer, particularly if you’re a brand-new customer and you’re not familiar with the layout of the place. Those are kind of like nuts-and-bolts things that you want to have some advance understanding of depending on what sportsbook you’re going to use.
PB: What are some wagers a new bettor could make that are fun and easy to understand?
BO: I would caution any new bettor to limit parlay betting to only one parlay for the day. Pick a winner of the game and what the over-under will be for the game. For a beginning bettor, that’s kind of a nice, easy way to break into the world of parlay betting. I would strongly urge anyone who’s just starting out to limit their parlay betting to something like that. Other wagers that are going to be available are obviously going to be the point spread wagers. There might actually be point spreads that are weighted heavily one way or the other with different types of betting odds. There will be the moneyline. The moneyline is where you just pick the winner, but you are either getting or giving odds depending on whether you want to take an underdog or a favorite. Of course, there is the over-under, which is pretty easy to understand.
[Here is what] I would recommend for folks who are just doing it for the first time. If they think they really believe in who is going to win a game, whether it’s a Ravens game or if it’s some NFC game between two teams that has no impact on the Ravens, consider betting just the moneyline. I know that’s not the norm, but with the moneyline, you are either going to give or get odds — and the bookmaker is always going to get the better of that, you have to be resigned to that notion. But you don’t have to worry about the point spread. You just have to pick the winner of the game.
PB: Is there any football bet that has become particularly in vogue recently?
BO: I think what has probably become more in vogue in football is betting on players — on passing yardage or rushing yardage or receptions. I think those things have become very popular for football bettors. They size up a game and they look ahead at what we call the likely game script. How is a game likely to go? [Savvy bettors like] to see how the first half goes and then wager on the second half in all types of interesting ways. Let’s assume the Baltimore Ravens jump out to a 7- or 10-point lead up against any particular team. For the second half, what savvy bettors might do is start wagering on whoever they perceive to be the feature running back for the Ravens, say, rushing for more than 25 yards in the second half. That would be the type of bet that a savvy bettor might want to jump on where they’ll consider who the workhorse running back for the Ravens is. If the Ravens get a lead in the first half, they might want to bet the over on yardage for that workhorse running back.
PB: What types of football futures bets are popular for fans? What about for you?
BO: If I were going to do this to think I’m going to make money, I would try to pick two or three teams that are dark horses and pick them to win the conference. Picking them to win the Super Bowl can be a real heartbreaker if they did win the conference and end up costing you a lot of money because they couldn’t win the Super Bowl. But I would pick some dark horses — maybe two or three of them — to win the conference. As an aside, if you’re looking for an inexpensive way to get some Christmas shopping out of the way early, [you can] decide to buy a $10 or $20 futures ticket for your friends and family knowing whoever their favorite team is. There’s a really good chance that by the time you give that ticket as a gift around the holiday season that whoever it is [will] probably still be in the hunt. You have to basically be Jacksonville Jaguars not to be in the hunt, it seems. That’s my sense of futures tickets. Understand that you are never getting true odds, that you are always going to be getting the worst of the odds. If you’re doing it because you think you’re smarter than the average bear, go for two or three dark horses and pick them to win the conference.
PB: What dark-horse teams do you like this year?
BO: Baltimore doesn’t need a whole lot to go right. They need one guy to go right for them. If that one guy goes right for them, they can go to the Super Bowl and that guy can win it for them. You’re not going to get the best of the odds picking the Ravens to win the conference when you go to one of the sportsbooks in Maryland, but I think generally they’re a reasonable pick to win something that far out in the future because you don’t need a million things to go right for those guys. You just need one thing to go right, and that is for Lamar Jackson to play the way he did the year he won the MVP. If he can do that, they are capable of going all the way.
Philadelphia, with the wide receivers that it now has, could wind up being a real surprise in that conference in part because the team that is picked to win the division there has made a living out of disappointing their followers in Dallas. Beyond that, Denver obviously is going to be a team that’s going to get a lot of attention in terms of the futures because everyone feels they have a lot of the pieces in place and now they’ve got a quarterback, so I like Denver. I am going to discount the chalk. I am going to discount Buffalo. I am going to discount the Los Angeles Rams. Depending on what kind of odds you can get, the other Los Angeles team is interesting, and that’s the Chargers.
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