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The Different Ways to Bet a Football Game
There are several different types of common football bets, which we describe and analyze below.
1. Against the Spread
In every game, there is a favorite and an underdog. In order to make the game even for betting purposes, oddsmakers come up with a point spread, or line. The spread is a handicap, the amount of points you have to part with if you bet on the favorite, and the amount you will receive as an underdog. For example, if the Titans are favored by 15 over the Cowboys, (Tennessee -15 vs. Dallas ), and Tennessee wins 31 - 20, then those who bet on Dallas win, and those who backed Tennessee lose. Essentially, the game is looked at as a 35-31 Dallas win because of the spread. If Tennessee won 31 - 16, the game would be a push, and both parties would get their money back.
Every game that has a point spread is considered an even proposition, a 50/50 bet. In fact, that is the purpose of the spread, to make the teams even, so that there is no obvious advantage to picking one side or the other. In order to make money on wagers against the spread, sports books charge a commission (or a vig), typically 10%, that you pay on losing bets, i.e., you have to risk $55 to win $50.
In order to overcome the vig, you have to win roughly 52.5% of the time. To illustrate this, imagine if you made 100 $1 bets and won 53 of them. You would win $53 and lose $47. So you're up $6. But on top of the $47, you lose another $4.70 (the 10% vig) and net $1.30.
Another option you have when betting against the spread is buying an extra half point in your favor. If Tennessee is favored by 2.5 over Jacksonville, and you want to bet Jacksonville, it may be worth your while to purchase another half point and make the spread three. That way if Tennessee wins by a field goal, the most common margin of victory in the NFL, you would tie instead of losing.
The cost of the half point is an extra ten percent on losses, i.e., instead of just betting $55 to win $50, you would bet $60 to win 50. So if Tennessee won by six, you would lose $60 on a $50 bet.
The only time it's worthwhile to buy a half point is to move the spread from 2.5 to 3 if you're betting the underdog and 3.5 to 3 if you're betting the favorite. Moving the spread from 6.5 to 7 if you're backing the dog or 7.5 to 7 if you like the favorite won't hurt you over time, but it won't help you, either. Never move a line from 5.5. to 6 or 5.5. to 5, for example, because those are rarer margins of victory, and the double vig is too heavy a price to pay for the off chance that the half point helps you.
2. Over/Under
Also called the total, this is a bet on the sum of points scored by both teams in a given game. For example, the over/under line for the Titans-Cowboys' game might be 40. If the Titans win 30 - 13, the total is 43, and the over wins. If the Cowboys, win 20 -13, the total is 33 and the under wins. It doesn't matter which team scores what, (unless you bet that specifically).
The over/under is also a 50/50 bet, and as such, there is typically a 10% vig attached, just as with games against the spread.
3. Money Line
The money line is as odds bet. Instead of parting with points or receiving points to make the game even, you part with or receive extra money. For example, if the oddsmakers believe that it's twice as likely that Dallas will beat Arizona than the other way around, then the odds will look something like this: Dallas (-220) vs. Arizona (+180). Dallas -220 means that if you want to bet on Dallas, you have to risk $220 in order to win $100. Arizona +180 means that if you bet on Arizona, you risk $100 to win $180.
The reason why you lose $220 if you bet Dallas win just $180 if you bet Arizona, is that this disparity takes the place of the vig, i.e., the big is built into the odds here.
4. Parlays
Basically, parlays are bad bets. They are essentially the combining of two or more standard against the spread bets for a better payout. For example, if you feel strongly about Tennessee -15 against Dallas and Philadelphia -10 against Arizona, then you may want to parlay the two games. In that case, if you lose either you lose your entire bet. If both win, you get paid 13-5 or 5-2, depending on the house.
In other words, if you parlay $50 on those two games, you'll win $125-$130 if and only if both teams cover. So why is this a bad bet? Because you have a 50% chance to win each game, and thus a 25% chance to win both. If you were getting true or fair odds, a 25% chance would pay 3:1. In that case, you would risk $50 to win $150. But you only get $125 to $130. Assuming that you get $130, you are receving $20 less (or 13.33%) less than an even bet would pay. But remember: on normal bets against the spread, you only kick in an extra 10% on losses.
