Sport Betting System

At present, depending on different sports several systems for betting exist in the world. You can also find different systems for one and the same sport. Before understanding any of them, one should get acquainted with the main terms and notions of sports betting . Action is the process of betting.

To handicap means to provide one team with some sort of advantage so that to even up the betting odds.

The handle is the sum total of money involved on bets.

A sportsbook is a special house which accepts bets (also called ‘a book’). A bookie is a person who takes bets.

Juice (vigorish, vig) is the bookie’s profit expressed in the percentage from all the bets taken. Mainly, juice is calculated from the odds but in some bookmaking houses it is a fixed percentage.

The term ‘spread’ is widely used in such sports like football and basketball. It is a sort of handicap whose main aim is to level all games and make them competitive for bettors. The spread provides a few-point advantage to one team over the other. As a rule, the point spread is presented in the form of a formula where the odds-on favourite team goes first with a negative number (called ‘actual spread’). The host team is usually written in capital letters. For example, if Manchester United were playing against Aston Villa in Aston Villa, it would be stated like this: “Manchester United -5; ASTON VILLA”. It means the following: if you bet on United, the team should win with more than 5 points in order the bet to be paid off. Aston Villa gets an advantage of 5 points before the game.

The money line is used in sports (such as baseball) where scoring isn't very high and the point spread is out of advantage. For example, this money line formula can have the following look:

TIGERS -1.20; Astros +1.10

In some bookmarking houses the decimal point is omitted, it means 120 is equal to 1.20.

If you want to place your bet on the team which is considered a favorite (in our example, Tigers), you need to bet $1.40 for every dollar you’d like to win. If you want to bet on the other team which is very often appears a loser (in our example, Astros), you need to bet $1 for every $1.10 you would like to win. It is called ‘the dime line’(10 cents are between the favorite and the underdog).

Pick'em is another name for money line games when two teams are neck and neck and the line on both teams is -1.10. You need to bet $1.10 for every dollar you want to win. A Parlay is a complex bet when you make only one bet for five different sports games instead of five bets. If one game is lost, the parlay is lost, too. But the pay-off is much higher in parlays.