Gridiron Gold: Live Betting Strategies
Week 10 with Raheem Palmer
When it comes to the crossover between the content industry and the sports gambling space, the hardest line to walk is discussing live betting. Live betting angles often emerge early in a game, differentiating them from the pregame handicap. The odds also move and fluctuate quickly, making it nearly impossible—and borderline irresponsible—to recommend a live bet to an audience trying to tail picks. The hold percentages are generally higher; instead of seeing -110 as the average odds on both sides, you're more likely to encounter -114. This increases the implied probability of the odds you're betting into, which in turn raises the hit rate required to break even.
Despite these challenges, live markets offer high limits and some clear advantages for bettors. If you can crack the code for live betting by developing effective strategies and capitalizing on them, the returns can be substantial. Since content creators can't provide direct picks to tail in the same way they can for pregame bets, it's all the more important to identify successful bettors and highlight their strategies.
When I decided to embark on this project to showcase industry experts across various topics, “Live Betting with Raheem Palmer” was one of the first ideas I jotted down months ago. I've seen Raheem successfully live bet everything from college football games to the Chinese Basketball Association. While I do know Raheem personally, I can confidently say he is not handicapping these pregame; rather, he's watching the games and finding angles to exploit in real-time. Fortunately, I had the chance to check in with Raheem this week to get a breakdown of some of his tips and tricks for advantageous live betting. According to Raheem, these are some of the most fundamental things to know and use when live betting.
1. Timing:
The first thing Raheem stressed to me is something that resonates deeply with my content style: understanding your disadvantages. It wasn’t about what to do, but rather about recognizing what not to do. When I talk about good practices, like obtaining closing line value and creating a quantifiable edge relative to key numbers, I also emphasize that the wrong strategies are much worse than a smart strategy is good. For example, a standard 8-leg parlay has an estimated ROI of -31.1%. There’s no realistic CLV position that can give you a 30% edge. The most underrated aspect of advantage sports betting is knowing not to shoot yourself in the foot.
As it relates to live betting and timing, this is your biggest disadvantage. Unless you are physically at the game, you should consider yourself about 30 seconds behind the action. There is a slight TV delay, a delayed feed to tracking apps, and an additional delay for online streaming platforms. For an Amazon Thursday night game, you’re likely more than 30 seconds behind. In the NFL, this can mean being an entire play behind.
Down and distance are critical in NFL live betting situations. A 2nd and 10 that turns into a 3rd and 2 vs. a 3rd and 10 becomes significantly different. You could be behind on a massive play for the offense or possibly a turnover for the defense. For that reason, the simplest way to circumvent the time lag is to only live bet during quarter and halftime breaks. In the NFL, you can also take advantage of some live betting windows after touchdowns (once the PAT is completed). When there is an extended injury break, the odds screen usually locks, and these aren't really actionable opportunities in practice.
I believe most people hear this advice and still think that those at the highest level are capable of live betting during moving action. Wrong. People like Raheem, who are proven live bettors, practice what they preach. That often requires patience and waiting for the most foolproof timing to place a bet—even if it means waiting a few minutes after identifying an angle worth betting into.
2. Pricing Due to Bad Data:
Nobody is perfect, and there are still moments of human error in odds making, setting lines, and even updating the scores in real time. Raheem stressed that a lot of the books rely on 3rd party vendors to assist with in game information, score keeping, stat tracking, and in turn- relative prices of the in game betting markets. There may be a moment where you are watching a game and the score on the books user interface is different from what you are actually seeing. This could be because you are behind the game action, but it could also simply be a book mistake. In the NFL this is more rare than the NBA, but you may see a field goal counted for a team, when in reality the FG was taken off the board because (for example) a roughing the kicker penalty and now the offense has 1st and goal instead of kicking a 30 yard field goal. In this example, rushing to bet the team that has a touchdown scoring opportunity and still an easy FG opportunity waiting if they do not convert becomes clearly advantageous.
