How to Read Betting Lines
If your sports betting experience consists mostly of office pools during March Madness or a casual wager between you and a friend while you watch the Super Bowl, the transition to serious sports betting means learning how to read betting lines. The biggest difference between making the kind of casual bets mentioned above and placing wagers with online sportsbooks or at brick-and-mortar bookshops is the use of sports betting lines. Casual wagers usually involve each person in the bet picking one team to win, then wagering an equal amount, say $20 or $30. Professional bookmakers, online sports betting exchanges, and sports betting facilities in casinos have a more complex system for offering wagers on sporting events, in part to ensure profit on the part of the book, and in part to present a standardized representation of odds.
Football Betting Lines Explained The novice football bettor may be a bit overwhelmed when they first create an account at an online Sportsbook and then look at the posted NFL betting lines. Most bets with your buddy will be on what NFL team will win straight up or who will cover the spread. If you’re new to betting, one of the first things you should do is learn how betting odds work. It’s critically important because it allows you to understand how likely an event is to happen, and what your potential winnings will be. At first, it may appear confusing, however, read our guide and let us explain it to you. Welcome to the Sports Betting Odds section of The Sports Geek. If you are new to sports betting and don’t understand how to read betting odds (+150, -110, +2200, etc) we will lay it all out for you and help you learn how the betting odds work.
Sports Betting Odds
Let’s start with the basics: what do sports bettors mean when they talk about a ‘line?’ The word line, in the language of a sportsbook, can refer to either the odds and/or a point spread in any sports contest. Let’s take a look at an imaginary line the way you’d read it off the board sitting in a Vegas sports betting lounge or on the screen at your online book. Let’s imagine a game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. Your book’s NFL betting line might look something like this:
Understanding Betting Lines Football
DAL -7.5-110 -405
NYG +7.5-110 +300
56.5 ov-110
What may look like a jumble of words, numbers, and punctuation is actually a precise and easy-to-read breakdown of the various odds and point spread details your book is offering. Here is a breakdown of each unit of information given above. Once you understand each part of the jumbled details above, you’ll be able to read a sports betting line with confidence.
The Point Spread
Obviously, the first three letters on the top two lines of the three-line package of symbols represents a team in the game you’re wagering on; NYG stands for the New York Giants, while DAL stands for the Dallas Cowboys. The number next to each team’s name is known as the spread or the point spread. Wagers on the point spread are among the most popular sports wagers in the world. The reason this wager is popular is that it doesn’t matter which team wins or loses; what matters is the amount of points the teams score, and whether or not the team you place your money on beats the difference in points (the ‘spread’) or not.
Placing a point spread bet means gambling on how much a team will win or lose by. In our above example, the Cowboys are the favorite. How do we know that? The minus symbol in front of the point spread indicates that the bookmaker thinks the final score will have Dallas winning by 7.5 points or more. The underdog, in our example that’s the New York Giants, will always be indicated with a plus sign. If you wager on the Cowboys on the point spread, America’s Team will have to win by at least 8 points for your wager to pay off. Should the Cowboys win by less than 8 points, your bet is lost.
A wager on the Giants on the spread does not mean that New York has to win the game in order for you to win cash. All the G-Men have to do is come within 8 points of the ‘boys, and you’re a winner. You determine a winning or losing point spread by adding or subtracting 7.5 from the final score, depending on which side you laid your bet. If you’re confident that New York will at least come within a touchdown of beating the Cowboys, or beating them outright, then you’d wager on the spread in favor of New York.
A quick word on that annoying half point in the point spread – most lines you’ll come across will use half points, but it’s not standard practice across the board. When you see a line with a full number instead of a number with a half point, your wager could end up as a push. In our example, if the line were 7 instead of 7.5 and the final difference in points was exactly 7, your wager is returned to you, and neither you nor the book makes money.
What’s the function of the second number in the line?
Understanding Betting Odds
The second number in our example (-110 for both teams) tells you how much you have to wager in order to win $100. It’s an easy way to calculate how much you’ll win if your bet pays off, presented in units of $100 at a time for simplicity’s sake. Most of the time, these two numbers will be the same, because oddsmakers want to set lines so that they get as much action on the underdog as on the favorite, guaranteeing them a profit. If a book gets a single bet of $110 (by a customer hoping to win $100) on the Cowboys and a single bet of $110 on the Giants, it will have taken in $220, but will only have to pay back $210 to whichever customer wins the bet. That’s a guaranteed profit of $10, and since sportsbooks take far more than a single bet in either direction, they stand to earn that seemingly small amount of profit many times over. The $10 difference between what you wager and what you win is known as juice or vig in the sports betting industry, and it’s the way books earn their bread and butter.
