While most casual bettors spend time focusing on picking winners of a NASCAR race, the real handicappers are busy working away on finding the best value in the match-up bets. In NASCAR betting you’ll find two types of match-up bets, one which features two racers and another that features a group of 4-6 racers generally. The odds are obviously better when you bet on the match-up bets with more racers, but then it also becomes more difficult to pick the winner of the group.I like to stick with the match-up bets with only two racers since you have a 50% chance of winning. If you put in a bit of work you should be able to win anywhere from 60-75% of your bets on a consistent basis which would mean you’d make lots of money. Most online sportsbooks set-up their own match-up bets with racers that they think will finish close to each other, but often times there will be a couple match-ups that scream out to you.
When the NASCAR match-up screams out to you there are a couple things that you need to check. You first need to find out why the line screams out to you. Maybe one of the racers is struggling as of late and therefore the books are trying to suck you into betting on the racer. You should also try to find out how each of the racers did during the test runs and qualifying runs as these are an important look into how the racer is going to perform on race day.
A lot of the time bettors will focus on the match-ups on the best racers in the race, but this isn’t always a good idea. In NASCAR odds, the top racers are always swapping places on the leaderboard every race and it can be difficult placing one racer above the other in any given race. If you look at the middle group of racers finding value becomes a lot easier as the competition is more thinned out. Most sportsbooks will also set-up the match-up bets based on the qualifying positions.
So if one racer has an extremely good qualifying run when they generally start near the back they might be involved in some match-up bets that they wouldn’t otherwise be involved in. If you find racers that usually finish near the back in match-up bets because they finished good in the qualifying round you should look at betting against them.
When you bet on the match-up bets with 3+ racers you’re going to need to rely more on luck. When you have 3-6 racers grouped together in a match-up bet almost any of them can win the group and therefore finding an edge or value in the bet is nearly impossible. One of the racers in the group might not stand a chance, but that doesn’t narrow the bet down enough for you. If you’re up some money and you want to have a bit more excitement on race week then you can throw down some small wagers on the larger group bets, but try sticking to the match-up bets with two racers when possible.