Since whether you pay extra when losing or get less when winning amounts to the same thing, the 13.33% built in vig is even worse than the 10% added vig you'd ordinarly pay.
5. Teases
There are two basic kinds of teases: a two and a three team tease. With the two team variety, you can take six points and do what you want with it on two different games. For example, if you like Tennessee-15 against Dallas and Philadelphia -10 against Arizona, then you can tease both spreads down by six points, to Tennessee-9 and Philly -4. Assuming you bet $50, if the Titans win 30-20 and the Eagles win 16-10, you will win $50. If either team fails to cover the teased spread, you lose $50. Moreover, if you tie on either leg of the tease, you lose the entire bet.
There's no need for the house to take a vig because the tease is a bad bet. Six points, as attractive as it seems, doesn't quite make up for having to win both games.
You can also tease over/under bets. For example, you may tease the Titans down to Titans-9, and if the over/under is 40, you may tease that down to 34 and bet the over. So you have the Titans-9 and over 34. In order for you to win, the Titans must win by 10 (ties lose) and the teams have to score 35 points or more combined. A 33 - 10 Titans win puts you in the money; a 33 - 0 costs you.
Of course, you can take the Cowboys +21 and over 46 if you like as well. You can do whatever you want with six points per game, but you must win both.
Three team teases are the same thing but you get 10 points to play with, but you must win all three games. As tempting as is to bet the on Arizona +20, Dallas plus 25, and over 30 combined on the Dallas Tennessee game, the fact that you must win all three makes it a bad risk. There's a reason they call it a tease.
These are the five most common types of football bets. In general, you should avoid parlays and teases and stick to picking against the spread, betting totals and playing the money line. Good luck this season. As the NFL season prepares to kick off, we look at the resources available to the smart football bettor.
If time is money to you and you'd rather spend your time making money than reading this article through to its conclusion, I'll sum things up in a single word for you: Sasquatch!! Just kidding...it's actually "INTERNET". For everyone still reading, here's the detailed scoop:
Before the days of the World Wide Web, bettors lived in isolation. People would get together in bars (well, my friends and I were in the parking lot at the local high school... the only place we could hang out until we hit the magic "18") or cafeterias, lunchrooms and diners, comparing notes on the upcoming weekend games. You'd read the newspaper, and if you were lucky you got ESPN or something like it. Maybe grab a magazine. That, friends, was it.
The utterly devoted were always looking for edges. I'm reminded of an older friend scouring Logan Airport in Boston for out-of-town sports sections of newspapers before he caught his flight home for weekends. Now and then he'd find crumpled papers that let him read what the beat writers in other cities said about their teams. If he won big the week before, he'd blow $5 at the airport kiosk on whole, brand new papers.
Another guy I knew was trying to develop a primitive form of power rating on his computer, a Radio Shack machine he affectionately called his "Trash 80".
Today these people would just seem a little quaint. The Internet and new, sophisticated spreadsheets can do all this work for us. Check out the following:
MEDIA PAGES
Almost every major newspaper in the US has gone online. Further there are collected lists of links of online addresses (BWORLD has such at list...it's at "The Newsstand" off Handicapping Central which is off the front page). Here, in an hour or two, you can read what every beat writer is saying about every team. No lurking around airports either!
There are also many good sites that cover the NFL as a whole. The NFL's official website, nfl , has official injury lists as they become available – but don't expect a weekly column from Mr. Tagliabue saying he "really likes the Eagles plus the points this week". The NFL still officially dislikes gambling, even if that's the reason the TV ratings are so high.
DEVOTED NETWORK PAGES
Of somewhat more use are the dedicated NFL pages off the main pages of the networks that carry the NFL. The best is espn , but foxsports and cbssportsline are also good. ABC, which only covers Monday Night Football and a couple wildcard games, has a ho-hum information site of its own off ESPN.
