Betting preseason NFL games never fails to elicit an irreconcilable difference of opinion among sports betting enthusiasts. Some consider it a very poor wagering opportunity, while others maintain that there’s no better moneymaking opportunity in sports than pro football’s preseason. The truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes–NFL preseason betting must be approached with caution and discipline, but offers the potential to make a tidy profit before the regular season kicks off.

Sports betting futures wagers can be an entertaining and profitable investment, but there are a number of pitfalls. These are some things to avoid:

There’s a strange dichotomy between the complexity of high level sports handicapping and the amount of theoretical literature on the subject. While successful sports betting is a complex and difficult pursuit, there’s very little that’s been written on the subject from a serious theoretical angle. For that reason, it can be helpful to delve into the wealth of books available to the serious poker player for insights that can be applied to sports betting.

Many serious sports bettors consider the futures wager the province of rank amateurs trying to go for the big killing. Theyre the sports betting equivalent of the wanna-be stock investor who always gripes if only I had bought Microsoft when they went public. Theyre not the type wholl do the work to grind out profits in the market, nor are they forward thinking enough to find the next big company to go public. Theyd rather lay some money on a high priced dog and hope for the best, which seldom (if ever) occurs. Right now at some sportsbooks a $100 bet on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the 2010 Superbowl will pay back $10,000. The problem is that the true odds of Cincinnati winning the Superbowl are probably in the range of 50,000 to 1 which makes the +10000 youre getting in this bet a bad value from the get-go.