Defining Sports Betting: The Legal Kind, That Is
Sports betting is the wagering on the outcome of sports events, from pro teams to college tournaments, from football to boxing to basketball. A sports book is the facility that operates the betting arena. A sports book may be a stand-alone establishment, one that operates within a casino, or one that exists ethereally in cyberspace. Think of the sports book as the legal form of your local bookie, without the insults, the phone calls in the middle of the night, and, of course, the baseball bats.
Betting on a wide world of sports
Sports betting in the United States encompasses a spectrum of sporting events, although professional and college ball games are the most common. While in Nevada, you can make your wager on the following sports and sporting events, listed in order of popularity.
Because the rest of the world’s taste in sports is quite different from that of Americans, an online sports book offers an array of events that may seem strange when viewed through red-white-and-blue–tinted glasses. If you broaden the betting net to include events accessible online or overseas, you can bet on.
Leveling the Betting Field with Lines and Point Spreads
How does the casino get you to bet on an underdog, such as North Dakota in a game against Notre Dame? With all due respect to North Dakota, the Sioux probably don’t have much of a chance in a football game against the Fighting Irish. Great disparities between teams exist throughout the world of sports competition. If everyone bet on the favorites, casinos would have a hard time making money. Thus, sports books employ one of two systems, commonly called lines, to level the playing fields between the Davids and the Goliaths — at least in the betting arena. The casino doesn’t care who wins the game. Its primary concern is to get an equal amount of wagers on both sides in order to ensure its vig.
Rounding Up Sports Betting Differences
Betting activity varies from sport to sport. Remember that football and basketball wagers typically involve point spreads, while baseball uses money line bets. This section looks at the major sports and their unique idiosyncrasies when you make a sports bet.
Slam-dunking basketball bets
You can wager on both college and professional basketball games. Just as in football, point spreads, parlays, and teasers are par for the course. The one major difference between football and basketball is the number of games. The basketball season (for pros and college) is three to five times longer than the football season, which gives you more opportunities to uncover information that may give you an edge.
Knocking around some boxing bets
Boxing uses a money line for all its matches. You can also find prop bets, such as how many rounds the fight will go or whether it will end in a knockout. Big fights, however, are few and far between, so this sport, unlike baseball or basketball, has few opportunities for betting. Handicapping, or using statistics to predict an outcome, is a challenge, too, because much of the available information is more subjective than statistically based. (See the following section “Understanding Handicapping Basics” for more about handicapping.) And the house vig is generally worse for boxing than for bets on other sports.
Many handicappers are a combination of all three types, blending their own unique perspective with methods borrowed from other handicappers. If you’re a smart handicapper, you can consistently beat the house. One reason for your success is that you can choose which teams to bet or pass on, which gives you much more control than the house has.
Summary
Many handicappers are a combination of all three types, blending their own unique perspective with methods borrowed from other handicappers. If you’re a smart handicapper, you can consistently beat the house. One reason for your success is that you can choose which teams to bet or pass on, which gives you much more control than the house has.
