Basketball offers bettors a great way to try to make a profit as a quick as possible. However, before you get started with basketball betting, you need to know a few basic types of bets that are important for this.
Moneyline bets are the most common and simplest way for bettors to get started. With moneyline bets, you are betting on the winner of the game. As an example, here is a hypothetical situation.
Let us say the Celtics 1.3 are the favorites at odds 1.3 to beat the Hawks (3.4) on their home turf. If you bet $10 on the Celtics, you would get $13 back if they win, which includes your bet of $10. The profit would therefore be $3. However, if the Hawks won, you would not win anything and lose your $10.
Winning on the Celtics would bring you $34, including your initial $10 bet, so your winnings would be $24, which is eight times higher.
Once you understand how to bet with moneyline bets, handicap betting can be a valuable tool for bettors when a team is heavily favored over their opponents. To counteract the alleged superiority, the bookmakers offer a handicap to compensate for the difference.
This compensation i.e. the handicap (displayed as + or – , such as +7.5 points or -7.5 points) is calculated in the final result to determine the outcome of the game in the sense of the bet. This means that the handicap result will differ from the actual result.
For example, if the Cleveland Cavaliers are the favorites over the LA Lakers, this is displayed with a negative number next to the odds e.g. -7.5. The Lakers are displayed with +7.5. This means that if the Cavaliers win with a result difference less than 8 points, bettors that have placed a handicap on the Cavaliers will lose their bets.
Essentially, to win a handicap bet on a favorite, the favorite has to win and the result difference has to be higher than the handicap offered. However, to win a handicap bet on the Lakers (the underdog), they do not necessarily have to win. They just have to keep a lower result difference than 7.5.
On the other hand, betting on the overall result (the so-called over/under bets) is when you bet whether the total points scored in a match will be above or below a set value.
If the Toronto Raptors were playing the Indiana Pacers today and you were offered to play the over/under bet, you would have to choose between the more likely outcome. Do you believe that the total score will be over or under 210.5 points?
If you think it would be over, just select the odds for Over and vice-versa. In the end, if the final score were 115:98 no matter which team won, you would win the bet because the total score is 213 points, which is over 210.5.
These three are the most basic basketball betting types, which will give the bettor a solid foundation on how to bet on basketball. There are even more advanced betting types so keep learning!