What to Know About Betting on Football Elimination Games, Part 1

One of the challenges of betting online on football has to do with the attitudes that teams take toward different games.  There are a lot of games that teams take only somewhat seriously or not at all.  That attitude reverses entirely when it comes time to play an elimination game. 

That means that a team that you have been following may behave very differently when the tournament moves into the elimination round.  The performance you have seen so far may not be what you can expect moving forward.  What you see could be quite surprising, and if you are not ready for it, you could lose money with betting mistakes.

When players know that they are not going to get a second chance, they put in a lot more effort.  They know that the rest of the tournament is on the line, and they are going to do everything they can (most of the time) to stay in.  So you will see a lot less sloppiness and laziness.  Players will be putting in their all, which means they will be capable of more than they were earlier in the tournament. 

Of course, you may also see more anxiety.  When players are under pressure, their performance can sometimes suffer due to their nerves.  So, ironically, while you are probably going to see much stronger performances from some players, with others you may see a decline.  This may especially be true if there has been a lot of hype surrounding a match, and one team is heavily favoured over the other.  You can bet the underdogs are going to be pretty nervous.  Of course, the favourites may take the game for granted, in which case you may still see sloppy play from strong players, even though they care about the match.

The good thing about all this is that despite these differences, you do have a lot more to go on than you did at the start of the season.  When the tournament began, you might have had outdated information on the teams.  Handicappers may have had to rely on past data from a time when the team had a very different roster or was utilising a different strategy on the field.

Having had a chance to actually watch a team in action, you now have a much better idea of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how their current roster is playing.  You can tell if the team works well together or poorly, if they are being well coached and managed, and if there are key strategic gaps that other teams might exploit.  You just need to remember to adjust for the changes in attitude and emotion that come with an elimination game.

These are just some of the factors that you need to consider while you are handicapping an elimination game and trying to decide how to wager.  We will talk about other important factors in our next article on betting on football elimination games Part 2.