Types of Sports Bets

Life is basically built on taking chances. Nearly everything that we do has chances of being a success or a flop. We have the same risk involved when it comes to sports. The result is never a guarantee that it will fall in favor of one team or the other and this is what makes it exciting.

Sports betting is one of the exciting ways that one can make money. It involves taking a risk on a predicted result either on a match or on a duel that involves two different entities. There are different types of bets that one can place in a bid to make money.

Proposition bets

One of the types of bets common in sports betting is proposition betting. This is betting based on different types of outcomes or sub outcomes in match. The parties involved put up wagers in a bid to predict how a match will go. It may be a bet on which team will score first or even which team will win and by how many points. It may be a bet on a particular player and how many points they look set to accumulate in a match or even a comparison between two players in a bid to pick who among them will get more points.

Parlay bets

Parlay betting is a type of betting that is done targeting a string of results. It involves one placing bet on more than one predicted result in a bid to win big. The successful candidate is the one who gets all his bets right and they are set to win big by collecting the winnings from all the bets they have placed. However, if they lose any of the bets then they lose it all.

Progressive parlay is whereby one is allowed to put up multiple bets from which they can collect big winnings if they are all successful. The difference between this and normal parlay betting is that one is allowed to collect reduced payout if some of the bets are lost.

Teaser bets

Teaser bets are mainly made in baseball or basketball and they have similarities with parlays considering that for one to win their bet the team they have selected has to win. The difference lies in the fact that the bettor is allowed to spread the risk though at the expense of reducing their payout. They are are allowed to make the range wider so as to increase the odds. They can move the point spread in a game between two teams in any direction to boost their chances of winning.

Run line, puck line and goal line bets

Run line betting involves wagers that are placed on point spreads that are fixed. One can bet on a team to win by one or two runs or the losing team to lose by one or two runs and this increases their chances of getting a huge payout. This bet is done for baseball games and the odds are also affected by whether a team is playing at home or on the road.

Puck line bets are placed on ice hockey games and puck line is usually the goal line in an ice hockey game. This involves betting on a team to win by more than one goal or the underdog to lose by more than one goal.

Goal line betting involves wagers placed on teams conceding or scoring goals. The bettor wins their bet when the said team wins or loses by the margin that was predicted. All these bets are done on future games and are collected once the results that were predicted are attained.

Future bets

Future bets are made based on an event that is predicted to happen in future and it may be on events that are bound to happen weeks or even months later. The bets are placed well before the start of the event for example placing bets on a team to win the trophy at the start of a tournament. This may be a bet like on the chances on a team winning the Super Bowl at the end of the season in January and the bets are placed at the start of the season in September. For people who have bet on teams which get knocked out before the end of the season then they are off the books. The winnings are collected at the end of the event once the predicted team wins and they are usually expressed as a ratio between odds. One can place a team at the odds of 60-1 to win a championship and that means that if that team wins then they are meant to collect 60 times the amount they wagered.

Head to head bets

Head to head betting is another type of betting that is popular with bettors. This is a type of betting where one takes into account the results between competitors rather than the overall outcome of the competition.

One can do a short term head to head bet for example on two formula one drivers predicting on who is going to finish faster or who is going to get disqualified. One can even do a long term bet in a bid to predict which driver will have the most podium finishes at the end of the season as compared to other drivers or even who will have most wins at the end of the season.

This type of betting can be done in different types of sport like comparing different footballers and the number of goals they are likely to score by the end of the season or even basketball players and who is likely to end up where in the scoring charts.

Totalizator bets

Totalizer betting is similar to the bets that are done by people who bet on horse races or dog races. It is done between bookmakers and the bettors and the earnings are split depending on the percentages that are agreed. If the bookmaker has a 70% return percentage on the winning result then the bookmaker will keep 30% of the earnings while they give the 70% to the bettor.

These are some of the types of betting that exist and when done wisely this venture can turn out to be very lucrative.