Of America’s four biggest spectator sports it is probably true to say that basketball is the easiest of all to bet on and is therefore perhaps the most suitable for novice gamblers. Similar to the other favorite, football, basketball utilizes a point spread system for placing bets on teams and also a system known as over/under. As a result if you have ever placed a bet on football you will have a head start in understanding the mechanics of the system and betting on basketball is pretty well the same.
Perhaps the most common way to bet on basketball is by use of the point spread system. The points spread is a handicap system whereby bookmakers place an imposition on one of the teams in order to make each team ore equal when it comes to betting. In terms of the point spread the team that is widely expected to win the game is known as the favorite while the opposing team in the same game is referred to as the underdog. The favorite in the game is given a handicap that it must overcome in order for a wager on them to be considered successful while the underdog is given a point bonus to their score in order to give them a higher chance for a wager on them to be considered successful as well. This means that even if the favorite wins a game by a small margin a wager placed on them might not be successful, while at the same time even if an underdog loses a wager could still pay off.
As an example of how this works let’s look at a hypothetical match-up of the Knicks and the Celtics. If the New York Knicks play the Boston Celtics most gamblers betting on the match would, in all likelihood, expect the Celtics to win. Let us imagine, though, that the point spread system makes the Celtics a 15-point favorite for the game. In purely betting terms this will mean that the Celtics must win the game by 16 points or more in order for those betting on them to win the bet. Conversely, those that placed their wagers on the Knicks would win if the Knicks were to even lose by 14 points or fewer. In the event that the Celtics were to win by 15 points precisely the bet is deemed a tie and no money would change hands.
The way the bookmakers make their money on such bets is that when gamblers bet against the point spread the gambler many times will be asked to lay 11-10 odds, which will mean that they must bet $11 in order to win $10. If, for instance, one gambler places $11 on the Knicks and another bets $11 on the Celtics the bookmaker and sports book would collect $22 from the two gamblers but they would only give back $21 to whoever wins. The extra $1 is regarded as a bookmaker’s fee for taking the bet in the first place.
With the second system of totals, or the over/under system, gamblers place their bets on the total predicted combined score of the teams in the game. The predicted number is posted and gamblers can bet on whether or not they feel the overall game points for both teams will be more than the predicted total (an over bet), or they can bet less than the total (an under bet). This type of bet is highly popular and can be found in many in many different team sporting events.
