Life After College Basketball – Your Summer Betting Options

The madness of March has subsided. A national champion in college basketball has been crowned. For many bettors, this was their best college basketball season yet. For others, it’s the end of a long grind of college sports that begins at the end of August and extends to the first Monday in April. Either way, there are many bettors left wondering which form of summer betting they’d like to take up this year. Fortunately, there’s more to the summer than just baseball. Let’s explore some of the options as you move on from the winter sports season and into the summer betting season.

April 6th – The Masters

The golf majors season kicks off with the venerable Masters from Augusta, Georgia the first weekend after CBB ends. If you’ve never bet golf before, the Masters is a great tournament to start. Due to the popularity, it offers the most robust betting buffet of any golf tournament. You’ll have plenty of prop bets and leaderboards to try to solve. There are plenty of tournaments for your summer betting pleasure and 3 more majors after the Masters. Our resident golf expert is, of course, Rufus Peabody. He recently sat down with Tom Viola to preview his betting strategies for the Masters.

April 11th – NBA Playoffs

The NBA Playoffs begin with the Play-In Tournament for teams finishing 7th through 10th in their conference. Then the regular rounds of the NBA Playoffs begin on April 15th. The NBA Playoffs include plenty of rest days so there’s less risk of sudden lineup changes or load management. The NBA market tends to be fairly efficient as the playoffs roll on. If you’re not already an avid NBA bettor, this might not be the time to start. NBA player props can have some opportunities in the playoffs. If that market interests you, you can take advantage of Unabated’s Prop Odds Screen and simulator tools.

April 17th – NHL Playoffs

The NHL typically saves its most compelling product for the postseason. It’s a physically grueling sport and often injuries play a key role in the postseason. Teams are very protective of injury information in the playoffs as not to expose a weakness. If you’re new to the NHL it might be tough to pick up the ins and outs late in the season like this, but paying attention to whatever injury information you can find could serve you well.

April 27th – NFL Draft

For those tuned into the college game, the NFL Draft is less than a month away. The draft is a bookie’s nightmare. It’s one of the few times they take wagers on events where someone knows the result. This typically has led to low limits and many restrictions on the types of wagers that can be accepted.

However, in the new world of legalization there is significant money that can be laid on the line if you’re creative. Plus there seems to be no end to the variety of wagers if you’re willing to shop both near and far away places. If you’re looking to bet the NFL Draft, Unabated will be discussing draft betting strategy on a podcast later this month. Otherwise, my advice is to be careful who you listen to. Just following a mock draft probably isn’t enough to get the money. You need to aggregate opinions and possibly run your own simulations of potential draft results.

News travels fast and you’ll likely see lines swing wildly based on news and rumor. Remember that variance is your friend when betting big underdogs but it’s your enemy when laying favorites.

May 19th – WNBA Season

The WNBA begins play in late May and they’ll take you through to the start of the NBA season in October. You can occupy your summer betting on WNBA games. The WNBA used to be a sharp bettor’s dream. They could use basic analysis and pay close attention to the schedule and get the edge over some of the weaker books. However, the WNBA has grown in popularity and the attention it receives from bookmakers has increased as well.

If you’re looking for a market making book when it comes to WNBA betting, Circa Sports has definitely had influence in the WNBA betting market given our research. That might be a good place to start when trying to practice Top Down betting on WNBA. 

For more information about betting the WNBA, check out our article on the basics of WNBA betting. 

On-going: MLB

Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention America’s Pastime, baseball. The MLB season is just getting started and there are many varied ways to attack betting MLB over the next 6 months. Beyond sides and totals there are partial game derivatives such as 1st inning (the ever-popular YRFI/NRFI debate), 3-inning, 5-inning, and 7-inning lines, and plenty of props.

There’s a lot of angles that make a summer betting on baseball enjoyable. Weather impacts, pitcher impacts, umpire impacts, and lineup impacts. As a recovering baseball bettor myself, I could go on and on about the many ways to attack betting baseball. However, I’d only be repeating myself. Check out some of my early YouTube work below to get a better understanding of why baseball can be both rewarding and frustrating.

Option X: Go Light On Summer Betting

The least popular option is to take the next few months off and get ready for fall sports. It’s actually not as lazy an approach as you’d think. First, we’ll start to see NFL Season Win wagers available as soon as the NFL schedule is released in mid-May. That’s also when we’ll begin to prep our renowned NFL Season Simulator to be leveraged against the upcoming season. Before long, training camp will be here and exhibition games in August. 

Meanwhile, on the college side, being able to identify offseason changes to teams can be a big boost in getting an edge at CFB when it resumes. Taking some time to decompress after many months of grinding could be beneficial to your longevity as a sports bettor.

Lastly, there are a lot of bettable sports that I didn’t cover in this article: Soccer (EPL, MLS, many other leagues), Tennis (tournaments every week), XFL/USFL, minor league baseball, MMA events, the list goes on. The months between April and August are also the time when our team at Unabated looks to develop new tools and resources. We’ve got some great things planned to help you get the most from your betting. Stick around so you don’t miss what we’ve got next for you.