Where ABC is the equal or the better of its rivals is in its college coverage, particularly in relation to any team with even a remote shot at appearing in a BCS game. ABC "owns" the BCS for the next while, and they cover, in depth, the games for all the marbles (well, last year, it was for all the Tostitos). Find it off abcsports . Fox isn't involved in broadcasting the college game nationally at all.
HANDICAPPING PAGES AND FORUMS
Better still are the web pages devoted to winning money at betting football. These of course vary widely in quality-- from the joker who's eating up perfectly good bandwidth that rightfully belongs to fans of the TV show "Webster", to top notch handicappers and handicapping forums.
BWORLD's "Handicapping Central", "Bookies Hell" posting forum, is a great places to look for all the dirt. These information pages and forums, and pages and forums like them elsewhere, are great resources for overall betting strategy (which we'll start discussing next week) and specific info on specific games.
As with anything else on the Internet, be careful about evaluating the information you read. Like picking stocks or forecasting the weather, nobody's right all the time...and some handicappers are far superior to others. (If you think somebody knows his stuff, track his picks.) Even in the better forums, thanks to the democracy that is the Internet, each season without fail a few schmucks will appear and promise to hit 65%, 70%, 80% of their picks against the spread. Well, you know how in "Romeo and Juliet", amongst all the killing and warring, the minstrels or the wet-nurse and Mercutio would show up intermittently to lighten the mood and give everyone a few laughs? Well, this is sort of the same deal. Nobody hits 80% consistently, period.
Which brings us to a related matter: We'll discuss this in-depth later, but for now just take my word for it: DON'T pay for picks. Some pages and many phone services require a fee to get their "information". Leave these scamdicappers to feast on suckers...don't you become one! (There are a few "touts" who do try hard for their clients; there are a few that are not crooks. I respect a couple, but these folks are few and far between.)
ANY OTHER IDEAS?
Well, I do have one non-Internet (but somewhat technological) one that melds nicely with the "guys just sitting around comparing notes" theme:
A group of friends I know have invested in expanded college FB coverage and "NFL Sunday Ticket". Each armed with two VCR's (some are top-loading, 40-pound stone-age machines), they divvy up bunches of games to tape. They then watch and analyze the games on Tues./Wed nights. With remote clicker in hand ready to hit fast-forward between plays, the boys can watch a whole NFL game in 40-50 minutes and a college game in 45-60 minutes...less if it's a blowout and the first string leaves.
This whole exercise lets them see, with their own eyes, if a team really did stuff the run last weekend or the other team just chose (or was forced) to be pass-happy. Is the O-line that good or was the defense always dropping eight guys into coverage? These guys know.
(Incidentally, these lads hit 61% in 1996, 53% in 1997, and 59% in 1998...enough to pay the TV bill, buy a drink on Thursdays after making the upcoming week's picks, and take their strangely understanding spouses out to dinner on Fridays.)
ONE FINAL ITEM..."THE SCREEN"
Maybe you've seen the ads on this site or elsewhere for the Don Best Line Service screen. What is this thing, and do you want it?
The Don Best Feed gives your computer live line updates from sportsbooks in Las Vegas, the Caribbean, and Central America. The premium service costs $500 US/mo. While the scaled-back "Island Express" service, which features fewer books, is $99/mo.
This lets you compare odds on the same game at different shops at a quick glance. Like the Giants this weekend and see that WWTS has them at -2.5 where everyone else has them at -3? I know where you're betting! (To take advantage of this, obviously you need accounts at as many of the screen books as you can get.)
It also lets you watch lines move as big action ("steam") on a single game hits the books within a short time period. This is most dramatic in baseball and in hoops totals, a little less so in hoops sides and in college FB, and least in the NFL. But you don't even need accounts at the screen shops to cash in on this:
Suppose you opened this morning's paper, reviewed the lines, and liked the Cornhuskers this Saturday at -2, and you've got a local guy that lets you bet the newspaper line. Well, if you see the line go from 2 to 2.5 to 3 to 3.5 at every shop on Don Best this afternoon, you better get that bet in TODAY before tomorrow's paper shows it to be 3, 3.5, or even 4 points.
