A Guide to Sports Betting, and a Warning: Winning Isn't Easy

Written by:
Associated Press
Published on:
Jan/30/2021

(AP) - Wanna bet on sports?

First, make sure you know what you’re doing — and the odds against you.

With Virginia now offering sports betting, here are some of the basics — as well as some of the more esoteric aspects — of betting on sports.

Start Your Own Sportsbook Today

Pony up

Say you want to bet $25 on a football game. In the app, you'll deposit $25 and receive a confirmation of the bet. In most cases, if you win, you will get back your original $25 stake plus your winnings, which won’t amount exactly to another $25 because of ...

The vig

This is the vigorish, also known commonly as the “vig” or the “juice” — the bookmaker’s cut of the action. Oddsmakers try to set betting lines as precisely as possible to attract an equal amount wagered on each team involved in a particular game. They use money from losing bets to pay off people who make winning bets, while keeping a percentage for themselves. That percentage varies but usually is around 10 percent.

The payoff is given with a plus (+) or minus (-) sign, depending on whether a bet will win more or less than the initial amount wagered.

A plus bet is based on wagering $100, meaning a line of +110 would pay $110 in profit on a $100 bet, for a total payout of $210.

The minus bet is based on how much must be wagered to win $100. A line of -200 means $200 must be wagered to win $100 in profit, for a total payout of $300.

How to bet

One of the most popular ways to bet on sports is through the point spread. If the Seattle Seahawks are favored by 4 points against the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle must win by 5 for a Seahawks bettor to win his or her wager. Minnesota backers would win if the Vikings win, or even if they lose as long as it’s by 3 points or fewer. A final margin of exactly 4 points for Seattle is considered a push, meaning the bets are refunded.

You can also do a money line bet, and simply choose the team you think will win.

For a heavily favored team, say the Boston Red Sox putting their best pitcher against a weak opponent with a poor pitcher, that could involve putting up $350 of your own money to win just $100, a wager that would be listed in sports books as -350.

Big underdogs pay off well, but only if that team wins the game. A bet on a team with a money line of +410 would give you a $410 profit on a $100 bet.

Another popular option is the over/under, also known as the total. Oddsmakers set a number for the total number of points scored by both teams combined, say 52½ points between the Chiefs and Raiders. Gamblers bet whether the combined final score will exceed that number (over) or fall short (under).

Teasers

Don’t like the number offered by the point spread or the over/under? Change it. Bookmakers offer the opportunity to increase or lessen the odds, called “teasing” it, by a particular number.

It must be applied to combined wagers on two or more games. For instance, if the New York Giants are favored by 3 points over Washington, and the Los Angeles Chargers are favored over the Baltimore Ravens by 2 points, a gambler using a 6-point teaser can lower the line on the Giants game to have the Giants as a 3-point underdog instead of a 3-point favorite (getting 3 points instead of giving 3), and the Ravens as an 8-point underdog instead of a 2-point underdog (getting 8 points instead of 2).

The catch here is that ALL bets in a teaser must win; if even one does not, the entire betting ticket is a loser. That’s why they call it a “teaser,” because it can seem so simple to manipulate the odds to where you want them, and yet there is a decent chance of losing the whole thing.

Parlays

This is one of the places gamblers can get crazy. To boost the payoff on a bet, gamblers can string together a series of bets on multiple games, or multiple bets within the same game. This is called a parlay. It is a way to potentially win a lot of money for a small bet. But these bets are frequently losers. They are among the highest earning bets for sportsbooks, because, as is the case with teasers, every one of the bets in a parlay has to win, or else the whole ticket is a loser.

Hang around gamblers long enough and you’ll inevitably hear a story about how someone missed a big parlay payout thanks to a tiny margin on a single game.

Props

There are also tons of other things to bet on, including so-called proposition or “prop” bets on things that might happen during games. You could bet on whether Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes or Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady will have more passing yards or touchdowns. You can bet on whether a particular team will be leading after the first quarter or at halftime, whether there will be a safety or whether any field goals will be missed.

There are also futures bets, which are wagers on things that won’t happen for a while. You can bet on the winner of a particular sport’s championship before the season starts or at any point during the season and predict whether a team will win more or less than a predetermined number of games. Similarly, you can also gamble on who will be voted most valuable player in the NFL or Major League Baseball.

Bottom line

Sound easy? It isn’t. Sports books rarely lose money.

Big favorites inexplicably lose. Underdogs with seemingly no shot rise up unexpectedly. Games that appear set for high-scoring shootouts end as low-scoring affairs. A star quarterback or running back gets injured early in a game and never returns.

What starts out as fun can easily become a problem for some people. Help is available for those with a gambling problem, or who fear they might be in danger of developing one, by calling 1-800-GAMBLER.

Gambling News

Draft: Hunter Passes Shedeur at No. 1

Most sportsbooks have Shedeur Sanders listed as the favorite to go No. 1 overall in the upcoming NFL Draft, but one is going against the grain and putting his teammate up top.

Syndicate

Subscribe to Syndicate
More