Simplify NFL Betting: The Prix Fixe Menu Plan

Most bettors' problem during football season isn't a lack of options. It's that football is an all-you-can-eat buffet of bets.

But, what if you ordered from the prix fixe menu instead? You know, the menu that they give out to the poor saps who have to take their wife or girlfriend out on Valentine's Day itself. The defined courses and just a couple of options to pick from.

Well, it turns out that that's actually an excellent way to approach the football season. Not just an excellent way to serve once-a-year customers who wouldn't know beef bourguignon from beef aroma. By the end, you'll have simplified your NFL betting menu—which markets to focus on and when to bet them.

The full buffet can be an overwhelming amount of information to consume and decisions to make. And to some people, odds screens can be intimidating and overwhelming. So much information, where do you look?

But, I'll show you a way to shut out the noise and keep you from getting overwhelmed every time you go hunting for expected value in your betting. You'll make better decisions in less time and won't end up like the buffet guys who fill up on the bread and salad station before they get to the prime rib.

Amateurs.

You need two things to make your prix fixe work. A window of when you're going to be betting and which markets you're going to attack.

That's where we're going to start because everything else, honestly, is downstream from that. I've said it in the past that the NFL is like a money tree.

Choose your markets

The hardest branches to reach are full game sides and totals. So, where should you actually start climbing? If you want to simplify your NFL process this season, start with the easiest markets to beat. That means props, alternate lines, partial game derivatives, and teasers.

You can mechanically calculate sharp prices for alts or simulate prop projections to compare prop lines or calculate the value of teasers. And we have tools for all of those things at Unabated.

Live betting opens up a whole new area to attack with books forced to algorithmically price live lines. If you can spot something in the game that isn't going to be priced in like the severity of an injury, you can get ahead of the sports books.

And probably the furthest up the money tree you want to go are opening lines. The opening numbers are going to move over the course of the week and while there are times when you'll get burned by late-breaking injury information, you make up for it in softer numbers to bet into before the market picks them over.

Are you a Sunday night better, a Wednesday prop bettor, or did you want to just live bet the games you were already watching? If you decide beforehand to keep your attention just on the easiest markets to beat, you don't have to worry about the fear of missing out. You've already got your plan.

You're not missing anything because those markets that you're not betting are only opportunities if you have the time, resources, and ability to evaluate them well. But choosing the right markets is only half the menu. The other half is timing.

Find your windows

Show up too early or too late and even the market you choose can turn into a bad use of your time. The next piece of the puzzle you need is understanding what happens at different points in the week on the football calendar. You see, Wednesdays through Fridays give you practice nuggets and the injury report. Sunday morning has the most efficient lines. Sunday night has the least because it's next week's openers.

In fact, some shops will even tell you their whole schedule for all of this. Midweek can see new power ratings published and prop lines start to trickle out. Even Saturday has its place, a distraction for the sports books on busy college Saturdays for anyone who needs to slip their action in. You don't need to be available for every news cycle. You just need a few repeatable execution windows. Sunday morning, the Sunday games you were already watching.

Now, let's turn that into an actual menu. You know how on a prix fixe menu you get a couple of salads and a soup to choose from on your starter course and then a chicken, a fish, or a beef to select as your entree.

Build your menu

Well, let's build a simple menu for someone who doesn't want to make NFL betting a full-time job along those lines. Earlier when I asked what kind of bettor you were, what did you pick? If you started with openers, well, there's your Sunday night appetizer. Your entree would be Wednesday props. Dessert would be a rich decadent day of live betting the Sunday card. The point is that to keep things simple, you should pick the markets where you think you'll have the best opportunity and then time box them to their optimal windows. Alt lines, partial game derivatives, and teasers all need efficient lines to perform optimally. That means your window is early on Sundays.

Live betting has a wide window, but I'd recommend sticking to the Sunday games if expanding to Thursdays and Mondays would put a strain on your mental bandwidth. With power rating systems generally released on Wednesdays, that's your opportunity to rerun futures sims and find value before it gets fully priced into the market. If your attention is on contests, well, don't ship your picks right when the contest lines drop on Wednesday. Those lines stay fixed through kickoff. So, wait until at least Friday's injury report comes out and you can watch any information that might move the market. In other words, don't take Bills minus six on a Wednesday and then find out they're only minus four on a Friday.

Each window should only give you one core market that you focus on for that duration. Maybe you can think about adding a second market if you've built out enough sharp processes and it frees up your capacity for you, but don't overreach and undo all the work that you've already put in. For each market, build a decision framework.

The decision framework

Know ahead of time what's worth using your time and attention. Is it a price that looks off? A projection edge? A matchup or injury angle? Don't chase down bets for reasons that don't fit your framework. Oh, this game is on at the bar while I'm out or oh, I just heard it's supposed to snow in New England this weekend or but he threw for 300 yards each of his last five games. Those are all blind alleys other people go down to chase things that are already priced into the market. Let them have it. Before you make any bet, give yourself a checklist that's part of your process. Ask things like, does this bet fit with my chosen markets?

Am I accounting for all the available information? You'll find when you specialize, you learn more about your markets and don't make sloppy mistakes because you're spread too thin. Simplifying your process isn't about lowering your standards. It's about making sure that you can apply higher standards to fewer decisions to ensure that those decisions are quality. And if you find yourself struggling to keep up with three windows, pare back. Cut it down to two. You don't need to be a hero. You just need to get the money.

Here's how this process breaks down, though. You do everything right.

The missing piece

You wait for your Sunday night opening window. You know you only want spreads and totals, and then you open six books, 15 tabs, and start looking at all these things that you never plan to bet. The buffet sneaks back in just when you're trying to manually line shop.

You can have a tight menu, a perfect window, and still lose an hour opening books and chasing prices that you never intended to bet. One way to cut through the noise is to use an odds screener. That's a tool that lets you define what you're looking for and see what bets qualify. If an odds screen feels like sensory overload sometimes, you'd probably benefit from an odds screener.

This is the shortcut that I promised. Instead of searching the whole buffet, you tell the screener what is on tonight's menu and let it surface only the spots that qualify. And we have one at Unabated. We called it Bet Builder.

First, you choose what bet types that you want to see. You can pick from props, game lines, or mix and match both of them with a premium account. You can choose specific games or specific players and only certain markets with those. If all you want to see are Puka Nacua receptions and Matt Stafford completions, you can do that.

Then you can narrow further by book or by edge threshold, whether or not you want to see alternate lines or partial game numbers, and how you want to sort them. If one of your prix fixe items is betting openers on sides and totals, you'd set your filters to only show game bets, only spreads and totals, disable partials and alts.

And you can have Bet Builder running on a second screen, like a laptop or your phone, while you wait for Sunday night football to kick off and opening lines to hit the screen. It's also a useful tool if your process doesn't involve being fused to your office chair.

If kiosks are a big part of your approach, well, Bet Builder is very mobile-friendly. Set your filters before you walk into the casino and discreetly check plays that update constantly. When you see something that meets your threshold for a bet, saunter over to the kiosk and get to jamming. I consider it a huge step forward for sharp bettors. It helps speed you to the edges. If your time is valuable, it's definitely worth a try. The prix fixe approach keeps you focused.

But when I said the NFL was a buffet, I wasn't kidding. Just ask Jameis Winston.