Is the steam always "right"? Of course not. Sure, maybe the Cornhuskers will win by 14. They could lose by 7. But in the instance they won by 3, you cashed in largely because of the screen. Similarly, even though you like a team, you could watch the steam come down on the other team–so you'd know to let things settle down before you bet to get the best line possible. NFL Football Betting
Football Wager Types
Football is the most popularly wagered upon sport in the U.S., by a wide margin, for a couple of reasons. The games themselves are entertaining, and the wagering on games is easy to understand and readily available. Many proposition bets can be made on any number of games, but the most popular football bets concern the simplest outcomes; the winners of the game and the number of points scored.
A "point spread" or "line" is attached to just about every pro football and major college football game. Basically, the point spread is a number that represents a combination of two things; the oddsmaker's opinion as to which team will win a particular game and by how much, and the oddsmaker's opinion as to which team the betting public thinks will win the game, and by how much.
For example: In a game pitting the Bears against the Packers, Chicago is listed as a seven-point favorite, ( -7). So for a bet on the Bears to be a winner, Chicago must win the game by more than seven points. If the Bears win by less than seven points, or if they lose outright, the wager is a loser.
On the other side, a bet on the Packers is a winner if Green Bay wins outright or if they lose by less than seven points. If the Packers lose by more than seven points, the bet is a loser.
A Chicago win by exactly seven points results in a push, or no wager. And points scored in overtimes count toward the final result of point spread bets.
The other basic bet on an individual football game is the "total," or "over/under." The total is a number, usually between about 32 and 50 in NFL games, that represents the oddsmaker's opinion as to how many points will be scored by both teams together in a particular game. Bettors then have the option of betting that the total number of points scored in a game will go over the posted total for that game, or stay under.
For example, if the total in the aforementioned Chicago-Green Bay matchup is 35, bettors can wager that the two teams will combine to score fewer than 35 points, or more than 35 points. Points scored in overtimes count toward the game's total.
Another football bet is the "money line" wager. This is a bet in which the bettor just has to pick the winner of the game, without a point spread. But, of course, it's not that simple.
A money line involves a number that is based on 100. That number, usually anywhere from 110 to 1000, generally defines the oddsmaker's opinion of which team will win a particular game. It works like this: Our sample game lists Chicago as a -200 favorite. That means in a money line bet on Chicago, the bettor must put up $200 to win $100. If the Bears win, the bettor collects $100. But if Chicago loses, the bettor loses $200.
Conversely, a winning $100 bet on Green Bay will net the bettor $180, while a Packer loss only results in the loss of the $100 wagered. If the same amount is wagered on both the favorite and the underdog, and the favorite wins, the bookmaker makes nothing. But if the underdog wins, the bookmaker collects $200 from the favorite bettor and pays out $180 to the underdog bettor. The difference between the $200 collected and the $180 paid out is known as the "grease," "juice," or "vigorish," which is the profit made by the sportsbook.
The percentage of juice involved in a particular game increases as the odds on the favorite go up. With a favorite of -300, a $100 bet on the underdog, and a win, nets the bettor around $250. A game with a favorite of -500 and a winning $100 bet on the underdog is probably worth around $400. And so on.
When it comes to money lines on football games, a few specifics should be noted. Many sportsbooks don't put out money lines on games with very small point spreads. After all, a game that is a pick 'em, or close to it, is really just a money line bet anyway.
And many games with very large point spreads, common in college football, also won't have money lines attached to them. A seven-point spread equates to a money line of about -200. A 14-point spread might have a money line of around -600. But most sportsbooks do not put out money lines on games that have point spreads of -15 points or so or more.
Point spread and totals can be found at many sportsbooks not just on the final scores of individual games, but on the quarters and halves, too.
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