The sports betting fraternity is always rife with action, courtesy the vast range of sports events covered by leading sports betting houses and the fact that such professional online sports books incentivize betting further to make it an irresistible proposition for enthusiastic risk takers. It’s really amazing to invest some amount on a sporting team that you know has the arsenal to win a match, and then reaping benefits when the same happens. Better still, you don’t even always have to bet on a won or a loss for a team; in fact, you can bet on several aspects of the games. Again, there’s even more flexibility in the form of the different types of sports bets that you can place. This guide intends to introduce you to a few of them, so that you can explore and measure different options while betting on sporting events.
Straight bets
If you’ve been into sports betting, you’d know that a line looking like the following one would mean as explained.
501 Ney York Knicks -4
502 California Kites
The (-) sign indicates the favorite team in the contest, and the number to the right of the sign is the spread. The numbers to the left of the team names are just identifiers for the sports book. If you bet on California Kites, and the final score line reads Knicks 31 to Kites 34, then you’d win the bet, as Kites would have covered the spread by a point. However, if the score line would have read Knicks 31 to Kites 35, then there is no overlap on the spread, and the wager amount is refunded, and the bet is considered as a tie. This is how straight bet system works.
Money Lines
Let’s consider the same example to illustrate the working of money lines. The line gets modified as follows.
501 Ney York Knicks -150
502 California Kites + 120
Again, the (-) sign indicates the team favored by the bookmakers to win. However, there are no point spreads in money lines sports betting. Herein, you’ll have to invest $150 in order to win $100 if you are favoring the Knicks to win. However, if you are betting on the Kites, then an investment of $100 will win you $120. Sometimes, you could see a money line with decimal notations. In such money lines, just treat $1 as $100. In decimal notation, the above money line would have looked like:-
501 Ney York Knicks -1.50
502 California Kites + 1.20
Over/Under Totals (O/U)
It’s pretty easy to work out how these bets work. What generally happens is that the sports betting operators declare a total, indicating the bookmaker’s estimate of the total number of points that will be scored by the competing teams in a competition. All you’ve got to do is, to bet Over if you think that the total of the points scored by both the teams will be larger than that declared by the bookmakers, or bet on Under if you think otherwise.
Parlay
Here’s the most exciting form of sports betting explained for you. Parlays are for those who believe in all or nothing, and dream of striking those multimillion jackpots one fine day. In parlay bets, you can wager on 2 or more teams, and apart form that, you can bet on money lines, over/under, total points, point spreads, and all other kinds. However, you only win the parley bet if all your picks (the individual bets you make) are correct. Even if one of your picks goes wrong, then you lose the parley bet. Payouts are absolutely whopping in parley betting, and that’s pretty obvious. Higher the number of picks you make, higher the payouts of the parley become. Of course, the risk of you losing the parley also increases correspondingly, as it’s all or nothing. Payouts can range from 2.5 to 1 for 2 picks parley, to 320 to 1 for parleys with 10 picks.
We’re sure you’d be excited about exercising the world of flexibility that you have in sports betting now that you are aware of all the different kinds of bets you can place. Bet smartly, and win regularly.
