Blitz Your College Bowl Pool: Strategy Secrets And Value Picks For 2023

College football bowl season isn't just about epic matchups—it's a chance to outsmart your friends and dominate your bowl pick'em pool. Let's dive into the winning strategies that can leave your opponents in the dust, plus identify three captivating 2023 bowl picks.

College Football Bowl Picks and Strategy

Here are three strategies sharp pool players use to compete for top prizes every year, based on years of historical research by PoolGenius.

Secret #1: Embrace The True Bowl Favorites, Not The Rankings

Picking winners is crucial, but many pool players fall victim to surface-level hype like win-loss records and AP rankings. Instead, stay focused on the latest betting odds, which react quickly to bowl season's unpredictable developments (e.g. player opt-outs and coaching changes).

Remember Kentucky's upset loss in the 2022 Music City Bowl? Despite a gaudy record, the Wildcats lost 21-0 to Iowa after key player opt-outs like QB Will Levis. The betting market, however, was onto it, flipping to favor Iowa by kickoff after initially leaning Kentucky.

Also, remember that every upset pick you make is a gamble that increases your reliance on luck. While a well-calculated underdog gambit can be tempting, don't let the thrill of a long shot score cloud your judgment. Favor the favorites, and make upset picks the rare exception.

Secret #2: Uncover Hidden Gems With Contrarian Picks

While picking winners is essential, understanding and exploiting pick popularity is a game-changer. If you make an unpopular pick and it hits, you'll leapfrog your pool competitors.

To find these hidden gems, you need to research and project pick-popularity for every game. To do so, you can utilize public data, such as ESPN's "Who Picked Whom" trends from their Bowl Mania game. You should also consider your pool's specific demographics.

Once that work is done, compare each team's win odds to your pick popularity estimates to identify two types of contrarian choices:

• Under-the-radar favorites: Think Duke in the 2022 Military Bowl. Only 39% of bowl pool players picked Duke, despite the Blue Devils being a 3-point favorite over UCF. Duke won 30-13, delivering an extra standings boost to players who still just picked the more likely winner according to betting odds!

• Slight underdogs with low pick popularity. Consider Tulane in the 2023 Cotton Bowl. They were a slight 1.5-point underdog against USC, but only had 20% pick popularity in bowl pools. Tulane won 46-45, scoring their backers points that four out of five players missed, despite it only being a small calculated risk.

When these types of picks pan out, your odds to win your bowl pool can soar.

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Secret #3: Tailor Your Approach to Your Pool

Every pool is unique, and the best pick strategy factors in its size, rules, and scoring system. Here's a quick cheat sheet to help you navigate different bowl pool environments:

• Small pools (under 50 entries): Play it safe with favorites, minimizing risks. Upsets are tempting, but remember, they're risky tightrope walks.

• Medium-sized pools (50-500 entries): Take some more calculated gambles on value picks, adding some differentiation to your entries. But don't get carried away with long shots.

• Large pools (500+ entries): Diversify your risk! Play multiple entries, each with its own mix of unique contrarian bets. If most of them hit on one entry, that one should have a realistic shot scoring a huge payday. In these pools, a few well-chosen long shots can be your saving grace, especially if you fall behind early.

• Confidence pools: Bias your higher-confidence picks towards key value plays with good win odds and comparatively low pick popularity. In larger pools, consider a moonshot or two with medium-to-high confidence. Lower confidence picks matter far less, so don't stress over them.

• Point-spread pools: Look for "stale" lines where the real-life point spread for a team differs from your pool's line. Exploit those free points! Remember, point spreads can shift significantly throughout bowl season due to breaking news.

3 Bowl Picks To Boost Your Odds In 2023

If you're hunting for contrarian gold in a 2023 bowl pick'em pool, here are three picks for game winner based pools that look scintillating as of Wednesday, December 13:

• Virginia Tech (-7.5) vs. Tulane in the Military Bowl. Virginia Tech boasts a high 74% win probability, yet only 51% of pool players are picking them. That's a rare pick popularity gap for a larger favorite, and Tulane's coaching shakeup is a factor that many pool players may be missing.

• Rutgers (+1) vs. Miami in the Pinstripe Bowl: This one's a nail-biter, but the public is quite biased toward Miami, with around 3-of-4 players picking the Hurricanes. So you've got close to a 50/50 shot at snagging points that 75% of your rivals are likely to miss.

• Missouri (-2.5) vs. Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. In the betting market, Missouri has moved from a 7-point underdog to a favorite. Ohio State QB Kyle McCord is transferring, and several key players are expected to opt out after the Buckeyes missed out on the College Football Playoff. But the public continues to favor storied Ohio State, picking them 63% of the time.

There are more value picks like these within the 2023 college bowl game slate, and our product (see below) identifies them all.

Maximize Your Edge In Bowl Pick'em Pools

At PoolGenius, we have the tools and data you need to get a leg up in college bowl pick'em pools. Since 2014, subscribers to our Bowl Pick'em Picks product have won college bowl pick'em pools nearly twice as often as expected.

The product provides ready-to-play picks for your 2023 bowl pick'em contests (game winner, point spread, and/or confidence point based), all customized for your pool's size, rules, and scoring system. And it updates for impactful breaking news multiple times per day.

On the data side, it includes algorithmic game predictions and recent betting odds for every game, national pick popularity data, and even a Q&A forum if you have strategy questions.

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