How To Bet The NFL Using Point Spreads Articles | Gambling

By: Richard Bleuze

First off,  "What is a point spread?" The point spread is the amount of points a team is favored to win by.

Football and Basketball, because of the high number of points scored in both sports, give the sports bettor the option of betting against the point spread. Baseball does not offer up the same option because of the minimal numbers scored in games.

For example, if the Bears are favored by 10 ½ over the Saints inChicago, that would mean that the Bears would need to win by 11 or more to "cover" that bet.

So how do you know what side of the spread to bet on, the favorite or the underdog?  Well, thats why you need to do is to adept at honing in on the right situations.

For example, there is an old adage that if you can find a home team that's playing as an underdog   you might want to look into that game and lay some money down. Remember, a team doesn't have to win, only cover the point spread.

When looking at the paper or the internet for point spreads, whichever team has the minus symbol in front of it is the favored team.   Remember, you can generally make more money by betting on an underdog.  Thus, as a sports bettor, you need to do your homework and find the point spreads that you feel are weak.

For many sports bettors, football gives one time to analyze injuries, potential, weather - anything and everything. The lines (point spreads) in these games sometimes change from when they are set at the beginning of the week because of the amount of money being bet on either side. So, if you see a line that interests you when it comes out, if it seems extremely high or low, jump on it before it moves.  So be sure to take advantage of each piece of information available to you, because you can be sure the people setting the point spreads are doing the same thing.

Check out this week's point spread at 5Dimes.com by CLICKING HERE!