Online sports betting is becoming more and more mainstream for solid reasons. It’s a sure-fire way to stay safe while also indulge in all the excitement of the gaming world you’ve been craving. Online betting has proven effective in ways we could hardly imagine. Given its flexibility and speed, it optimizes the betting process and makes sure nothing gets in the way of the fun.
Surging forward in popularity online betting has a constant stream of new bettors. If you want to join the stream, chances are you can even become a sharp bettor with the right guide. We’ve decided to give you a quick cheat sheet of the process so that you have the basics at hand before embarking on your upcoming gaming journey.
Bankroll Management: Set Your Budget
Before you make your first bet online you need to decide on your financial capacity for wagering. How much are you willing to bet? Betting on certain sports is for the risk-takers, thus, it’s important to know what amount exactly you are risking. You can start with setting a certain budget limit for the upcoming week or month. Do not test your beginner’s luck and start with a reasonable amount. Take a look ahead at the possible losses and wins before you set the budget. The smaller budget for the first time will do just fine. Practice makes perfect, once you feel like you are already an old hand in betting, you can increase the numbers.
Read the Odds
It’s hard to resist the excitement of betting on your favorite sports. This may even be the biggest reason why online sportsbooks are being hyped. But before you start betting you need to learn how to read and interpret important concepts. Among them are certainly the odds. The least you can do is know how to deal with different types of odds and calculate the payouts. We won’t get to all the types but we can overview the most common one—decimal odds. You can see this format on most top-notch online betting platforms such as Pnxbet.
The format is considerably easy to understand. In a nutshell, it displays the exact amount of the winning bet return per unit. To calculate the potential returns you need to multiply the initial stake by the odds. To see the potential profit, apply the same formula subtracting one from the odds.
Let’s put words into formulas:
Potential Returns = Stake x Odds
Potential Profit = Stake x (Odds – 1)
Although Decimal odds are the most straightforward ones, there are other odds formats such as Fractional, American(Moneyline).
Choose the Sports to Bet On
To double or even triple the excitement of online sports betting, spend some time on choosing the sports to bet on. Some bettors hit the online betting platform already knowing what to bet on. If it’s something you still ponder upon, we say, make up your mind before placing your first bet. No sport has an edge over the other when it comes to betting, they are just different. You don’t necessarily need to go only for mainstream opportunities such as online football betting. Choose sports that you enjoy following and know a thing or two about. Understanding what you’re betting on will help you tackle every bet with confidence.
If you don’t have a favorite one see what sporting event resonates with you. You can check the online sportsbook sections of some top betting platforms for more inspiration. They give a wealth of options such as online horse racing, tennis, basketball, volleyball, ice hockey, baseball, handball, futsal, American football, MMA, badminton, chess, and many other sports.
Whatever sport you go for, make sure that it keeps you on the edge of your seat and you enjoy the whole wagering process to the fullest.
Research the Basic Bets
There are some basic bets you need to know to get things rolling. These are the go-to types you’ll most probably need at online sportsbooks. Let’s add some of them to our cheat sheet.
Point Spread, Favorites vs. Underdogs
One of the most viral types of sports betting is point spread betting. It’s especially viable for the best football betting sites, or the ones that also offer basketball, although it can be applied to all the sports. The point spread is basically an equalizer the sportsbooks offer. The main function of the point is to create equal chances of winning for both teams. One of the teams is labeled as the favorite of the game—the one that has better chances of winning, the other one that has lower chances of winning is called the underdog.
The favorite gets a minus sign(-) right before the odds number while the underdog gets a plus(+) win by the point spread.
Let’s say that the point spread for the teams in a football match is 2, team A is a 2-point favorite over team B, this means team A needs to win by 3 or more points. Team B is a 2-point underdog, thus, they need to either win the game or lose with a point that is not 3 or more.
There’s a lot more to learn about the spread point betting, this will just help you get started. If you are just starting, college football can be a good starting point to practice point spreading as there are hundreds of games a week and you can benefit from sites like Doc’s football picks that will keep you up to date and in the know, increasing your chances of winning.
Moneyline Bets
This is one of the most straightforward forms of betting. You don’t need to be a pro to simply pick the team or the player that’ll win. The bet can have two or three potential outcomes. If your bet turns out successful you get the money. There’s no point spread involved, although it has some relation to the spread point in terms of payouts. The components of the moneyline betting are again the favorites, the underdogs, and the pick’em(even)
Over/Under(O/U) Bets
In the case of an over/under bet, the sportsbook predicts a number for the statistics(the number mostly combines the scores of the two teams playing). Your task is to bet on whether the actual score will be higher or lower(over or under) the provided number.
Parlay Bets
If you are not much of a risk-taker parlay bets might be just the ones to click with you.
These are single wagers that combine together multiple individual bets. The outcome of your total single bet depends on the multiple individual bets winning altogether. Given that you need to succeed in all your individual bets to win, the payouts are much higher than in any other betting type.
Proposition(Prop) Bets
If you know the game full well or have a sharp sports intuition you can opt for Prop betting. It features wagering on something that’s likely to either happen or not during the game. The occurrence is not likely to directly affect the final outcome. An example of such a bet can be the time and the scorer of the first goal in football, etc.
Last but certainly not least, choose your betting platform. This is crucial to the whole betting process. Spend some time looking for the best match for your interests and needs. Go for a trustworthy, safe betting site that offers a smooth experience with betting bonuses and promotions. Once you find the platform and set up your account, you’re good to go and explore the world of online betting.
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