Sports betting is a kind of gambling, when you can predict the result of a sports match. The bets are usually accepted by a person named bookmaker or bookmaker company. Depending on the result of the match, bet could be winning, half-winning, losing or returned. The sum of any win depends on the result’s index, which is fixed by the bookmaker company and valid at the moment of bet.
Bookmakers propose a lot of possibilities of betting on any sport event. The easiest way of betting is an anticipation of the team or player or the draw. According to the kind of sport, there would be a lot of other possibilities, for example, in football: the prediction of exact result of a match or a break, quantity of scored goals etc. The handicaps are an interesting type of bets (Asian and European), where the winner must be chosen or undertake a draw, presuming that one of the players or team (usually the weakest) gets the additional quantity of scores. The multiple bets are popular too, which consist of placing some different bets as one. Such a type is winning only when all its bets are won, but the possible sum is usually more expensive than the separate one, because the chances are multiplied. Nowadays gets more popularity the custom bets, which you can make by yourself rooted in the bookmaker companies’ events and events of your own life.
It’s impossible to imagine the contemporary sport without betting, especially without exact sports betting on football matches, events, sportsmen and all teams. Sports bettings are known not even for a decade, not only complimenting the sport industry, but even becoming one of the largest parts of it because of joining around billions of fans all around the world. The reason is obvious — simplicity and accessibility, the tiniest dependence on a chance. There the competition is not between a person and roulette wheel or random choice of playing cards, but between two persons — a player and a bookmaker. Only your knowledge and intuition help to make a correct bet on a match or to calculate a forecast of some sport events.
The bookmaker shop has a role of market-maker of sports betting, whose majority has binary results: a team can either win or lose. The company accepts both bets and maintains a spread and its percentages, which will provide an income regardless of the result. The Federal Wire Act of 1961 was an effort of the US government to prevent illegal bookmaking. However this act doesn’t touch other types of gambling on the web. So the Supreme Court didn’t approve the Federal Wire Act against gambling.
Making a bet on a match or event
Millions of sports fans are obsessed with betting, meanwhile betting companies are among the main contributors of football clubs, sport leagues and events for a long time. A lot of fans bet on matches to increase their interest on an occasion. Some people make bets hoping to earn money: if your knowledge about a kind of sport or information about separate teams are high, you can beat the bookmaker company. All the more, they propose a wide choice of disciplines — fr om football, basketball, box, tennis to horse racing and cybersport, and different events: from the quantity of scores in a match or its result to a knockdown in a particular round in box or number of corner kicks in a football match.
The most popular sports bets
Football is the most popular sport in the world, and the football bets are the most demanded type of sport forecast. Every day all over the world decades of matches are played in different leagues and tournaments. The most known are the championships of top-5 (England, Italy, Spain, Germany and France), League of champions and Europa League, matches of national teams. But it’s possible to make a bet on other games — championships of exotic countries, the lower divisions of leading European tournaments, friendly matches between clubs. In such cases it’s important to know that you’ll have little information about those events and teams that take place there and you should rely on your intuition.
Also bets on box, car racing, basketball, baseball, horse racing, cyber sport are popular too.
Modern technologies gave players from all over the world the possibility to make bets on sport in live mode. Another way, by tracking an event that is going on at the moment, you can place your bet: either on the win of the team or sportsman or on the number of goals in a match or even the winner of a race. In that case you have more chances to beat the bookmaker, but you should know that the rate will be lower.
Types of sports betting
There are some classifications of sports betting types, but we’ll discuss the most common cases. There are some basic kinds of betting:
- Bets on the outcome
Betting on the win of one of the teams (sportsmen) or draw is the oldest and the easiest way of betting. Perhaps it’s the best option for newcomers, marked in the line by 1x2 (1 — owner, x — draw, 2 — guests). Indeed everything there is really straightforward: if your frontrunner won, you would get a prize.
- Double chance
This option is for prudent persons. The bet is for a win by one of the opponents or a draw, for example: 1X — win of owners or draw, 12 — win of one team, X2 — win of guests or draw. The quotations by those bettings are usually low, but if you’re not sure about your forecast, it’d be a great idea to use a double chance.
