A Beginner’s Guide to Football Betting

People who tend to like to gamble using slots and online casino sites also tend to like to gamble with other aspects of life. Some people will play bingo, but the majority turn to sports betting, and football betting in particular.

Many of the best online casinos now have sports sections, and nearly all online sports betting sites have online pokies and casinos. There is a difference between sports betting and wagering at online casinos, though. When you play at an online casino, your chances of winning are all down to luck, nothing more. If you use a sports betting site, then if you bet on markets upon which you are familiar with you stand a greater chance of emerging on top!

While football may be considered the beautiful game, betting on the sport tends to get really ugly really fast if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’ve seen countless people lose thousands of dollars when learning the ropes of football betting, which puts them off from the sport altogether.

To help them out, we’ve compiled a concise football betting guide that will help you understand the basics of betting on football (soccer). So, if you can’t tell your Asian and European handicaps apart, this guide is bound to help you out!

The Two Handicaps

To win big when betting on football matches, you need to be able to tell your handicaps apart. Here’s all you need to know about these two essential terms,

1. European Handicap

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how European handicaps work. When you break it down, this handicap operates the same way as a 3-way bet. This handicap becomes active when there’s a significant difference in class and quality between two teams.

To understand this better, let’s say the Brazilian National Football team is about to entertain San Marino at Estádio do Maracanã. Given how highly rated the Brazilians are, it would make no sense for the bookies to offer you simple, straightforward odds.

In such scenarios, bookies tend to offer a European handicap. For example, your local bookie may offer you a handicap of -2 goals.

That means, even if you bet on Brazil and they win by a one-goal margin (1-0, 2-1, 3-2, etc.), you lose money. This particular handicap makes it so that Brazil have to win by at least 2 goals for you to win!

2. Asian Handicap

Unlike its European counterpart, an Asian handicap is a little tricky.

For example, Manchester United are about to play Yeovil Town at Old Trafford. Every sensible betting person will tell you that betting on United is the safest bet you’ll ever make. So, to make things more interesting, a bookie will introduce an Asian handicap.

Let’s say that the handicap is 2.5 goals in favour of Yeovil Town. This means that even though the game starts at 0-0, Yeovil Town has an advantage of 2.5 goals on the betting books. In other words, you can only win if Manchester United were to win by 3 goals (3-0, 4-1, 5-2, etc.)

Types of Football Bets

Football is by far and away from the most popular market at all online sports betting sites, which is quite understandable as football is the most popular sport in every country in the world, except the United States where they can’t even call it by its proper name. At the US, football is known as Soccer.

If you know your football, then you could start making a little bit of cash by putting that knowledge to use at a leading online sports betting site. Here are a few types of football bet that you might like to consider.

1X2

The most common type of football bet is a simple forecast. There are only three possible outcomes (mostly) to a football match – home win, away win or draw (unless the game is played on a neutral venue). You bet on what you think the outcome of the match is likely to be.

Draw No Bet

This is a bet that takes away the possibility of the draw as you wager upon whoever you think is going to win the game. If the game does actually end in a draw, then you get your stake returned.

Under/Over

This is another bet that has become very popular in recent years. With this bet, you are betting whether there will be over or under a specific number of goals scored. Usually, that number is 2.5, but you can bet on 0.5, 1.5, 3.5 and so on.

You may find it confusing that the number is 2.5, as to how can you score half a goal? In truth, it’s just a simpler way of saying ‘two goals or less’. If you bet on there being under 2.5 goals, then if the game contains 0, 1 or 2 goals, you win, but if it contains 3 or more goals, then you lose.

You may see offers such as ‘Under 2.25 Goals’ which might confuse you even more. You can’t score half a goal, so how can you score a quarter of a goal? A bet such as ‘Under 2.25’ goals is just two bets in one. Half your stake goes on ‘Under 2 Goals’ (i.e. 0 or 1 goal), and half your stake goes on ‘Under 2.5 Goals’ (i.e. 0, 1 or 2 goals). If 0 or 1 goal is scored then both ‘half bets’ win and if 0, 1 or 2 goals are scored then just one bet wins. If more than 2 goals are scored, then both bets lose.

