How many times has the team you wagered on staked out a decent lead, only to let it slip away in the second half? Fans of the Bears (led 20-0 but lost 29-23) and Titans (led 21-7 but lost 31-28) and to a lesser extent the Vikings, Seahawks and Chiefs understood your pain this weekend. If you have never tried betting on First Half lines you are missing a valuable tool from your wagering arsenal. That is the topic for this week’s column.

Books offer first half wagering for the simple purpose of increasing handle. The more you bet, the more (hopefully) the book earns. There is not much secret in how First Half lines are derived - generally it just the pointspread for the game cut in half with a half-point to full-point adjustment against the favorite. For example, the Sunday Night Falcons-Bengals game had a pointspread of –7.5 and a First Half spread of –4 or –4.5. There is usually a bias against the favorite team because bettors tend to prefer them in the First Half as perception is that the favored team is more likely to get out to a quick lead in the First Half before allowing a “back-door” cover in the Second Half.

In summary, it is worth your time to track all teams’ performance by Half and look for inconsistencies in the First Half line. This past Sunday night, the Falcons were 4-point favorites in the First Half. Considering Atlanta had outscored their first two opponents 21-13 (in Green Bay) and 10-7 (at home against the Bears) in the First Half before losing both games outright while the Bengals had yet to score a First Half point (but had given up 37), that line looks very low. The Falcons led at the break 20-3 and if you had the First Half bet, you could now get some sleep and not worry about losing your bet (or even worse, watching the Bengals play another 30 minutes). Take this with a grain of salt though as it is very easy to pick winners the day after the games are played.