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Spread betting was invented by Charles K. McNeil, a mathematics teacher from Connecticut who became a bookmaker in Chicago in the 1940s. [5] In North America, the gambler usually wagers that the difference between the scores of two teams will be less than or greater than the value specified by the bookmaker, with even money for either option.
The most popular way of betting is by laying or getting points. The most popular way of betting is by laying or getting points. Skip to main content. 24/7 Help. For premium support please call: ...
If you bet $110 on every underdog against the spread last season, you would have lost $930. Underdogs won outright in just 97 of 272 games last season. That is a winning percentage of under 36%.
As the Super Bowl nears, legal gambling on sports is booming. Wagers have gone beyond scores and point spreads to include such beyond-the-game prop bets as how many songs Usher will sing at halftime.
In gambling parlance, making a book is the practice of laying bets on the various possible outcomes of a single event. The phrase originates from the practice of recording such wagers in a hard-bound ledger (the 'book') and gives the English language the term bookmaker for the person laying the bets and thus 'making the book'.
McNeil's invention, the point spread, revolutionized sports betting by introducing a method of wagering on the margin of victory between competing teams. This system, more commonly used in football and basketball, aims to level the playing field by creating a form of handicap between the favorite team and the underdog .
In the last two seasons, the spread matters less than 15% of the time.
Parlay bets are paid out at odds higher than the typical single game bet, but still below the "true" odds. For instance, a common two-team NFL parlay based entirely on the spread generally has a payout of 2.64:1. In reality, however, if one assumes that each single game bet is 50/50, the true payout should instead be 3:1.