Learn How to Bet On Sports
This guide will explain how to bet on sports events in the form of a glossary: the world of sports betting is full of betting jargon and instead of making it a guide with several parenthesis explaining the terms, a rather efficient way to learn bit by bit about the sports betting world and how to become a profitable punter is to master the concepts involved one by one.
Stake
The stake is the amount of money that you bet on a sports event. It is one of the factors that determinate the size of the potential prize.
Odds
The most important concept of the sports betting world, the odds are more complex than they seem: they aren’t just the number that multiplies the stake to determinate your potential betting prizes, they are the ‘prices’ of the betting world. If you are familiar with economic theory you know how prices may seem simple but are the ultimate expression of the two main forces of the economic world, the demand and the supply.
Applying economic concepts to the betting world may sound too complex but lots of knowledge of the financial world can be transported to the betting universe. If you are learning the basics about sports betting, stick to the basic definition: the odds determinate the prizes alongside with the stake size.
Prize Money
As simple as it sounds, the product of the stake X the odds, which is your prize in case you guess correctly the outcome of a sport event e.g. the victory of a football team.
Betting Bonus
A promotion or a package of promotions that are offered by sportsbooks to gamblers as a marketing strategy to retain new customers. There are several different kinds of bonuses and packages, the most common ones would be the welcome bonus (normally comprised of a deposit bonus or a welcome package involving the deposit bonus and some free spins for slot games), the refundable bets (free bets) and the enhanced odds.
1X2
The most common system of odds, it represents the chances of the 3 possible outcomes of a football or handball game for example, the number one are the odds for the hosts winning the game, the ‘X’ odds represent the odds for the match draw and the ‘2’ are the odds for the victory of the away team.
Handicap (Asian Handicap)
A system of odds designed to ‘balance’ teams of great disparity – it is considered an advanced system which requires more experience to obtain profitable results but it worth the struggle to master it as the odds of this market can be much better than the traditional 1×2 which is the most common system of the ‘retail world’ of bets.
Underdog
The team that isn’t the favourite to win a game, normally associated with much higher odds than the ‘dogs’ which is a term that is also used to define the stronger team. ‘Favourite’ and ‘underdog’ however are the most common terms.
Over/Under Bets
Bets on goals of a football game or points of a basketball or volleyball game often use these terms to determinate whether a number of points / goals will be ‘produced’ by a game or a specific portion of a game such as a 1st half or a set.
Draw no Bet (DNB)
A special kind of bet that excludes a potential outcome. If you bet on a DNB selection of a football game, the draw isn’t ‘taken in account’, that is to calculate such odds you simply calculate a proportion of chances of both teams winning. Find out more about how to calculate betting odds at our specific guide called ‘Betting Odds Explained’.
Summary
If you grasp all the basic elements of the sports betting jargon described at this article you will be able to successfully start your betting journey; as secondary guides to improve your betting skills we recommend our guides about betting bonuses and the specific articles about bets on sports that aren’t as popular as football in Brazil like Basketball, MMA, Tennis and more others.
Keep in mind that the best way to learn how to bet is to place your first bets and nothing better than free funds in the form of betting bonuses to gain some traction in the sports betting world.
