This is an updated version of an article written several years ago, AThe Ultimate Guide to Being a Wise Guy for Not-so-Dummies”.  But as technology and sources for information have changed, we felt is deserves a lot of updating and that’s what the staff of OffshoreInsiders.com has done.

One of the most common questions that I get is where in God’s name (no pun intended) do Wise Guys and sharp players get so much information?  Just as the only way to Carnegie Hall is Apractice, practice, practice”, the only way to win in sports handicapping is Ainformation, information, information”.

All you need to get that information is to merely live, sleep, and breathe sports handicapping.  Well maybe forget the sleep part.  Siestas are really is not much of an option in sports soothsaying.  An endless supply of coffee is indispensable apparatus as well.   Also make sure that your insurance company covers marriage counseling. 

Are you still with me?  If so, you are ready to be a Wise Guy.

Do handicappers and high rollers really have “inside information”?  In reality it depends on how loose your definition of “inside information” is.   Didn’t Bill Clinton utter that same line or something to that effect? 

Anyway, Wise Guys and the few legitimate handicappers out there do have the time, resources and knowledge of where and how to find useful information and data that 99% of players do not.  To put it mildly, to win consistently which few do, takes a lot of time.

The Internet is bar none the greatest tool on the planet for obtaining peerless particulars.  Hometown newspapers and in college so often the teams own SID sites are unbeatable for not-so-inside, but certainly little known to the public facts.

Sites that are catered toward the gambler as well as those accommodating just to the general sports fan can be of infinite value as well.  In fact, as we will specify, fantasy sports sites are among the best sites for the speculator as so much information is overlapping.

At one time the best location for centralized links to both hometown press and the teams SID websites is Sportspages.com.  They do an outstanding job of having links for each sport to each team’s specific newspaper web page.

Then along came ESPN Insider, which takes it a step further.  They do daily links to the local gazette stories, which of course include both game raps and most importantly stories concerning the games to bet that night.   This is done in all major betting sports.

ESPN is less than perfect as far as linking all game storiesCthey do miss a fair amount, but there is more than plenty of information for the sports investor on a daily basis.  It is essentially a one-stop hometown newspaper shop.  But like Sportspages, there is minimal information on the smaller conferencesCthe so-called mid majors.

Sportsnetwork.com does the best job of writing game previews in both college and professional sports as far as information that is keen for the pony upper.  The Sports Network is a wire service carried by many sites including SportsCrew.com, which is as good as any as far as syndicated content.

What is a person to do though for information on the more obscure colleges?  No problem, now Google has a search engine for the dailies that also includes quite a few of the team’s official sites as part of the search inquiry. If Fairfield is playing Iona, a sports bettor need just go to news.google.com and enter “Fairfield Iona” and Google can find any news stories from that day searching even the small town scandal sheets.

This is true with high profile colleges and professional sports as well.  Of course one need experiment when it comes to more generic terms like AArizona” or ACincinnati” but by adding one of the team’s nicknames or a term like Abasketball” can narrow the information to exactly what one wants.

No pun intended but between news.google.com and ESPN Insider, it can be a Godsend when it comes to info.

Oh my word, those who think that preseason football games are a mere crapshoot are truly missing out on cash cows.  Reading the team’s stomping ground ledgers are goldmines for learning which teams are taking the exhibitions most seriously at least from a standpoint of a final score.

It is very commonplace for coaches to flat out state that they want to instill a winning habit in the preseason.  This is of course more true with fledgling coaches and young and/or traditionally losing franchises.  Quarterback and key player rotations can be found with educated research. 

In other cases, a little reading will manifest that there are several teams just concerned with looking at certain young players.  It is not uncommon for one team to play its starters much longer than the other squad.  Best of all, coaches announce it before the game.

Those with limited time can get decent Cliff Notes just by reading the Associated Press stories found on about oh about a million sports sites.  The AP stories are at their best in the NFL preseason, though quality information can be had in other sports as well particularly college football.

Every now and then I have even uncovered a treasure at U-Net, which is a centralized place for college student media.  While there is a select group of beat writers who I feel comfortable accepting what they say at face value, any potential gem that I get at U-Net must be verified, but one would be surprised at the information that can come from the college media itself.

Considering there is a lot of overlapping information with handicapping and fantasy sports, the fantasy sites are also great foundations of sports gambling information.  To put it mildly, Footballinjuries.com is a no-brainer for the gambler in the NFL.  Nobody comes close to not only giving football injuries but also giving a fantastic analysis of how such will affect teamsCwho the replacements are for key injured players, key match-ups and the like.  

Rotowire, formally Rotonews is as good as and sometimes better than some of the gambling injury sites simply because they give some breakdown as to how an injury will affect a team.  The injuries furnished to the gamblers can be found at Don Best, Jim Feist and the Sports Network. 

Actually Don Best’s expensive Premium Service does the best job of real-time late-breaking information.  Feist’s expensive service is just a notch behind.

