When it comes to sports, sometimes betting on the game is a bigger rush than the game itself. While you need to be a pro athlete to play in pro sporting arenas, anyone can be a pro at sports betting. All it takes is a sharp eye, good instinct, and learning the rules of the game. That’s why in recent years, the stigma of betting has faded in America’s mainstream sports culture. The game is simple. As a bettor, you place a gamble on the results of how a sports event will turn out. And your potential for that win or lose is determined by a sportsbook that breaks down those odds.
But if you’re new to the arena, it can all feel overwhelming at first. It’s time to break it all down and give you the beginner’s guide to sports betting.
How to choose your picks
The guessing part of a sport is pretty straightforward. You have two teams in any national league pinned against each other. One’s considered the favorite, the one likely to win the game based on past performance, and the other is considered the Underdog, the one who’s scrappy in a fight. Expert pick sites, like FanDuel or Big Al, will list the favorite with a minus sign and the Underdog with a plus sign, offering different types of sports picks. It’s easy to pick the favorite, although everyone likes an Underdog. But before you can do this, you need to create a point spread based on these pluses and minuses. The greater the gap, the more points a team needs to score to win a bet. Let’s break this down a little further. Favorites have minuses rather than pluses because it’s an expected win. So, to win the bet, the score has to be greater. Whereas the Underdog is expected to lose, if they win, it’s a greater risk, so the number gap is usually lower.
What determines point spreads
A team’s point spread is based on several different factors. In professional sports, these athletes are on the road all of the time and constantly in action. The most obvious factor that determines a point spread is the team’s win-loss record. Refer to the Favorites versus Underdog bet above. But then you can break it down further into the individuals that make up the team. While your favorite team might look good against the odds, how do the players match up this week for the big game? Did someone get traded? Did the MVP sustain an injury? Was the scrappiest person on the team in a recent media headline? Some people in Las Vegas usually determine these odds called linesmakers. And like anything in Las Vegas, the odds can change at any minute based on how much money is rolling in and being placed on a certain team. That’s where line movement comes in—how much the plus or minus changes from when it opened to when you place a bet. That’s where you go back to the factors—it’s not just about how an overall team performs, but maybe a specific player got into some trouble.
The moneyline bet
Spreads can be confusing. That’s why there’s an alternative system called betting the moneyline. This happens when you want a team to win, and it doesn’t matter by how many points. It could be one, it could be 10, you just want to make a bet that your team will win. So you say you want to bet your team on the moneyline. However, going back to those pluses and minuses, the moneyline bets still show those odds (minus for Favorites and Underdogs). This time it’s straightforward. Minus sign means you will receive less than your full bet investment and means the payout could end up winning you more money than you initially played in.
The over/under bet
The over/under bet happens a lot in football and basketball. There’s a column that has a number. That number represents the total points expected to be scored in a game—for football, it’s lower, but that number can be pretty high in basketball. Once you look at the number, it’s time to determine if you think the overall game will score higher or lower than the number shown. What happens in a tie? No one wins.
The Parlay bet
Another common type of bet is the parlay bet—this pools numerous bets together so that the bettor can win a bigger payout. A lot of people don’t prefer this form because it’s an all-or-nothing scenario, and those odds don’t always play favorites.
As a beginner in the sports betting world, you can jump two feet in and rely on what’s in front of you. Or, you can up your odds of winning a bet by doing your research and studying the game. The more you know your team and players, the better the odds are for you to come out with the money in hand.