by When it comes to performance in sports, fatigue plays a big role. It can handicap a superstar player or cause an entire team to play way below its full ability. The good news? It can also pay off big when you’re making bets if you know what to look for?
When teams are coming off particularly grueling road trips or back to back schedules, fatigue can change the odds dramatically. There’s nothing worse than betting on a favourite to win only to see them sluggish and slow when the game starts.
If it’s happened to you, you know fatigue can cost the better team the game.
Fatigue and Betting at a Glance
If you don’t understand how it works, fatigue can cause big problems in yoru sports betting strategy. The goal of this article is to help you find ways to use fatigue to your advantage.
Here are some key concepts to keep in mind:
- Fatigue negatively impactsa team’s performance.
- Look for favourites who are suffering from fatigue and bet on the underdog.
- Over-hyped favourites often get inflated odds meaning you get a bigger payout if there’s an upset.
- When a coach benches a star player due to fatigue it can dramatically change the game’s outcome. Being able to predict if is a big edge.
- Teams and players in the NHL and NBA are most affected by fatigue.
Fatigue is a factor in all major sports but in terms of gambling, it’s most useful for betting on the NHL and the NBA since they’re both really physical games with heavy schedules. Not only do teams play back to back games or three games in four days, they travel all over the country to do it.
Coaches and managers do their best to manage player and team fatigue and the oddsmakers definitely look out for it too. Even so, if you can understand the role fatigue plays and how specific teams and players react to it, you can use it get an edge on your bets.
How fatigued are the star players in a certain matchup? Are there fresh players ready to break out? Is there an underdog that could have an advantage because of fatigue? These are just a few examples of the questions you can ask concerning fatigue.
Tips and Strategies
Oddsmakers adjust their odds and lines to reflect the role they believe fatigue to be playing. If you can spot clues they’ve missed, like a star player who’s particularly affected by back to back games, for example, you can find an edge.
The most straightforward approach is to look at the schedules of each team leading up to the game. Here are some common schedule trends you can keep an eye out for before placing your bets.
As we mentioned before, fatigue is most important in the NBA and NHL but we’ll also outline a few spots where it can play a role in other leagues as well.
Games on Back to Back Nights
- This doesn’t matter so much for MLB players since the game isn’t as physical and athletes are used to playing consecutive games
- Back to back games do play a big factor in both NBA and NHL games
- Don’t just bet blindly against teams playing on the second night of back to backs.
- Consider the amount of travel between games, how emotionally draining the game previous game was and how fatigue might be affecting the other team.
- Also, watch for who might be sittin gout on the second night of back to backs.
- For the NHL, make sure to check who the starting goalie is and what his last game was like.
Three Games in Four Nights
- This situation mainly applies to the NBA and NHL
- Sometimes, playing three games in four nights can be even more tiring than back to back
- Look for teams who are on lengthy road trips while also facing three games in four nights
- Also, watch to see if the team playing its third game in four nights is also on the second night of back to backs. This is an especially grueling spot that can affect performance in a big way.
Five Games in Six Nights
- Teams almost never play five games in six nights in the NHL or NBA so this is a situation that is most common in Major League Baseball.
- When MLB teams start playing five games in six nights it can significantly affext their performance in a negative way.
- Sometimes MLB teams even play six games in six nights on some occasions.
