Gorge Yourself on Thanksgiving Bets

Just as with food, Thanksgiving is a feast for sports betting. NFL games are the main course, but you have college football and basketball as supporting dishes.

If you’re not careful, however, it can be as dangerous for your bankroll as it is for your diet.

With Turkey Day on the horizon, your friendly neighborhood Robin Hood (of sports betting) is back, and I’m here to offer a plan!

Today we’ll strategize a foolproof way to gamble gluttonously while protecting our bottom line.

Then, as always, we’ll make immediate bets of the week using our learnings.

Let’s get after it.

The Philosophy: Disciplined Degeneracy

To win some money and avoid becoming the angry guest at dinner, I recommend the following strategic pillars and guardrails to keep your inner degenerate bettor in check.

Open new accounts to create extra bankroll – If you have the ability, open a new sportsbook account to take advantage of their lucrative new player offers. A big “No Sweat Bet” (strategy guide here), or a slew of bet-boosting tokens, are great ways to protect your downside on a big day of betting.

Set a “115/10 budget” for the day – My best method of avoiding betting catastrophe, and the associated self-loathing, is to pick winners like I’m Nostradamus ;). My next best method is to create what I call a 115/10 budget.

First I’ll choose a loss limit. Let’s say it’s $1,000 for the day. I’ll then multiply this number by 115% and ensure my total betting doesn’t exceed that amount, $1,150 in this case.

Next, I’ll divide $1,150 by 10 to get a betting unit of $115. This is the most I’ll put in play on a single bet, ensuring I make at least 10 unique bets if I maximize my limit.

Since I’m statistically unlikely to lose all of my bets with this level of diversity, I’m comfortable putting more than my “loss limit” in play and knowing I’ll be safe nearly all of the time.

The exercise of choosing a limit, and a max bet, reduces my likelihood of a betting spiral tremendously.

Only make higher house edge bets with a boost or promotion – With three standalone NFL games happening during the day, most bettors want to place some creative bets (read: same game parlays, first TD scorer, player props, etc.) to get enough action. Make these bets, but protect against their large house edge through promotions.

Almost every major book is offering 30% boosts for SGPs on Thursday, and some may be offering “No Sweat” loss refunds on this bet type (FanDuel definitely is). If you really want to get weird, DraftKings offers a boost on “Touchdown Scorer” parlay bets. I’d never endorse these bet types in the normal course of betting, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving! Just grab the boosts.

Make your parlays “synthetic” – Instead of betting a three team parlay on all three NFL games ahead of time, create this parlay synthetically — here’s how:

Bet the first game for whatever amount, let’s say $110. You can place this bet at the book with the best line and odds — very responsible!

If you win, bet the total payout from the first bet, $210 in our example, on the second game. This simulates a parlay, but takes advantage of the fact the games do not run concurrently. This let’s you again shop for the best line/odds (on Juice Reel ofc).

Finally, if you’re 2-0 heading into the late game, place the full ~$400 on whichever team you like, again with line-shopping and no compromise on your odds.

While a $400 bet would hypothetically violate our 115/10 budget, it’s really just the initial $110 at risk, as it would be in a parlay. This is both more likely to win than a typical parlay, and it’ll win you more $ because of the perfect line-shopping!

Congrats on mastering a low-harm approach to making Turkey Day a lot less boring! Let’s continue and dial in our bets.

The Information: Thanksgiving Betting Trends

Football on Thanksgiving is a long-standing tradition, so let’s review trends that might inform our betting choices.

I’m including Friday’s game because it has some juicy intel. I encourage you to brush up on how to assess the value of trends before you put your money in play!

1. Favorites Have Feasted – Thanksgiving has seen incredibly chalky betting outcomes. Since 2003, favorites are 49-10 straight up, and 39-20 against the spread (ATS), for a 66% win percentage. Even more dramatically, favorites of 10+ points have won 10 of their last 12 games since 2005, and home favorites of 7+ points are 25-9 ATS since 1990.