In the NBA, possessions move so quickly you may see the book add the score to the wrong team, and take a minute to correct it. These mistakes are great for the bettors and give us some leverage in live betting environments. Raheem encourages readers of this article simply watch an entire game while having 2-3 books open simultaneously, and make note of the in game discrepancies that occur. Whether thats written down, typed up, or bet with small amounts to study the tickets later, observing mistakes allows you to pounce on the next opportunity. Maybe you notice a certain books makes errors more frequently, and then you start prioritizing that book for live betting opportunities. That would be a massive edge to garner.
3. Injuries
Running to bet the under on a player as they get injured is not realistic. The markets lock so quickly, and this is an example of past post-betting, where the bookmaker could (and probably should) void the winning ticket. One example of live past post-betting occurred when I live-bet “Any Player to Score 70+ Points in an NBA game this season” at 22:1. I placed that bet when Luka Dončić entered the fourth quarter with 68 points. The line should have been -5000, as it was obvious he was gunning for 70 once he got that close. I placed the maximum wager, the bet won, the money was deposited into my account, and then it was removed the next day. While this was not injury-related, the concept of past post-betting is important when considering how injury-related live betting can affect odds.
When a player goes down, the most advantageous scenario is a subtle injury that doesn't immediately halt gameplay and where no injury designation can be determined right away. For example, last week, Desmond Bane injured his oblique after a bump. He then grabbed a rebound, made a pass, and waved to the bench to signal he wanted a substitution. He played until the next dead ball, then left the game. The next day, it was announced he would miss a few weeks. If you saw that moment and knew that Bane was a critical part of the Memphis offense, live-betting against Memphis and the under would have made a lot of sense.
Correlating injuries that occur in real time to their impact on point spreads and live totals is critical for live betting success. In the NFL, we know which positions are the most important based on the salary cap distribution and player salaries. On the defensive side, pass rushers and defensive backs are priorities, while linebackers are not. But what if a team has stout linebackers who are incorporated into randomized blitz patterns that significantly disrupt a quarterback? Or what if a live injury to a wide receiver creates a cluster of injuries among several skill players? In these cases, the live lines should be repriced. However, you may see the spread or total remain relatively the same, presenting potential strike opportunities. For quarterback injuries, Raheem notes that bookmakers have become very sharp at quickly adjusting mid-game.
4. Game Factors Within Your Sport
Once you understand that your biggest disadvantage in live betting is timing, and your biggest advantage is identifying bad lines based on incorrect information, you can start to understand the nuances of the specific sport you're betting on. For the NBA, the most obvious factor is understanding a team's rotation and how that impacts different portions of the game. Right now, Jayson Tatum is averaging the most points per first quarter, and the Celtics are the best first-quarter team in the NBA. This is fairly obvious when you realize that Tatum is one of the few stars who plays all 12 minutes of the first quarter and doesn't check out. There's a rotation where an energized Tatum takes on a bench unit, and that's a plus situation for the Celtics. The Warriors do something similar with Steph Curry. The Grizzlies intentionally take Ja Morant out early, around the 6-minute mark, only to put him back in with 3 minutes remaining so he can blitz a bench unit with tons of energy. The NBA, being "a game of runs," sets up opportunities to live-bet the likely direction of those runs based on the talent disparity on the court.
In the NFL, a live betting angle worth considering is the first quarter. Often, the first 15 plays for both offenses and defenses are scripted, practiced, and executed with precision. This highlights the coaching staff's ability to scheme up a system that works against their opponent. The Minnesota Vikings, for example, have Coach of the Year candidate Kevin O'Connell running the offense, and Coordinator of the Year candidate Brian Flores scheming up wild blitz patterns to disrupt their opponents. It should come as no surprise that the Vikings rank 1st in first-quarter offensive points per game (9.0), while their defense ranks 2nd in the least amount of first-quarter points allowed (1.3). The Vikings average a winning margin of more than a touchdown in the first quarter! This week, they play the Jacksonville Jaguars without Trevor Lawrence. The current point spread is Vikings -1.5 for the first quarter. Let’s wait until the coin flip to see if the Vikings get the ball first. If they do, this could be a good live bet at Vikings -2.5 (the line will likely increase based on the coin toss—I’ve tracked this and found it’s not possible to beat the line by knowing which team may have +1 possession in the first quarter).
5. (For the most part) Forget your Pregame Position
One area where I recognize I struggle is detaching myself from my pregame positions when entering the live market. Maybe this is just a me problem, but I doubt it.
