Sport Gambling and Where It Started

Sports betting is considered to be a form of gambling. Billions of dollars circulated in sports betting industry annually. Great sporting competitions (for example, the World Series and the Super Bowl) attract millions of bettors which leads to billions of dollars in bets.

Since the appearance of first sports, there have been people who were eager to wager on the results of games. At first, people used to bet at horse races or cockfights. It was not only the way of getting some money but the way of entertainment as well.

The beginning of sports betting

What concerns the first steps of bookmaking, in particular, sports betting, one should recall horse racing which was very popular at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. But at that time racing was enjoyed mainly by the upper crust of the society. But step by step horse tracks began to appear everywhere and bettors from all classes crowded the racecourses.

At first, bookmakers used to make bets for each horse separately. But this format didn’t stay long as bettors were short of luck if the horse they wanted to bet on had already been taken. The bookmakers soon understood that if someone set odds on single horses it would blow up betting handle and, as a result, their own money. As soon as there were too many bets on one horse, the bookmaker used to lower the odds to warm up the attraction of other horses in that race. In some parts of the world bookmakers still make use of this scheme though horse racing is not very popular at present.

At the end of the 18th century baseball started to come in and the new type of betting – betting on sport – appeared. Baseball 'pool-cards' reminded present-day parlay cards. Bettors had a wide choice of baseball betting options. The min bet was 10 cents. But there was one problem – a bettor had no chance to win a lot as the odds were calculated in favor of the bookmaker. But it didn’t stop the spreading of bookmaker’s houses.

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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.

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