Marc Lawrence's Playbook; Iskoe's Study on Teasers/Totals Great Handicapping Tools

13 August 2003

By Howard Schwartz

Two of the most respected names in football handicapping once again have produced books of importance for pro and college football bettors. Marc Lawrence of Cleveland has his Playbook Stat & Log Book (375 pages, 8x11 plastic spiralbound, $34.95) and Andy Iskoe of Las Vegas has his incisive NFL Teasers & Totals (73 pages, 8x11 plastic spiralbound, $29.95) on the shelves of Gambler's Book Shop (Gambler's Book Club).

Lawrence's book is a perfect tool for those who want college and pro record-keeping capability showing the pro games and most key college matchups, week by week with room to keep records including results and spreads. For the pros, the regular season ends in Week 17, Dec. 28. The first college bowl game is set for Tuesday, Dec. 16, with the last one, Jan. 4, the Sugar Bowl.

The format for pro teams is as straightforward. It starts with the entire season schedule which has space to keep records from September to December. In the same section Lawrence placed the opponent's won-loss records for 2002. And that precedes the recording areas where there's room for the spread, total, final score and additional notes. To provide additional insight, Lawrence includes a 10-year history for each pro team showing previous scores, spreads and totals.

This year, the Arizona Cardinals for example, face the Cleveland Browns Nov. 16. They've met only once in the last 10 years (in 2000) with Arizona winning 29-21, covering a 4 point spread, with the game going over the 39-point total. Basically, the user doesn't have to go to the trouble then of looking up the opponent to see how it fared against Arizona for every game scheduled in 2003

A quick look will also tell you Arizona has been in the playoffs only once in the last 10 years -- in 1998, winning at Dallas, losing at Minnesota.

The book follows the same format for the college, except Lawrence includes the team's web site; how many returnees on offense and defense, plus the number of lettermen; and names of key players including their position. Homecoming games are indicated with a special code and so are conference matchups. For those who must know about revenge situations, there's a chart for each college team breaking down which opponents fall into single, double, even triple revenge situations, or not at all.

There are betting angles keyed to college coaches, from Air Force to Wisconsin. Shown are how teams performed in a variety of situations under a specific coach and how long he's been with the team. If you want to know how a team did with a week's rest, at home, or away or in a revenge situation, off a win or loss and what a good angle is for that team, it's listed

Iskoe's NFL Teasers & Totals book has its focus on 6-point teasers. In this book, you can examine how the entire NFL‹all teams, did in 27 categories such as road favorite; home dog; Monday nights; on grass or turf; in a divisional game. For all NFL teams as a whole, you can look back each season since 1997 or the last three years or the last six years.

Then you can examine each individual team, season by season since 1997, or the last three seasons or last six seasons, in the same 27 situations.

For example, it's interesting to know that the Cleveland Browns, for the past three seasons overall, are 10-2 with a six-point teaser in their first four games and 12-4 as an underdog at home. Green Bay is remarkable at home with a six-point teaser, with a 21-3 record, and 5-1 Monday nights.

As with teasers, all NFL teams are examined with the same 27 categories for totals. One of the more outstanding numbers is the fact Road Pick Œem games, as rare as they are, have gone over six out of the seven times the situation has occurred for the past three seasons.

New Orleans seems to like grass surfaces when it comes to totals, since it's gone over 11 of the 15 times it's played on grass in the last three seasons. Last season was a big over season for the Saints who went over in 12 of 16 games.

Again you can look back one year, three years, six years or the last three together or last six overall.

One particular chart could be a tremendous time-saver for totals bettors. Iskoe shows you in the last 4,942 games since 1981 how often specific totals occur, ranging from a 3-0 Patriots win over Miami in 1982 and the Jets 3-0 win over the Redskins in 1993 to a high of 99 points (Seattle beats KC 5l-48 in 1983).

Four key numbers are 37, 41, 51 or 30 (one out of every six games falls on those numbers). Iskoe shows us since 1997, the posted totals have ranged between 33 and 45 points almost 84% of the time.

This is truly a gold mine of information for the totals bettor‹a great timesaver if ever one existed for the serious researcher looking for an angle or answer to a theory or a spot play.