Q: You've got some amazing stats, but which of them should I use to make winning picks?

A: We are often asked how to use the stats we produce to bet against the spread successfully. Many people find that if they look at too many stats for too long, that instead of becoming more confident about their pick, they will in fact become confused and feel like every game is a toss-up. To counteract this reaction we produce a number of different reports, some of which summarize all of our data down into neat little packets of information.

Probably the easiest to understand (and arguably the best) feature that we create each week is our "Overlay Report" which lists each game, our predicted score from both a drive chart and play-by-play perspective, the current "neutral" line, and the subsequent selection and overlay amount.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, an "Overlay" really refers to the perceived value between your expectation of what will happen and the actual spread on a game. For instance if you think Team A will win by 10 points and they are only favored to win by 3 points, then you could say you have a 7 point overlay betting on Team A (the difference between your 10 pt win prediction and the 3 pt actual spread). Of course whether you have an actual overlay or not is dependent on your predictions being more accurate than the point spread.

We have been producing our predicted score numbers since 1997, and strongly believe our stats give us an edge against the line. For a sample of what the Overlay report looks like, here is the actual data from the Drive Chart projected score summary for week 14 of the 2000 season:

In the chart above there were several games with at least a four point difference between the TMW line and the actual line. People often fail to win when wagering because they play too many games, without focusing on where they actually have an advantage. If you look at the "season-to-date record" table in the sample above you can see the first two columns of the overlay range both have win percentages under 50%! These games were ones where the projected score was close to the actual line and consequently did not provide enough of an edge to expect to do very well. However, the next three columns which represent the 4+ overlays, are all clicking at 60% or better.

In conclusion then, whether you use TwoMinuteWarning's data or not, concentrate your betting dollars on those games where you are getting significant value when comparing your prediction to the line!