INTRODUCTION TO SPORTS BETTING
Sports betting is a fun and exciting way to bolster your total sports experience and to make some money along the way. Using this guide will teach you how to go about your sports betting experience and will have you in the game making money in a heartbeat! Moneylines How To Bet On Football Betting on football is clearly the most popular way to go about wagering on sports. The Sunday Night Football game and the Monday Night Football game are two of the most bet upon games every single week, and every year, the most popular game to bet is the Super Bowl! But how does it work? It would seem relatively easy to just pick the winner of a game and have the sportsbook pay you for getting over half of those picks correct, right? Unfortunately, it s not quite that easy. You have three types of bets when you look at the football betting lines, the spread, the total, and the moneyline. This holds true for college football betting, NFL betting, or betting in any of the minor league football leagues like the CFL, AFL, and UFL as well. The easiest of the three to comprehend is the moneyline. Simply put, you re just picking the winner of the game. The oddsmakers won t set up a line at 50/50, though. If you re picking the Alabama Crimson Tide against the North Texas Mean Green, you might have to bet upwards of $1,000 just to make a few bucks! Practically, most sports bettors don t bother with these types of wagers. Instead, moneyline wagering is typically done in games where there is some legitimate doubt in the outcome of the game. Take last year s Super Bowl for example. The Pittsburgh Steelers went off the board as slight underdogs, and you could have gotten them at +130 to win the game. That means that for every $100 that you bet, you would have won $130 if the Steelers were to win the game. And this is the way that it works when you bet underdogs. Any time you see + next to a team s moneyline price, you know that you have to bet $100 to make whatever the three (or more) digits are after the + sign. A team lined at +200 would net you a $200 profit, while a team at +105 would net you a $105 profit. Let s go back to our Steelers vs. Packers example. Green Bay was the favorite in this game, it was lined at -150. Notice the - sign instead of the + sign; it means that team is favored to win. That means that you have to bet that amount of money to win $100. A team that is -120 would require that you bet $120 to win $100, whereas a heavy favorite of -300 would require that you bet $300 to win $100.
Spreads Betting on spreads (aka point spreads) is the most popular way to bet on football. In the Super Bowl last year, the Steelers were 2.5 point underdogs, and the way that would be listed at a sportsbook would read Pittsburgh Steelers +2.5. Or, if you wanted to bet on the Packers, they would be listed as Green Bay Packers -2.5. Think of a point spread as a head start for one team or the other. If you are betting on a favorite, you are starting with negative how many ever points they were favored by. If you re betting on an underdog, you start with that many points before the game ever starts. If you re one that prefers to look at a finished product, a team who is favored by 5.5 points would have to win by six to cover the spread and give you a victory. Should you want to bet on the underdog though, if that team were to win the game or to lose by fewer than 5.5 points, the underdog would cover the spread and be the winning side. When you bet on football, you have to be careful with your point spreads. A sportsbook might have a team lined at +4.5 that another sportsbook has lined at +4. That half point might not seem like it makes a difference, but if the game lands on the underdog losing by four points, you would push at +4, but win at +4.5. Think it s easy to bet on football? Think again. The mass majority of NFL games end within seven points one way or the other, so getting the difference between all of those tiny little half points is always crucial. On top of that, you have a handicap that you, the bettor has to overcome. You can t just bet $100 to win $100. Most of these bets are at -110, though they could deviate depending on the sportsbook and the particular game. Remember our moneyline talk and what that - sign means? That means you have to bet $110 to win $100. Any smart math person realizes right away that winning exactly 50 percent of your bets isn t going to win you money. In fact, this is what sportsbooks hope happens. If everyone wins 50 percent of their bets, they claim a 5 percent profit on every dollar spent.
