When you begin you sports betting career you should think of the handicapping process (breaking down games/lines) a job you need to have the right “tools” for. One of the most important tools to have is learning how to successfully watch the lines (odds) move throughout the day and up until game time. You can get the answer (correct wager) by doing this and cross-referencing it with applicable trends and situations to get you to confirm a bet on a given team.

Many come into their sports betting careers with the misconception that they have been following teams/leagues forever, watching Sportscenter, and knowing tho to pick as the winner. But the popular media outlets (ESPN, Fox Sports, TSN -for you Canadians) portray their message with generic narratives and common, often unusable tidbits of information. It’s not that helpful for me to tell you Washington has won seven of their last eight games in New York when those eight games took place over 3-4 years with different team dynamics each season. If that stat is incorporated into your handicapping process as a whole when breaking down the game it can be used as evidence as to why to bet Washington that night but it shouldn’t be the only reason you decide to make that wager. Like a lawyer trying to prove their case, you need to gather as much evidence as you can as to why Team X is the one you’ll be betting on tonight.

A good place to start is by using Sportsbook Review’s betting odds side – found here. It tracks the odds all day across numerous sportsbooks for every game that day and you can click on a given game and see how the odds have changed throughout the day. So for example, if you really like the Washington Nationals as underdogs to win you can see how the odds on the Nats have gone up and down throughout the day and try to determine when the best time will be to place your bet. Getting the best odds on a team makes a huge difference to your bottom line, so if you see the price going up on Washington all day, you may want to wait right before it starts to make your wager.

Secondly, you’ll want to see how many bets have been placed on both sides of a game (side and total) and garner information from that. I was taught a long time ago the saying that “if making money on sports was so easy wouldn’t everyone be doing it?” That holds true to this day and using a site like  http://www.vegasinsider.com/ can give you the info you need in this field. When you see 80% of bets placed on Washington and that underdog line is going up (reverse line movement) you may want to re-think that bet on the Nationals. Siding with the majority is a popular thing to do in life, but in sports betting it can be disastrous. That’s not to say you should avoid making a play that 70% or more have already made, you should just take a step back and go through things again.

By tracking how lines move prior to a game you gain a lot of information about what other bettors are on and believe will happen that day. You may think you know everything about sports, but I firmly believe in the idea that “there’s always someone out there that knows more than you” in any field, so to ignore these things will only hurt your handicapping ability.