Understanding Betting Odds Sports
What does the last number in the line mean?
The last number in the top two rows of our sports line example is known as the money line. If you’re not interested in betting on the point spread, you can wager on a team to win outright. The plus sign next to the underdog (in our case, the Giants) indicates how much money you’ll earn for every $100 you bet on the money line. Conversely, the minus sign next to the favorite’s line tells you how much you have to wager in order to win $100. In our example, a $100 wager on the Giants earns you $300 should they pull off the upset, while a bet of $405 on the Cowboys will net you an extra $100. Representing odds in units of $100 makes placing different size bets easy; if you want to bet $10 on the Giants, you stand to earn $30 if they win, while a $40.50 bet on the Cowboys will net you an additional $10.
What does the bottom row of numbers and letters mean?
The final line of information in our example line is the over-under. Wagers placed on the over-under have nothing to do with which team wins or the difference between the points they score, but rather the combined number of points both teams will score in the game.
The first number (56.5 in our sample line) is the book’s predicted total score, while the second number (110 in our Giants/Cowboys rivalry game) is how much a punter has to bet in order to win $100. If you were to bet the over-under on this game, you’ll have to decide whether you think the combined score of both teams will be higher or lower than the number put up by the book. Let’s say you bet the over, assuming the game will be a shootout between two talented offenses, you’re hoping that the final score will be anything that totals 57 or more. It could be Dallas 54, New York 3, or any other point combination that adds up to 57 or more and your bet will win. Betting the under means that the two teams cannot score more than 56 points combined, or else you lose your bet.
Reading sports betting lines becomes easier with practice and experience with different sporting events. What looks like a jumble of letters and numbers actually gives a lot of information in a tiny amount of space. Different sports have different types of wagers available, such as the run line in baseball or the puck line in hockey, both of which replace the money line found in our football example. The more experience you have watching and gambling on different sports, the faster you’ll be able to read betting lines.
The novice football bettor may be a bit overwhelmed when they first create an account at an online Sportsbook and then look at the posted NFL betting lines. Most bets with your buddy will be on what NFL team will win straight up or who will cover the spread. This guide give you the basic types of Football wager types associated with a betting line.Football Betting Line
A betting line is a posted number that the online Sportsbook posts for each game in a certain sport. The betting line will have different wager options within the betting line. Bookmakers will post odds on who they think will win the game. The betting line will usually show a favorite and an underdog. The example below will show what a NFL betting line looks like at one of our recommended Sportsbooks Bovada.com .Moneyline Wager
The Moneyline wager means you are picking who you think will win the game straight up. In the example above, the Moneyline odds on the New York Giants are +140. In this example the New York Giants are the underdog. The +140 means that for every $100 you wager you will win $140. You do not have to wager $100. The betting line is a payout ratio odds and will be scaled to your actual wager. The favorite in this example is the Detroit Lions denoted by the -160. You have to risk $160 to win $100.NFL Point Spread Wager
The Point Spread is one of the most popular wagers in NFL Football betting. You need to cover the Point Spread to win your wager. For example the Favorite in this game is the Detroit Lions as they have a point spread of -3(-110). For you to win your wager, the Detroit Lions would have a final score beating the New York Giants by 4 or more points. The (-110) in brackets is the 'juice' or 'vig' on the wager. Sportsbooks take a standard 10% commission on all wagers. If there is not a -110 beside the point spread it is usually assumed 10% juice. The Underdog in the point spread is the New York Giants +3(-110). For you to win your wager the NY Giants could lose the game by 2 points or less. If the final is score is a margin of 3 points then the wager would be graded a PUSH and the wager amount would be returned to you.
NFL Total Wager
A Total Wager is a bet on the OVER/UNDER for the Total Score at the end of the game of the combined teams. In this betting line the TOTAL is 33 (-110). For you to WIN the OVER TOTAL wager the final score would have to be 34 points combined for both teams. If the TOTAL score is exactly 33 then the wager would be graded a PUSH and your wager would be returned to you. The NFL betting line in the above example is for the full game. An NFL betting line can also be posted for 1st Quarters(1Q), 1st Half(1H) and 2ND Half(2H). Not all Sportsbooks post 1Q lines for all football games. Professional bettors are known to profit on 1H and 1Q wagers because they are able to handicap NFL games accurately because many NFL coaches script their first half plays. Moreover, 2H bets are very popular because you are able to see how well the team is playing in the first half.Circled NFL Line
Occasionally you will see a GREEN or RED box around a NFL betting line. When a NFL Point Spread, Moneyline or Total betting line is boxed RED or GREEN this is referred to as a CIRCLED Line. It is also referred to as GREEN or RED Boxed.