moneytalks

Football is the most highly bet game of all the major sports. The super bowl is the most bet on game of the year, in any sport. You can bet on the coin flip, first score, who will make the first score, which team will win the toss and anything else you could possibly imagine. But among all these prop (proposition) bets there are your basic point spread and total wagers. These will be what you’ll be betting on for the entire season and in the playoffs. The point spread is when the book maker decides how many points one team should give another to make the contest fair. Take for example if you have a team that’s 5-0 and everyones pick to win the Superbowl, they are playing a 1-4 team that at home and the 1-4 is even missing their star QB. The spread might be somewhere around 10 points for this game. That would mean if you bet on the favorite, you would have to win the game by more than 10 points to win your bet. If you bet on the underdog you could lose the game up to 9 points. Both sides would push on 10. The total is the expected total score of both teams combined. That means if the score is 21-17, the total for the game would be 38. Let’s say that the total for the game was 42, the under would win and the over would lose. Picking winners is tough, most people will end up picking right around 50%. Which is bad because the books charge a fee for betting. This is called vig or juice. It is usually 10 cents. Or you may see -110. This means that you must bet $110 to win $100. If you bet 20 games for a season and win 10 and lose 10 and are a $100 a game bettor, you’ll have lost $100 for the season. This makes it so you must hit around 56% of your games or higher to make any sort of profit. Betting can make a boring game seem fun but just as long as you know your boundaries and know your limits.