- Bets on the exact score
Here you have to guess the exact final score of a match. The most frequent case of this betting is used in football because there are not many scored goals. Divining the exact score of a basketball match is basically impossible. Moreover, you can guess the result in football like a real shot in the dark. So this type of betting is almost a lottery. But enrollment of them is always high.
Handicap
Handicap is a bet wh ere some number adds or takes up to/from a score of the chosen team. That’s to say that it has to win with an exact gap in score or to lose with a difference of balls that is lower than fixed. And there are a lot of kinds of handicap.
The more often usage of it is in football, so there is an example from this sport:
Let’s assume that you’ve made a bet on the match of ‘Real Madrid’ versus ‘Barcelona’, the result was 0:2 and now we can see which type of handicap is better for newcomers.
1. ‘Plus’ handicap
To the number of goals scored adds another amount. From our example, if you’ve bet on ‘Real Madrid’ with a handicap of +3 (usually F1(+3), it means that your bet worked. ‘Virtual’ result would be 3:2. But if you’ve made a bet F1(+1), there were not enough odds and you lost.
2. ‘Minus’ handicap
Here the system is arranged oppositely. The handicap is taken away from the final score of a team. If in the example you’ve bet on ‘Barcelona’ with handicap of -1 (F2(-1), your betting worked. But in the case of F2(-2) you would get funds back because the result of the score was 0:0. And the bet F2(-3) is losing.
3. Zero handicap
This subtype of bets in many ways looks like using the double chance. Actually in case of a draw a bettor cannot earn money, only to return his bet. For victory it’s necessary to win for the chosen opponent with any gap. The quotations of those bets are usually higher than using the double chance, so zero handicap is one of the best types of bettings for newcomers.
4. Strict handicap
All types that were above-mentioned are using flexible handicaps. This means that in case of the final draw (for example bets F2(-2) a bet is returning. But strict or fractional handicaps exclude the outcome of a draw. For example, the bet F1(+1,5) in this case seems to be losing, but F1(+2,5) will win.
Some betting companies use European handicaps. The principle is the same but without fractional numbers. It's just understood that the draw result would be losing.
5. Asian handicap
Here they use quarters and the bet is divided to two separate shares and each half automatically bet on nearest significance of handicap. It sounds complicated, so here we got some examples:
If we use a bet F2(-1,25) on 10 dollars, that means we’ve done 2 bets for 5 dollars: F2(-1) and F2(-1,5). In our case both bets are winning.
The bet F2(-1,75) will divide between F2(-1,5) AND F2(-2). First will be winning and second will return your money.
But in the case of the bet F2(-2,25) by the bet F2(-2) you’ll get your cash back, by F2(-2,5) you’ll lose.
6. Half and match bets
In this case the player tries to guess at the same time two things: who will win till the end of the first half or period and who will win at the end of the game. So it’s possible to predict the win of the first half by one team and of the match generally by another team. For getting money both forecasts have to be correct. And in such bets you can use double chance.
7. Total
Total is a bet on achieving some quantity of targets in a match. In football people bet on the number of goals, fouls, yellow and red cards, penalty shots, corner kicks etc, in tennis there are bets on the amount of sets and games and other sports have their own units. So you can find a bookmaker who takes total bets on any sport figure, which has statistics.
Bets are taking in the format of ‘Total under’ (TU, U, Under) and ‘Total over’ (TO, O, Over), so the rate of result of a match (for example, number of goals) has to be more or less than selected significance.
Besides, you can do both bets on general numbers of match and on the rates of one of the opponents.
8. Asian total
Using this type of betting you apply quaternaries and the bet is divided into two equal parts made on the closest number. In our example about an imaginary match between ‘Real Madrid’ and ‘Barcelona’ a bet TU(2,25) on $10 means that you do two bets at the same time: TU(2) and TU(2,5), $5 each. In the first case you’ll receive your money back and second will be winning.
9. European Total
In this bet there is no possibility to get your cash back. So betting on the quantity of goals TU(2) like in the example above would be losing.
