Reasons for betting on the CBI and CIT Tournaments

March Madness is every basketball fans Mecca.

First there is the NCAA Tournament, the NIT, and for those that are paying attention — two fairly new tournaments — the College Basketball Invitational, or CBI, and the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, or CIT.

And while every sports fan in the country pays attention to the NCAA tourney, and a little bit to the NIT, the other two are largely ignored by all but hardcore fans of the sport. Therefore, making it a great place for serious college basketball handicappers to turn a profit.

So, before bettors spend all their cash betting on the big dance, here are a few things to consider about why they may want to spend some bank on these smaller competitions.

To begin with, these tournaments have some unique aspects to their formats, which potentially create some lucrative opportunities.

For example, in the CIT, all of the teams play a first round game, and then the four best teams remaining, according to the tournament organizers, are give a second round bye and the remaining eight teams are re-seeded. This makes for some intriguing matchups. Meanwhile in the CBI, the teams are re-seeded after the second round, and the final is a best of three series. Fatigue and off-games can either help or hinder a team with this type of format, and if keen basketball bettors do their homework, they can cash in. Especially, because the betting volume is so low.

That’s because these two tournaments often feature ambiguous teams, which means bettors need to do a little more research. The kind of research casual bettors just are not going to do.

This also applies to the books, as these teams come from all over the country,and from conferences that are very different in terms of competitiveness and talent level. Because of this, oddsmakers know less about a lot of these teams, and aren’t going to necessarily spend nearly as much time in setting strong lines as they will with the more popular games played in the NCAA tournament.

This means college basketball bettors might be able to take advantage of possible inaccuracies in the opening lines, as well as not needing to pay particular close attention to big line movements based on hype or media attention.

Next, the location of games, unlike the NCAA and NIT tournaments, can have a far more dramatic impact on these teams, as games are played on the home court of the higher seeded team in both of these tournaments. So, home court advantage is much more easily determined, than games played at neutral sites.

Finally, unlike teams that were expected to make it the big dance and didn’t, or teams that are disappointed with a NIT appearance, the teams playing in these two tournaments are generally going to be thrilled about just being invited to a tournament. Still, there will be teams that started the season dreaming of much bigger things.

Understanding both personalities of two teams squaring off can be significant factors in a handicappers chances of beating the books with these two tourneys.

In the CBI and CIT, diligent handicappers can often find situations where the lesser team is dramatically more motivated, and that could be enough to get them a win, or at least a cover.