Unit Betting the Ncaa Tourney

The following is for entertainment purposes only and not an inducement to wager.

HAHA. Whew, sorry, I couldn't get that out with a straight face.

Now that we got that crap out of the way, to borrow a word from my friend Al, here's a little caper we like to pull which is a way to profit from NCAA tourney games - if you have a strong stomach, a decent bankroll - and of course if you live a place where sports betting is legal, otherwise Bob Goodlatte wouldn't approve and we wouldn't want to piss off that guy, that's for sure. The entire premise is based on the fact that a 6-11 seed will not win the entire tournament. This has happened exactly twice since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, Villanova won as an 8 seed in 1985, and Kansas won as a 6-seed in 1988. Yes, it absolutely could happen and we could get burned, but I'll take the 91% chance that it doesn't. Gambling is about odds, and with those odds I think it's a risk you have to take.

So, having laid down that piece of info, you are going to bet against every 6-11 seed to lose (you're betting money-lines here). As each one gets knocked off, you get your "unit" or however much you want to win per team. If a team wins it's first round game, in the second round, you bet enough to cover first round loss, plus your "unit". The problem is, it can get expensive if teams start pulling upsets. Eventually you're gonna win it back, but until you do, it can get stressful. I need to emphasize here that because you're playing money-lines, the amounts you have riding can add up quickly, before you jump in and decide you're going to do the entire tournament, you need to understand that even playing measly $10 units, you could easily have $800-plus riding in round two. Do the math homework or follow this column through this year and be prepared for next year. If you don't have the stomach or bankroll for the entire tournament, you can pick one or two regions instead. For our purposes here this year, we're going to lay out an example and follow through the results using the East and the West regions and playing $10 "units". The idea here is that we will profit 12 "units" when all is said and done.

We picked the East and West regions of this 2007 tournament because we feel they have the strongest 1-2 seeds (NC-Georgetown and Kansas-UCLA). You will immediately have 6 "units" after the first round because the 6-11 seeds play each other, and you're betting both sides of those games. (side note - if you're wondering why not just skip the first round games, then double up on the remaining 6-11 seeds in the second round - you could do that, depending on lines and upsets in the first round, the amount wagered in the second round will be very close to the same either way you do it to get your 12 units - it could be more or less, but then you have no action in the first round and what fun is that? - you are, after all, rooting against upsets in first round so that's less you have to have riding in round two).

In our regions where hopefully the 1-2 seeds come through, the idea is that at least 5 of the 6 teams in each region will be gone after the first weekend. If Pitt and Wash St can hold off the 6-11 winners, there is a possibility that we collect all 12 units the first weekend, but we're not gonna count on that happening, that would be too easy and we all know the words "gambling" and "easy money" don't usually work well together.

For the opening round, The Indiana line was -1.5 and there was no money lines offered so in this case we had to "buy points" down to a pick thus resulting in equivalent of a -140 line.

After the first round was over, we had 6 of our units, now the fun part comes in getting the other 6. When you figure out your second round "amount needed", this amount covers the amount lost on that team in the first round, plus our $10 unit. Because Duke went off at -270 and lost, it really affected the money riding in round two. Had Duke won that, we'd only have about $30 riding on that line instead of 122. (we'd only need 15 instead of 37, and figure the money line would be ballpark of -200 instead of -330).

If you want to make you're own spreadsheet to do this, you can automatically calculate the "wager amount" column using the following formula: =IF(L6>0,ABS(100*M6/L6),ABS(L6*M6/100)) where L6 = the money line and M6 = amount needed.

After the 2nd round, we're starting to see good results. We're in positive territory financially, we have 11 of our units and we're clearly out of the danger zone. With Vanderbilt getting through to the 3rd round, that was our best case scenario since we have the least amount invested in them that we have to make up. If you didn't feel like chasing the $30 you're out on Vanderbilt, you could walk away right now with a profit of about 8 units. not bad for a weekend's "work". heh heh.

At conclusion of 3rd round play, we're done. We got our last unit off Jeff Green and his last second shot. So there you have it, a nice tidy 12 unit profit from the NCAA tournament. I'd challenge somebody to just pick and bet games and wind up 12 games over .500 for the tournament. You'll get beat by the unit-system every time.