When betting on individual games, we have the opportunity to choose a side. When playing a side, we can wager on the favorite or the underdog. It is fair to ask whether it is worth betting on the underdog, because the favorite is supposed to be better and is supposed to win. If a team is better, then why would we want to bet on the worse team? Let’s example the pros and cons of betting on the underdog.
The Pros
It turns out that “better” and “worse” are contextual and fluid terms. For example, a team might be dogged at one point in time even though it was worse over the course of an elapsed period of time than it is in the present moment. The Chicago Bulls were the most profitable underdog this season. They provide a great example of an underdog that has been worth betting on in different games. They have been a profitable underdog because they were really bad for a long period of time.
But, again, “bad” is a contextual and fluid term, which means that it can apply in a specific time period and not in another. The Bulls have been a profitable underdog because they were dogged many times as if they were still bad when, after multiple players stepped up following the trade of Zach LaVine, they no longer were.
An advantage of betting on underdogs, then, is that, in doing so, you make use of your recognition that the odds often fail to capture how good or bad given teams are in given moments. Oddsmakers are slow. As bettors, we want to take advantage of that slowness.
At Bovada Sportsbook, the Heat were recently favored by around nine points because they were playing against the lowly Wizards. The Wizards were, generally speaking, a bad team this season. As such, it was easy for bettors to dismiss their chances. However, the odds did not reflect the context-specific nature of “bad” and “good.” The Wizards were a great underdog play because, though they have been a bad team in general, they appeared like a good team when facing a Miami squad that was missing a number of starters.
Betting on Washington to cover the spread against Miami highlights an additional advantage of betting on underdogs. You feel smart in doing so. No doubt, when you tell people that you are betting on the Wizards, they are going to ask if you are following the NBA at all. It feels good to bet on a generally bad team and to profit from doing so because, in doing so, you prove people wrong.
The Cons
Betting on underdogs comes with disadvantages. The Wizards, for example, were extremely unprofitable to bet on this season. It is tempting to want to feel smart and to think that you have identified a good opportunity for a bad team like Washington. However, it has happened so often that the Wizards let their backers down. That is, after all, what bad teams do, especially when wagering on big moneyline dogs.
Bettors all know that the Wizards are a bad team. By betting on dogged teams like them, they experience a major disadvantage of betting on underdogs, which is that you have to trust bad teams to not be so bad. It is worth emphasizing that bad teams will do all sorts of things to disappoint their bettors. More often than better teams, they might take bad shots, suffer egregious lapses on defense, and suffer from erroneous coaching decisions. Bet on bad teams, then, without being surprised when they act like bad teams.
Another disadvantage of betting on underdogs is that close games can be exceptionally frustrating. For example, a five-point underdog might be down four points. If there are three seconds left in a given game, then the team that is down will often foul after missing a shot. Bettors are thus placed on the mercy of the favored team’s free throw shooters.
Offenses will obviously try to get their best free throw shooters to attempt free throws in the waning seconds of a given game, so it is likely that the favored team will make its free throws. A disadvantage of betting on the underdog is that you often need the underdog to win straight-up because it can play really well and then fail to cover the spread as a result of last-second free throws that create a score line that doesn’t really reflect how the game went.