   While none of the games currently boast a double digit spread, the Lions are a home favorite that opened as 10.5 point favorites over Chicago, so if you like Detroit, don’t be afraid to lay the points.

2. The Cowboys Have Struggled – Dallas is 2-11 ATS over the last 13 years. Thanksgiving mainstays Dallas and Detroit have not both covered the spread, in the same year, for 30 years.

   I don’t believe the sample size and continuity of this trend makes it worth weighting heavily, but if you’re looking for reasons to fade the Cowboys, you have them.

3. The Chiefs Win Small – Kansas City is 6-0 straight up, but 0-6 ATS, as a favorite of 6 points or more this season. If you expand scenario that to Mahomes’ entire career, he’s the least profitable QB of the last decade as a big favorite against the spread. I’ve heard this phenomenon attributed to Andy Reid strategically stepping off the gas late in games where he can glide to a win, but have not researched the prospective cause personally.

   This is not a Thanksgiving trend per se, but fading the Chiefs as a big favorite in Friday’s game certainly has strong historical indicators.

The Attack: Point Spread vs. moneyline

Once you’ve decided which team to back in a Thanksgiving game, you need to choose how to act on your instinct. The main decision that comes into play is whether to bet the point spread or the moneyline.

While many bettors think of these as separate propositions, they are related and tethered by nature. A point spread is an indication of relative strength between two teams, and a moneyline translates directly to an implied win percentage.

While point spreads and moneylines generally move in tandem, unique betting days like the Super Bowl, and to a lesser extent Thanksgiving (!!), can create offset markets where one approach has an outsized edge vs the other.

Here is a conversion chart for NFL betting as reference:

This chart equates every incremental half point in a betting spread to a corresponding “fair” moneyline.

For an example of how to use this chart, let’s look at an example from Thanksgiving NFL:

The best spread I can bet the Bears at is +9.5, which typically equates to a moneyline of +367 based on our chart. Tomorrow, though, I can bet at +410 on the Bears moneyline, which is a mathematically better proposition than taking the 9.5 points (quite a bit better). If you’re inclined to bet Chicago tomorrow, at least sprinkle 20% of your wager on the moneyline, if not the whole bet, in order to capture this outsized value!

I love using this chart to detect when public betting is very one sided and driving unusual separation between the moneyline and spread — in this case people are pounding the Lions moneyline, thus opening up an opportunity.

The Execution: Where to Place Our Bets

You’ll always benefit by having access to as many sportsbooks as possible to find the best lines.

A Juice Reel review of New York sportsbooks show five different sportsbooks offering the best lines depending which side you want on Thanksgiving.

Here are the snapshots for quick comparison:

Early game:

Afternoon game:

Night game:

The most important books to access in order to bet good numbers seem to be DraftKings and BetMGM of the major players. Smaller operator BallyBet is important if you want every last ounce value.

Now let’s put all this in play and make some bets.

Bets of the Week $$

Last week our analysis was ruthlessly accurate and we were profitable.

All three bets locked in closing line value of 0.5 to 5 points. This peaked with the Packers. We bet Green Bay -1.5 on Thursday and the closing line at kickoff was Green Bay -6.5. That is a monster edge!

We went 2-1, winning on the Browns and Packers and making 0.9 units. I hope you joined us.

Since starting the newsletter, bets given out in this section are ahead 3.5 units, at a positive 19% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bets this week:

• Chicago Bears moneyline bet @+410 on BallyBet for 0.1 units (Thanksgiving)

• Under 37.5 points NYG v DAL @-108 on BetRivers for 0.5 units (Thanksgiving)

• Green Bay -3 @-115 on BallyBet for 0.5 units (Thanksgiving)

• Illinois Fighting Illini moneyline bet @-144 on FanDuel for 0.75 units (Thanksgiving)

• Las Vegas Raiders +13 @-110 on Caesars for 0.5 units (Friday)

Feel free to parlay or modify the above to fit your Turkey day criteria as you see fit!