You may be familiar with spread bets in sports betting, but are you sure you know exactly what they mean? A spread can refer to the difference in price between two teams or athletes. For example, if you bet on the New York Giants to win the NFC East division in the NFL, you would be getting a payout of +150 on your bet. If they win, the payout on your bet would be 150; if they lose, your payout would be 100.
But what if the New York Giants aren’t playing that day? In that case, you would have lost money because you were really betting on the Philadelphia Eagles to win the NFC East division. The spread doesn’t always mean that one team will win and the other will lose; sometimes it can be a draw. If you’re not sure what a spread bet or a prop bet is, continue reading…
Why Are Spreads In Sports Betting?
The most important aspect of sports betting is that it’s a gamble. You’re taking a chance on whether or not your favorite team will win. What’s more, you’re not necessarily placing a bet on them winning; you might be placing a bet on them losing. This type of wagering gives the gambler an edge because it’s not always clear what will happen. You could place a bet on the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, but if they get crushed by the Cleveland Indians, you might end up losing your entire investment.
Even when betting on a winning team, the odds might not be in your favor. For example, if you bet $1000 on the New York Yankees to win the World Series, you would be risking $1000 to potentially win $1500. But on the flip side, if you bet $1500 on the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series, you would be risking $1500 to potentially win $3000. So although you might win a little bit of money, it’s certainly not something to bank on.
The point of this hypothetical example is that if you don’t know what a spread is, it’s difficult to know how much money you’re risking or what odds you’re facing. This kind of ambiguity is what makes sports betting exciting for some people, but also risky for others. Just remember: winning sports betting is possible, but you have to be prepared to lose some money along with the possibility of making a lot more.
How Do You Determine A Spread?
For the sake of this article, we’ll use our previous example of betting on the winner of the New York Giants vs. the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL. We’ll pretend that you’ve never heard of a spread before and you’re wondering how exactly you determine one. First, you would want to get the best deal you can for your Giants bet, which in this case would be +150. Next, you would want to get the best deal you can for your Eagles bet which in this case would be -170. Finally, you would want to come up with a total of all the spreads you’ve chosen to make on a particular day (in our example, that’s the NFC East division).
Now that you have all the details of your planned wagers, you can set your total for the day. To do this, you would add up all the individual odds for each game (or event) and then divide that total by 2. For example, if you’ve chosen 5 spreads on a football day, the total of all those games would be 5 x 3 = 15. You would then divide that by 2 to get 7.5 which would be your total for the day. Now that you know how to determine a spread, you can come up with a plan for how to wager on your favorite team(s) and get the best possible return on your investment!
The important thing to note about this example is that it shows you the math behind coming up with a spread. Instead of just putting down -170 on the Philadelphia Eagles and +150 on the New York Giants, you would want to do some research to see if there are any trends or patterns that could potentially affect the outcome of that game. For example, did either of the teams play well last season? Did they have winning records in previous seasons? Are there any injuries or suspensions that could possibly affect the performance of one of the teams? You could also check online forums or read football books to get a better idea of what could happen on any given Sunday.
More Than One Team Per Spread
Let’s say that you’re an avid sports fan and you want to wager on more than one team per spread. You want to make sure that you’re not missing out on any opportunities to win because you’re only taking wagers on one group of players at a time. For example, you know that the New England Patriots always do well in the winter and the Pittsburgh Steelers do well in the summer, so you want to take a chance on them this winter and summer. You could make a spread bet on both teams winning, but it’s not always the case that the two teams always have to be separated by a spread. Sometimes they could be in the same division or conference and still lose or win by enough to cover the spread. This is where research comes in handy: you can use spread statistics to your advantage by knowing which seasons to bet on and which teams to bet against!
In the previous example, we used five spreads to make a total of 25 individual bets, which we’ll round up to thirty-two games (for the sake of simplicity). Now that you’re more familiar with how to determine a spread, you can come up with a better plan for how to wager on more than one team. You could set up a spreadsheet and create a few different scenarios that would make more sense based on the trends and statistics you uncover. For example, if one team tends to lose in the summer and the other team tends to win in the winter, you might want to consider taking a chance on the winter loser in the summer or vice versa. You could also look into recent history to see how the past games have played out and use that to make better wagers. For example, if you notice that the Dallas Cowboys have won the past three years in a row against the New York Giants, but those three games were all in the last three seasons, you might want to take a pass on that spread and go against the grain this year. You may be able to find similar patterns for other teams or conferences so long as you do your research before placing a wager. Having more than one team per spread can help improve your odds of winning and make sports betting more exciting for you!
What If You Bet On A Team That No Longer Exists?
Although it’s not common, occasionally a team will no longer exist when the season starts. For example, the 2010 New York Yankees were one of the best teams in baseball that year, but they no longer exist as an active franchise. Luckily, you still have the chance to place winning wagers on their behalf.
If you choose to do so, all you need to do is search for their historical results. For example, if you’re interested in betting on the New York Yankees, look up their results from 1936-1947, since they no longer exist as an active team. This will tell you the winning percentage for the Yankees in those years and will give you an idea of how the games would have played out if they were still around (with the occasional exception of 1942, when they played in the All-Star game due to the events of World War II). You may also want to check out their minor league teams from the 1920s and 1930s to get an idea of what they were like back then.
In our example, the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers have been separated by a spread for several years; however, since the Patriots don’t exist as an active franchise and the Steelers play in the AFC South, it doesn’t make sense to continue the spread in that case. You would need to look into historical results for the Tennessee Titans or Houston Texans to see if it’s currently beneficial to bet on the Patriots or Steelers in those games.
Why Does It Matter What Season It Is?
Another important factor to consider when deciding to wager on sports is what season it is. You obviously can’t place wagers for the Dallas Cowboys in the winter or the San Francisco Giants in the summer, so you must find a way to determine what season it is whether or not they have an outdoor sport scheduled that season. You might choose to use different colors for each team to easily identify them in the betting line, but you don’t necessarily need to identify the teams by hue; you could use statistics to your advantage. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers have only lost once in the last four seasons, so if you’re looking to wager on them during that time frame, you would want to do so at least a little bit further in the future than immediately.