Totals Totals are also lined at -110 typically, though those numbers can also change slightly depending on the sportsbook and the individual game. A total is exactly what it sounds like. The oddsmakers post a number, and you have to bet whether you think that total number of points scored by the two teams is more (over) or less (under) than that number. Typically, totals in the NFL range from the mid-30s to the mid-50s, while numbers in college football can range drastically, though generally from the mid-40s through the mid-70s. The average game in the NFL features right around 37 or 38 points seemingly year after year. Betting On Basketball Maybe the NBA or college basketball is your game! Great! It happens to be the rules for betting on any form of basketball are exactly the same as the rules for football. A team is going to be favored by a certain number of points, there is going to be a moneyline, and there will be a total. The quirk though, is that scores are higher, so the value of points isn t quite as much in the NBA as it is in the NFL or college football. However, the majority of NBA games finish within 10 points, so those half points could once again be crucial as to whether you win, lose, or draw. Betting On Hockey Hockey is likely the easiest sport to try to figure out how to bet on, but it can be vicious to bet on if you don t know what you re doing. Moneylines in hockey are treated the exact same way as they are in football and basketball, as are totals. However, those totals almost always range from 4.5 through 6.5, and one goal really does change everything. There is one new twist to hockey betting, though, and that s the puck line. The team that is favored in every NHL betting affair is given a spread of -1.5, while every team that is an underdog is given a spread of +1.5. With so many games ending 2-1, 3-2, or 4-3, there are huge discrepancies between moneyline and puck line prices. Because these puck lines are fixed at -1.5 and +1.5, the oddsmakers have to more or less make a moneyline price on them. A team that is +160 on the moneyline might be -150 on the puck line, and a team that is a -130 favorite might be a +200 underdog on the puck line. It s incredibly popular to pick your favorite on the puck line instead of the moneyline, but the puck line prices are very carefully calculated by the oddsmakers and almost always shade in favor of the underdog at +1.5. Pick your spots though, and you ll be a winner on the ice in no time.
Betting On Baseball Theoretically, betting on baseball is a lot like hockey, but there is a heck of a lot more to consider when betting on MLB (or college baseball) than in the NHL. In the NHL, all of the players are used on the team, save for the backup goalie, and the only real factor that can change from night to night is which goalie is in net. In baseball, you only use nine players in the National League, and 10 in the American League. Regardless of what league you re in though, the pitcher is the dominating player that controls the betting lines. Take the Philadelphia Phillies for example. Most nights at home, they re heavy favorites. It s rare to see a baseball team lined higher than about -250 or so, though in some instances, you can see up to -300 or even -350. A heavy favorite constitutes a team that is -160 or so or higher, though everyone s individual definition varies slightly. If the Phils are throwing Roy Halladay, they re going to be absolutely massive favorites due to the fact that Halladay can really take over a game. He is consistently lined at -200 no matter who the other team on the field is. However, if those same Phillies are playing at home with Vance Worley on the mound, and the Milwaukee Brewers come to town with Zack Greinke pitching, don t be surprised if the Brew Crew are the favored team even though they re on the road against a fantastic team. Totals still apply in baseball as they do in hockey, and they usually range anywhere from 6.5 up through 12.5. The worse the pitchers are on the mound, the higher the totals usually are, and the oddsmakers usually give roughly the same thought about the pitchers on the mound as the batting lineups facing those pitchers when establishing the numbers. Betting On Boxing/UFC, Golf, Tennis, Etc. Sportsbooks put up betting odds on all sorts of quirky events, but boxing, UFC golf, and tennis are amongst the popular ones. When you re betting on golf, you can bet on a player to win a particular event at a set price, or you can bet on an individual golfer s performance against another. Either way, the situation is clear. Whether it s a boxing matchup (and for all intents and purposes, it s treated the exact same way for a UFC matchup), a golfing matchup, or a tennis matchup, you know that you have one athlete going against the other. The oddsmakers set up a de facto moneyline regarding which player they think is going to beat the other, and you bet accordingly. Every now and again in boxing and in tennis, you see totals posted as well. In boxing, the total would refer to the number of rounds the fight lasts, and in tennis, the total is almost always the number of games played in the match, though at some sportsbooks, you can also bet on the number of sets in the match as well.
Conclusion In the end, sports betting isn t about winning 100 percent of the time; it s about winning often enough so you can beat the odds. Betting on a team at +1000 that you think is going to win 15 percent of the time is better than betting on a team at -110 that you think is going to win 55 percent of the time. Our best advice is to always run the math on every bet that you are going to make, and always ask yourself what percentage of the time you need to win this bet to be able to make money. If it fits the bill, fantastic! Play it! If not, you should heir on the side of caution and just pass on the event. A bet that isn t placed is significantly better than a bet that is forced and lost!