I never really liked to play the half-time lines as I always felt that the bets that I made for the game were enough action for one particular event.  And for games that I hadn’t made a wager on, I usually either felt out of touch with the game as I hadn’t researched it enough, or I didn’t bother watching it because I was too consumed with watching the games that I did wager on.  But this season, whether it’s been a product of watching a game that I wagered on not go my way or just noticing some anomalies with first half scoring, I’ve started to make some 2^nd half bets and have been successful with my process.

Second Half Wagers

There are certain statistics that correlate with points scored and repeat themselves over the course of time, and while “A” doesn’t always lead to “B”, it does often enough that you can expect a similar outcome over a large enough sample size.  For example, 30 points can usually be expected with about 425 yards of offense.  Now that doesn’t mean that every time a team gains that amount of yardage they will score 30 points, but that’s what can be expected from either outcome.  So if both teams combined for around 425 yards of offense in the first half, you should expect about 30 points on the scoreboard.  If there are 27 points or 34 points, then you’re in the ball park of expectancy.  But if there’s 21 points or 38 points, there should be a regression to the mean in the second half that can provide value for a halftime wager.

Aggregate stats reflect productivity, but not efficiency, as pace can have a distinct effect on output.  So to gain a sense of a team’s offensive efficiency I consider their yards per play.  To extend the example from above, 30 points correlates with ~5.75 yards/play.  With yardage stats being a much better predictor than points, I use both of these values to estimate the total points that should be expected for the game.  With a halftime line, I’m looking for at least 7.5 points (two scores) difference between what should be expected from a game’s first half yardage statistics and what the “new” game total is based on the 2^nd half line.

Halftime Wager Example

Here’s an example from this past weekend that resulted in a winning 2^nd half wager that should illustrate how I use this.  UNC and NC State had a fist half that produced a combined ~400 yards on just 5.3 yards/play.  That should produce somewhere between 24 and 27 points, so I split the difference and rounded up to 26.  Extrapolated over 60 minutes would result in 52 points scored for the entire game.  With a 1^st half score of 21-16 and a halftime line of 27.5, the “new” game total is now 64.5, a difference of 12.5 points from the expected outcome.  This obviously fit my criteria of gaining at least a 7.5 point difference between the expected score and the “new” game total so I played u27.5 on the halftime line.  Thirty minutes of game time later produced just nine second half points and an easy 2^nd half cover with a 27-19 final.

Rather than just looking at the 37 points scored in the first half and the 58 game total and thinking that 27.5 points should be easily attainable in the second half, I used the expectancy score based on yardage stats to determine that 64.5 points was way too high for this game to achieve.  Keep this in mind when looking at 2^nd half wagers this weekend, and hopefully you can find some situations that offer value as well.

Wishing you a “green” weekend!

T$