We all know you’re waiting for the season to start, flipping though magazines, reading pre-pre season fantasy rankings and boring news on whether Favre is coming back. So with little to report, being that this is the lull before training camp, Gridiron Experts has dug up an old article that we think you might enjoy. Before there was fantasy football, one of the most common ways to bet on the NFL was to join a pick’em pool. While both pools Pick’em & Fantasy are very popular now and well known, we find that very little advice is put into the Pick’em side of the things. In comparison, fantasy football is 100 times more complicated, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a strategy when joining these types of pools.


The most important thing to consider when joining pick ‘em type pools is weighing the value of the payouts. Learn the payouts before joining, and always find out if the pub/office takes a cut of the money for running the pool. If you joined a pool with 400 people that each paid $100, you would have a $40,000 pot to divide into the 17 NFL weekly payouts, and (usually) top 5 best overall record prizes at the end of the year.  With a $40,000 pot for prizes, you’d figure the pub would take $5000 to run it, maybe more. If you can find a pool that has all money going back to the players, become a regular every year as many of these types of pools have someone  pinching from the pot.

Strategies:

Go for the Gold
If the weekly payout is only 10 times your investment, I suggest playing very tight and plan for being in the top overall rankings, assuming that it’s not a winner takes all type pool. In the example above, the pub/office is taking a $5000 cut to run the pool, and has weekly payouts that are $1000. Sounds great, but with 400 people in the pool and a huge pot remaining for the top overall prizes. If you can play it safe and let everyone else kill each otheroff  for weekly prizes by taking dumb long shots, the overall record will be easy to take control of . The goal is to get 70-75% of your picks right each week throughout the year. Of course your goal is to win every week, but by counting the amount of games you need to get right to reach 70-75% for each week, it then allows you to take the odd long shot to win the week. This strategy does work, although you need to ignore the overall pool standings until the last 3-4 weeks. Most people see the pool standings and think they need to take long shots to gain ground to get to number 1, that is the wrong strategy, slow and steady definitly wins this race.

Roll the Dice
In this scenario (using the same amount of people and buy-ins), we have a pool with a 15 times payout towards weekly winners. This is a totally different situation; that’s an extra $8500 going towards weekly winners rather than to end of the year payouts. I know it’s only 5 times more per week than the first example, but playing it safe wouldn’t make sense here. Your goal here would be to try to win each and every week. Although when trying to win each week, you need to have a balanced attack when taking long shots and not to go crazy. In every NFL week there are maybe 1-2 real upsets at best; when a team is a 3 point favorite and you call the underdog, that’s not much of an upset. For this you need to become a regular reader to Gridiron Experts, as we give out free betting advice every week- It’s your best bet.

Fantasy Football:

Ask yourself: will I ever start this guy?

• Meaning if you have 4 WR’s and they’re all covering each others bye weeks, do you really need to draft a 4th string WR from the dolphins or 49er’s? Take this opportunity to get the best player available; this could mean a kicker or defense.
• Do you really need more than 3 QB’s? -NO, if you had C.Palmer and A.Rodgers go down with injuries, odds are you’d try to make a trade before going to your 3rd QB. Why waste another pick on a late QB that will never make your fantasy lineup?

Let the top Defenses go by

• Every year people draft last years top fantasy defenses too high, and every year the top defenses change hands. Remember when Baltimore was the top dog, or what about Tampa Bay? The Vikings with Jared Allen will probably remain in the top 5, but did the Vikings go #1 last year?-NO. There were the Bears, Ravens, Patriots, and Steelers. In fact, I bet the Vikings went near the end of your draft or were a waiver wire pick up. So try to pick a team that people aren’t talking about, or that has a good Kick/Punt return game.

Take good kickers on bad teams

•  No really, think about it: field goals are made when offenses can’t punch it in. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning rarely have problems in the red zone, whereas the Rams, Titans and Texans can move the ball, but tend to sputter out in the red zone.

Fantasy Football: