The true road to success lies in one thing: the numbers. That’s why my sports betting strategy system is based entirely on numbers. No emotions, no half-cocked ideas, no gimmicks. Looking at the NFL though, studies show there is another statistical bias that can be taken advantage of and it occurs later on in the NFL season. This advantage has to do with, drum roll please the home ‘dog.

Basically, this is a bad sports betting strategy to follow with winning percentages dropping below the required fifty-two. four percent you need to make even the littlest profit with ten cent juice, but the research shoes that later in the season, the home ‘dog play will start to make more sense to you.

Up until Week 14 a bet on the Home ‘Dog will only cover 51.4% of the time, that’s a losing proposition. But after Week 14 that percentage jumps to a remarkable (and profitable!) 60%. This is a huge advantage to have going into the late season schedule. If you’re lucky enough to find a home underdog in the playoffs, these come in at a success rate of 77.8%.

Some more points to think about: playoff games offer a restricted schedule, not as many options for parlays or teasers – the weather is a bigger factor, so be sure you are careful about playing a warm weather team that is on the road.

In his research about late in the season home ‘dogs, Professor Borghesi of Texas State discovered that there is a large number of wins by home underdogs to put together a winning plan. When studying national football leage games from the early 80′s to the late 2000′s he learned that the later season home teams bet the spread by nearly five points. You still must remember that there are not that many games to select from so the test sample is quite small, but there were enough to build a trend. During the playoffs the home team won games by an average of eleven points.

You may wonder how this lines up against weeks 1-14. On average, visitors win by .09 points when taking into account all of the games (damn those odds-makers are good). In weeks 15-18 however, home teams win by an average of 2.06 points, and home teams in the playoffs win by an average of 2.86 points. Betting late home underdogs was profitable in each of the 5 year increments studied from 1981-2000.

Basically, it does not pay off to follow the buzz about a specific sports betting strategy or what is “hot” at the moment. However, when you do find a strategy that works, and has worked for a long time, you’d be a fool not to use it and stick with it!

Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Betting Strategy and has worked for Las Vegas and Atlantic City books. His Sports Betting Professor Systems have sold over 250,000 units and cover all major sports. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-betting-strategy