But again the problem with all of the above sites besides their modest accuracy rate is that all the reader gets is a player name and a status.  But unless one knows the accurate scoop on every player on every team and their backups, often those injury sites are at best starting points.  What good is “Squid State, guard Pika Winner; questionable “knee” when that is the sole information provided?

Is Pika Winner the conference’s best player on a team that has no depth or is he a part-time starter playing for a team whose strength is at his position?  Rot wire does a better job, especially in MLB at analyzing how that injury will specifically affect a team.  But Wise Guys must Aresearch, research, and research”.  More times than not, the teams SID site will give very good information on the particulars of the player: games started, stats and ditto on his replacement.  The home ground fish wraps must be cross-referenced as well.

I have also found that all-sports stations on the Internet can have some good stuff as well. ESPN Radio and Sporting News Radio are much better than Fox Sports Radio for such.  Thank the original God for XM Radio, which has all three sports networks 24/7. You better believe I will be listening every waking hour to the radio sources during March Madness.

But what are the specifics that I look for?  I love it when I hear a player or a coach or better yet players (plural) admitting that they suffered a disheartening loss and have to follow it up with another tough game.  Such teams make great go-against plays.

This is most true with college basketball and NBA teams that are not true Atop shelf” teams.  For the latter this is especially true if a team is playing back-to-back and/or in the midst of a five-games-in-four-nights trip.

Few things jump out at me more than is hoops when a team is on the wrong side of an 11-2 run to lose “outright of course) by a point or two then has to play either the next night or the night after.  This is most common in the NBA but can also happen in the Ivy League’s and West Coast Conference, which play back to back.  But the generally the remaining conferences on the left coast including the Pac-10 play Thursday and Saturday; so heart-breaking losses are very important factors to track.  Keep an eye on teams that play Saturday and Monday as well.

For the NBA keep in mind that NBA.com in conjunction with Sportsline will give one a play-by-play rundown of the entire pro hoop game.  There are some glitches in their system to be honest, but one can for the most part get a 100% accurate breakdown of how a game ended.

For college, the Sportnetwork.com logs the sequence of scores that they sent, so one can get a decent idea of heartrending endings, especially when cross-referencing with the game recaps. 

This also applies but with different criterion in baseballChow much the bullpen was used etc, but that is for a future article.  Many sites give pitch-by-pitch breakdowns as provided by Stats Inc.

In the NBA especially and this occurs more often than one thinks, I just get giddy when I read that a few players thought their upcoming opponent ran the score up or was shown up by a gratuitous windmill slam dunk or something to that effect.  This is especially true if the team that feels they were shown up was on the road in the referenced game and is playing home in the upcoming game.

Also certain beat writers especially in the NFL and college football can be outstanding giving accurate unit versus unit breakdowns. But Wise Guys have the experience to distinguish as to who the heck knows what they are talking about and who is blowing smoke

I regret that Sportingnews.com for several years was a must-visit for college football as they broke down literally every Division I game.  However they have reduced that feature. Sadly I guess the budget limited the quantity down to the marquee games and quite frankly the quality seemed to go with it.

They also were one of the best sites scrutinizing the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  I noticed that ESPN Insider picked up the slack during the 2003-04 bowl season.  The gambler can only hope they have the updated write-ups for the Big Dance match-ups that Sportingnews.com had.

As mentioned in previous articles, one of the big keys to handicapping games is spotting deceptive final scores in handicapping or how and why teams really lost.  That is why any true handicapper must own a satellite dish.  I won’t leave home without it.  Well I guess that’s why I don’t leave home.  It is also invaluable as far as scouting mismatches in personnel match-ups. 

Sports gaming posting boards are good vehicles for gamblers to share information. 

In a perfect world the best sites would be not be moderated but in places like the sports gambling newsgroup and other sites flaming takes precedence over content and forces valuable contributors to go to the refereed sites.

Much like distinguishing from amongst the good beat writers and the unqualified scribes, one must differentiate between the posting board participants who provide quality and accurate insight and those who cannot.

Utilizing the best databases is essential to triumphant prognostication.   There are many out there, both free and pay sites.

Computer Sports World is best for baseball, Covers.com for both the NBA and college hoops.  With 10-16 game schedules for college football and the NFL one must as we have stated have the ability to look beyond the mere data.  Not ignore it mind you but an aberrational game here and there can dilute the statistical significance of football raw numbers. 

Feist’s site has some good databases but Covers and others made them obsolete.  Chalk Gaming, which like StatFox, is now syndicated at OffshoreInsiders.com has quality information and for those who very much like to ride hot teams, they can rank teams in different categories over the last five or ten games.

There, you now know the trade secrets.  All you need to do is invest 35 hours a day, 10 days a week, 60 weeks a year.  America’s greatest sports service the Dream Team at GodsTips, anchor of OffshoreInsiders.com has done it successfully for years and so can you.