Should You Bet With Or Against Public Money? A Sharp Perspective

Betting on a big game is an absolute thrill, especially if you have a favorite team, star, or want to kick the adrenaline up another notch on top of nervously watching your team stand up in critical moments. 

With the way that spreads and moneylines work, after odds are first published, one of the sides of that bet ends up proving more popular. 

This causes the line to move and move in favor of the other betting side, since a sportsbook’s goal is to even out the bets on both sides to be able to profit from the vig. 

If you consider yourself a particularly savvy fan of a particular sport, you could prove a natural as a sharp bettor. 

This is because, in many situations, casual fans tend to make bets without having much of an in-depth knowledge of the particular matchup and the circumstances that will sway the result. 

However, you need to strategize before you decide whether you will be betting against the public or with them. Today, we’re going to be talking about in which situations you should take advantage of the betting public moving off course by the herd.

What is Public Money?

This is wagers placed by the general public, typically casual or recreational bettors who more often bet for fun than profit. 

They tend to join a bet game based on surface-level information – that being their favorite team, or the big-name stars, recent performances, or one of the winningest teams. They could bet on a team just because they’re supposed to win.

Sharp bettors are totally different than these people in that their fundamental goal is profit. Profiting in the long-term is not easy in the betting world. 

Betting exchanges are subscribed to professional, high-tech data providers who professionally provide them with large volumes of data. They base the point spreads and moneylines on these data.

Suppose the spread of a basketball game is Chicago Bulls -10 versus the Milwaukee Bucks. That means that Chicago is being expected to win, and not only win, but win by 10 points. 

To get both sides of bettors willing to put up their money against each other, a betting exchange offers the underdog bettor to win the money if the underdog team either loses or the favorite, the Bulls, wins by 10 points or less.

Percent Of Money Wagered

Public money is tracked in two key metrics:

1. The percentage of bets: number of tickets placed on either side
2. The percentage of money (handle) wagered on each side.

When a large percentage of bets is on one team but the money is on the other, it often suggests the public is leaning one way while sharper, high-stakes bettors are backing the opposite side. 

For example, if 80% of bets are on the Delhi Capitals but only 55% of the money is – the rest being on the Mumbai Indians, this implies that while many people are betting on the Delhi Capitals, larger, more informed wagers may be coming in on Mumbai.

If too much money is coming in on one side, sportsbooks may shift the line to balance their risk. However, books don’t always move lines aggressively based on public action alone—especially if they suspect the sharp side is on the other team. 

This is where savvy bettors start paying attention. Line movements that don’t follow public money can reveal opportunities. 

Reasons To Fade The Public

As a closer watcher and bigger fan of the sport than the average Joe, you watch a lot of matches on a regular basis and stay up on the latest news and media. 

It is the ignorance and superficial thinking of the public that you can take advantage of when you are betting against the public and a unique opportunity arises. 

On top of betting with information that you know better than the public, the line should continue to move in your side’s favor over time. Here are the often fatal misjudgements the public makes.

Going Against The Big Star

Of course, few people enjoy betting on a game involving just a couple of mediocre teams full of vanilla players. After all, the excitement is a major factor in when people bet. 

So let’s say that Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors are about to play. People seldom like to bet against the star. 

In a game like this, people are going to enjoy taking the Warriors in the game and possibly the over on the total points and possibly the over on how many Threes Steph Curry is going to hit.

What the public doesn’t account for is that a player like Curry or Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels does not perform at the exact same level the whole year. 

The same goes for their team. A casual bettor may be unaware that they’ve been in a slump. They could be coming off an injury and still have some rust to knock off. 

They could be a bit tired after just having played overtime the night before and having to fly to the opposite coast to play the very next day in a new time zone.

Big-Market Teams

What makes bets even more entertaining is when you’re betting on your own favorite team and betting against the public. 

People get too emotionally attached to their team winning, and they get blinded to their weaknesses. If that team has a huge fan base, there may be a lot of people doing that. 

Indeed, there are a lot of other people for whom that’s not their favorite team, but they admire watching them. People get caught up in the general reputation of a team and become blinded by short-term performance. 

If a total juggernaut who just lost the Super Bowl starts off the year with a losing record, the odds may be in your favor. There’s a similar situation when a popular team just got a big win. By the next match, they may already be emotionally spent. 

Don’t forget about head-to-head matchups too. Sports matchups aren’t simply about whether this team is a B team and this other team they’re playing is an A-team. 

Teams prevail in matches through a variety of strategies, techniques, and gameplans. Some teams may have great batsmen generally but be lousy at hitting spinners. 

Then there is the simple fact that many teams tend to perform much better at home, such as dome teams in the NFL like the Atlanta Falcons.

Betting The Under

People like to see points, so they like to bet on there being more points in a game, not less. This is why people also prefer to bet on games involving high-flying offenses, as opposed to defensive stalwarts. 

As a result, the betting line for the under gets quite tempting and worth taking advantage of. If you learn that it’s going to rain in an NFL game, that’s especially a good time to bet the under.

Fading The Public In Different Sports

Point spreads don’t bode well for low-scoring sports. There isn’t much room for error. In that case, the moneyline bet is more appealing. 

It is just a straight bet on the winner of the matchup, with the favorite bettor simply winning less money than if they’d bet on the underdog and won. 

Moreover, betting against the public, then make a strategy. Another alternative is to rely on betting the over/under.