When a sports investor has many and varied betting options available for wagering on a contest, things can be a little confusing for the uninitiated or novice bettor. Clearly there will be options that are sports specific, but there will almost always be certain general betting products that suit all manner of sporting events – something as simple as the straight up “win” bet – is an example of a bet type that is common to nearly every sport.
Let’s illustrate some of the betting offerings that a gambler or sports investor would encounter when approaching the betting window, or as is more regularly nowadays, when logging into an online sportsbook, to place your bet.
Win Betting: The most simple type of betting proposition. The Boston Celtics will defeat the Chicago Bulls. In this type of wager we are betting on our selected team defeating the opposition. No further explanation is necessary.
Pointspread Betting : We have received emails from many Australian punters asking for an explanation on how to bet pointspreads – other wise known as “handicap” or “line betting”. Very common in America – it involves taking a head to head contest and handicapping the two teams in the betting to achieve a market that is approximately “evens”. Example:
Team A: -22.5 points, paying $1.91
Team B: +22.5 points, paying $1.91
The better team in this encounter is Team A, at -22.5 points, means that they need to win by 23 or more to win the bet or “cover” in betting speak. Likewise for Team B, who at +22.5, need to lose by no more that 22 points to get the cover. Team B winning outright is also a winning result for +22.5 in this bet type.
Parlay Betting: In a parlay, or “multi” as it is known in Australia, we connect two (or usually more) selected outcomes to enter in a bet together. If one of the outcome doesn’t eventuate, the bet is a loser. Parlays are higher risk for higher reward. The approximate payout is the result of multiplying the price offered for the outcomes.
For example, let’s imagine in the first round of the ATP tennis tournament, we like Federer (price 1.02), Nadal (1.10) and Hewitt (3.40). Instead of betting these matches individually, we can parlay them into the one betting ticket, with each result being required to win for us to get our final payment. In the above example, we would receive the following payout if all three players won.
Payout = 1.02 x 1.10 x 3.40 = 3.815. Betting $10 returns us $38.15.
Totals betting: A popular bet type where the wager concerns the cumulative game total of both teams at the end of the game. The team that wins the contest is essentially irrelevant. This wager type is particularly popular in NFL, MLB and NBA. Opinons and information concerning offensive and defensive match-ups, likely game tempo and medium term scoring trends can all lead you towards an “over” or an “under” bet situation. A typical NFL game total may have the over/under market set at 48.5 points – and a final score of 28 – 20 (= 48) is an under, 28-21 (= 49) would be an over.
Proposition betting: A “prop” bet concerns a great many and varied smaller propositions surrounding a game. In NFL this could be “first scoring play of the game (field goal, touchdown, safety), “coin toss – heads or tails”, or “over/under 3.5 quarterback sacks” etc etc.
Proposition betting is a great way for a punter to have a financial interest in a particular opinion and can add extra enjoyment to the game. It is a particularly good way to enjoy the superbowl.
By carefully choosing bet types and markets with the lowest margins, our team returned the following from strategic sports investment.
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