The fundamental goal of any professional sports bettor is to have a high volume of +EV wagers. It's not just about maxing out the right spots, but also constantly identifying small edges and playing into them. Volume creates more profitability for a winning sports bettor. It may decrease the ROI%, it may lower the hit rate, but as long as the added approach remains profitable, the bottom line increases.
When I enter the live space with a pregame bet already in place, I notice I’m overly fixated on my original position. I’m hesitant to open a "polished middle" (betting against my number in a way I could lose both bets), and most of the time I find myself waiting for a valuable middle as an exit strategy. I almost never double down, and I try not to hedge off a ticket that looks good. In fact, my action in the live space is usually limited to reducing exposure from pregame positions where the line has moved against me. I very rarely go into the live markets on a game I’ve already bet and make a new play based on what I'm seeing. Whether it’s foul trouble, a non-obvious but impactful injury, or even a mispricing, I’m hesitant to fire if it's in the same direction as my pregame bet. Instead, I’m more likely to hedge off a bad pregame ticket and then stay away. I wish I wasn’t making decisions based on my prior bets! This is an area I need to improve, as I realize the key point from the second paragraph: the goal should be a high volume of +EV wagers, almost entirely independent of anything else on your betting card.
I asked Raheem about how he operates when he has a pregame bet versus seeing something live, and he said, “It depends. Sometimes the number is too good to pass up, other times I don’t want too much exposure on a game. I do take chances on middles as well.” His answer is fluid, less rigid than mine—yes, I tend to look for exits on seemingly non-advantageous pregame tickets.
Raheem Palmer is one of the hosts on The Ringer Gambling Show, where he breaks down NFL action 2-3 times per week, along with some NBA and boxing coverage. He occasionally references possible live betting opportunities on the show or tweets them out during quarter- or halftime breaks in games. Rather than scouring content for picks, the important takeaway here is understanding the why behind his strategies and learning to implement them yourself.
If you have further questions about live betting, feel free to reach out to either myself or Raheem via Twitter (linked above). Let me expand on that 😂—please do not reach out to us about unique situations in which you're considering a live bet! It’s impossible for someone to step in, evaluate the critical thinking, and advise on a play in real-time before the odds move significantly. If you're unsure about a live bet, don't place it. However, if you have strategic questions about approaches or want to reflect on some examples in hindsight, those are the types of topics worth reaching out about!
I highly recommend following Raheem, listening to his podcast, and picking up on the key gems he drops along the way. It was Raheem who first interviewed Ben Fawkes this summer, which introduced me to a data set that uses 10 different top oddsmakers to quantify the impact of every individual QB-backup QB situation in the NFL. That has become a valuable tool in my arsenal—something I wrote about in Week 4 and will continue to track with updated numbers in the years to come. It’s not just live betting you can learn from Raheem—he’s a wealth of gambling knowledge!
As a topic for another time, I often refer to a capping strategy as a “Raheem Palmer trick” when you can reference a very recently priced game and compare it to current odds to identify discrepancies. This is a complicated thought to wrap up at the end of the article, but Raheem essentially uses the transitive property (or chain rule in math) to spot outlier, reactionary lines that deviate from consensus power rankings.
NFL Week 10 is a loaded card for me, as there are a good amount of NFL sides/totals that I like, a few props, and a Sunday NBA board that really caught my eye. Here is the full screenshot of all my action going into Sunday Week 10/Sunday November 10th. If you want access to all of my bets in real time with a text message alert, use the Whop Picks Package button below the tracker screenshot.
THERE IS ALSO A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT AND CHANGE COMING TO MY CONTENT THIS WEEK!
I will be announcing it today via twitter, but my whop subscribers, newsletter readers and podcast listeners deserve to know a little bit sooner… you guys are DAY 1s!
Moving forward the NBA Sharp Betting Live Show will be Monday-Friday at 9am ET.
We are pushing the start time up 3 hours so that people can tune in on their morning commute, first thing at their desk, or catch us later in the day as the content should stay good for an extra few hours each day.
We hope you will be there to join us at 9am Monday November 11th to break down an 11 game NBA slate. Here is the link to Monday morning show.