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When betting on sports game you must consider understanding very well what the betting line is. A betting line mostly consists on point spread, money lines and the Over/Under total, which are posted by the bookmaker every time there is a game.
The betting line is used by most sports betting and has been of great acceptance by the public because of their simplicity in which probability is handled. Let me give you an example based on a basketball game which uses point spreads, money lines and Over/Under bets.
Team |
Money Line |
Spread |
Total |
Chicago |
-175 |
-4 |
182.5 |
Atlanta |
+155 |
+4 |
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If you are making a straight bet then you must consider who the favorite is and who the underdog is as showed in the betting line. The favorite in this case is Chicago with a spread of -4 and the underdog would be Atlanta with a spread of +4. Understanding the betting line is really simple. If you choose to bet for Chicago then they must win by more than 4 points so you can win the bet, if they win by 4 points then it is a no-action result, but if they wing by less than 4 points or loose then you loose your bet. The betting line on the point spread column will tell you by how many points is the spread going to be established.
The betting line also shows the Total. This betting line value is the prediction of the bookmaker of the approximated sum of both team’s final scores. Your job is to bet that the score will be higher or lower than the one established by the bookmaker. This betting line is very popular on basketball because of the high points that a game reaches and the closeness both scores get to be. In the betting line shown we have a total of 182.5. This means you can bet over or under 182.5 total points.
Money betting lines are a bit different from the points spreads. It uses the same symbols to represent the quantity you need to bet to win an amount of money and the quantity you will win if you bet $100. In the example we have Chicago with a betting line of -175 and Atlanta with +155. If you bet for Chicago then you must wager $175 to play the chance of winning $100. If you bet for Atlanta the betting line will tell you that if you bet $100 on them you will receive $155 for your bet. It is a very simple to interpret betting line with real amounts of values. You don’t need to bet the exact amount on the betting line, you can bet more or less than a $100 and it will be proportional to what the betting line has established for that game.
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