Buying points or using alternative lines is another strategy that many punters use for total or spread bets on leagues such as MLB, NBA, and NFL especially, but it’s not really a good or bad strategy, so here it is separate from both of those categories. Buying points means changing the spread of a game you’re betting on to better suit your wager at the cost of a lower payout.
While this can be a profitable strategy if you really know what you’re doing in terms of spread or total betting, sportsbooks do too and they can also add juice to the spots where you want to buy up. For example, in the NFL, teams usually score in increments of 7 and 3, so if you get a spread of -3.5 and want to buy it down to -2.5, sportsbooks will be wise to that and make the odds for the latter spread a lot less appetizing.