BTTS Yes/No

Another increasingly popular bet in recent years has been BTTS, or ‘Both Teams To Score’. With this bet, you can bet that both teams will score, or that both teams won’t score.

This is a brilliant bet for any game where both teams tend to score plenty of goals, but both teams also conceded quite a few too. If you bet on both teams to score then unless one of the sides keeps a clean sheet, then you are a winner.

Similarly, if two goal-shy teams meet who also have tight defences, then you can bet on ‘BTTS No’. That means if at least one side keeps a clean sheet, then your bet is a winning one.

Double Chance

A double chance bet is one where two ‘1X2’ bets are combined. Your three options are the home team and draw, away team and draw, and home team and away team. Obviously, the final bet is only a winner if the game does not end in a draw.

Half Time/Full Time

This bet split the game into two separate matches, as it were. You bet on the ‘result’ at half-time, and then the proper result at full time. As there are three possible outcomes to each ‘bet’, there are nine possible outcomes in total:

• Home-Home
• Home-Draw
• Home-Away
• Draw-Home
• Draw-Draw
• Draw-Away
• Away-Home
• Away-Draw
• Away-Away

This is good when a team play who generally play better in the second half. This makes outcomes such as draw-home (or draw-away) or away-draw (or home-draw) very attractive.

Goalscorers

You can bet on individual players to score during the game. You can bet on them scoring the first goal of the game, the last goal of the game, or at any time during the game.

You might think this is a bit of a lucky bet, but it can be useful if a player who scores a lot of headed goals comes up against a side that concedes a lot of headed goals, for example.

Doubles/Trebles/Accas

You can, of course, combine your bets in the hope that you win more money should you be correct. The benefit of combining bets is that if all your bets come off, then you win more money. The downside is that if one of your bets fails, then you win nothing,

If you combine a bet, then your winnings from your first bet act as the stake of your second, and so on. It doesn’t matter what order your bets are ‘chained’ as the odds will always be the same.

Combining two bets is called a double, and combining three bets is called a treble. Anything with four or more single bets is called an accumulator, or ‘Acca’ for short. Remember, the more bets you combine, the more chance your bet will fail.

Simple Football Betting Terms

Now that you know your handicaps and types of football bets let’s quickly go through some common betting terms that will help you get started.

1. Stake

This is pretty self-explanatory. The stake is defined as the money you’re willing to bet on the match.

2. Accumulator

Accumulators can be incredibly fun or incredibly frustrating. Basically, a football accumulator is a series of bets you place on a matchday, that offers you exponential profits should you win.

For example, you bet that Juventus will beat Atlanta B.C., AC Milan will overcome Napoli at the San Siro, Torino will defeat Inter. Roma will beat Fiorentina in a particular match day, then the odds of each outcome will multiply.

In other words, if you bet $5 on an accumulator, you can (based on the likelihood of each outcome) stand to win thousands of dollars! That being said, you will only receive your winnings if every single one of your predictions come true. In our current example, let’s say Juve, Milan, and Torino win their games while Roma is held to a draw at Fiorentina, you will lose your stake!

So, when it comes to betting with accumulators, it pays to know when to get out and when to continue betting.

3. Half Time/Full Time

This is a two-way bet. For you to collect your winnings, you must be able to predict the correct half time and the correct full-time score. For example, for the Lyon vs PSG match, you bet that the game will be level at half time and PSG will win at the final whistle.

However, if PSG scores in the first ten minutes of play, you will lose your money even though you predicted the correct final score!

And there you have it; a beginner’s football betting guide! We believe that if you thoroughly study this before the next matchday, you can earn a lot of money while watching the beautiful game!

However, if you find your football knowledge to be lacking and want to learn more, we highly recommend reading our gambling dictionary, which will help you learn the gambling terms which are most commonly used. Never leave your winnings up to chance and always bet smart by reading our gambling dictionary!

We hope that this football betting guide has served you with all the knowledge you need to get started. Remember, as always, bet responsibly.