[Tommy]

The first week of NFL Preseason has now been completed with relatively no big injuries, apart from a Clinton Portis separated shoulder and a hard ‘yank’ on Chad Pennington’s arm. We also saw some stars return from big injuries like Daunte Culpepper and Drew Brees which no doubt wet the appetite of their new teams Miami and New Orleans. From a betting point of view, preseason is all about damage control, and trying to stay up to date with the information available, who’s starting and for how long. A good example of this was in Houston where Kansas City played Trent Green for one quarter and then handed the driving seat to Canadian Casey Printers for his first taste of NFL action. We opened Kansas City a 1 point favorite, but closed Houston being a 3 (-120) point favorite. I think many people who bet that game were thinking about the backup quarterbacks and how well they would do, and this game is a great example of the extra thought that is required when betting preseason football. The first week of preseason goes to our customers, and mainly the one’s which played Teasers. Teasers are great value in games which most results are within a touchdown.

We enjoyed a much better week with WNBA, even when it was the last week of the regular season. Normally the last week in a sport where you need to know who is going to try hard and who isn’t, makes it hard to set our lines.

Baseball was the sport which made our week and that was mainly due to the fact of some big favorites getting beaten. The best and most surprising result in baseball for the week was Kansas City ‘sweeping’ Boston 3-0! As long as results like that keep coming, we can never complain about baseball but we do however feel very fortunate and are not banking on Kansas City all of a sudden turning their season around!

Until next week,

Shane Catford
www.betcris.com