What Does Money Line mean?
Money Line is the most straightforward type of bet; it is popular among both experienced professionals and beginners. The point of a Money Line bet is to determine a winner of a match or to predict a draw and place a respective bet. Some sports are simpler as they do not imply draw outcomes by design or a tie is hardly possible: for example, in tennis, or volleyball. To estimate an approximate winning amount, you need to multiply the bet amount by the bookmaker’s odds.
Historically, Moneyline betting appeared in North America, but today it is one of the most convenient types of bets in the worldwide betting industry.
What do Minus and Plus odds mean?
Learning to understand the odds is an important part of betting. We recommend you sort this question out before you start betting on sports because the odds determine the expected probability of an outcome and the amount of money you can win. In other words, they help you to understand your chance to win and evaluate your possible profit. Below we will discuss how to read the odds in American format, mainly familiar to US and Canadian punters.
Minus odds
If you see odds with a minus sign (for instance, -150), it means that a bookmaker is pretty sure that the outcome will happen. For instance, -150 odds for the Baltimore Colts victory in their upcoming matchup against New York Giants, determine the Colts as favorites and imply that their chances to win are higher than their opponents’.
Negative odds show an amount that you must wager to win $100. In our example, you must bet $150 to get $100: not the most lucrative offer, but the winnings are more likely to appear in your pocket.
Plus odds
Positive odds, on the contrary, mean that the outcome is less going to happen but will pay out more than you bet. If you see, for instance, +200 odds, you can immediately cipher out that your possible profit from a $100 wager is $200.
Examples of negative and positive odds
Money line examples
For a better understanding of the Moneyline system, we can give some examples of this type of bet. In this part of the article, we will show how decimal odds work. Don’t worry, they may only look daunting — in fact, it is just an alternative way to express your possible outcome.
Suppose one bookmaker offers the following odds of bets on the NBA match of teams “A” – “B”:
- 1.78 for team A’s win;
- 2.28 for team B’s win.
If we recalculate the above quotes, we can understand that the bookmaker determines the probability of victory for team A at 56.2%, and for team B at 43.8%. If you chose team B, and you think that they have more chances to win than the bookmaker suggests, you can place a bet on W2. If team B wins, you can win (with a bet of $1000) 1000 x 2.28 – 1000 = $ 1280. If team A wins, you will lose $1,000.
Another example with already familiar American odds: you may bet on the C team as a -150 favorite to win or on the D team as a +180 underdog to win.
If you bet $100 on the C to win at -150, you would get a payout of $166.70. If you bet on the D to win at +180, the payout you may expect is $280 because they are an underdog.
Moneyline betting scenarios
There can be situations when odds may confuse you and give you the wrong information. Let us get some of the scenarios straightened out right now.
Lower-scoring sports
The fastest runner is not always the winner. There are sports where high speed or a large number of points, on the contrary, can lead to a loss, while being low and serious-minded is half the battle: for instance, golf. Unlike Basketball, Football, or other sports of such kind, a Golf player who scores fewer points in the round wins. In this case, you may get confused by the odds when betting so make sure you know the rules of the game and pay attention to this fact.
How to Handicap Moneyline bets
Handicap bets are those where a certain number of points are added to the number of points of a team or a sportsman.
There are two types of handicap: negative and positive and it works like Money Line. A negative handicap shows how much you have to bet to win $100. For example, if the value is (-200), it means that you must bet $200 to earn $100.
A positive handicap is the one that shows how much you may earn by betting $100. If the value is (+200), your profit will be $200, if you bet $100.
Handicap Markets Example
Searching betting odds
If you are planning to play sports betting, you should know that the higher the odds per game, the more money you can win. This is especially important for those who place large bets. In this case, even a small difference in odds will have a big impact on the number of your winnings. This is why odds comparison is so important.
It is better to pay attention only to odds provided by trusted bookmakers.
If you notice major changes in odds, it is important to find the reasons for these changes to understand whether it is worth betting or better to save your money. Understanding why the odds change is an important betting principle. By identifying how money affects the movement of the market, you can make more accurate predictions of the outcome.
The odds provided by different bookmakers can significantly vary (up to 20%). Thus, if you place the same bet at different bookmakers, your winnings can increase or decrease by 20%. Therefore, it is best to place bets with the best odds. To win more, you need to check the odds and compare them with each other.
Home vs Road Performance
Many experts believe that most teams play better at home than away. Probably, we can agree with this statement, especially since there are several confirmations for it.
Firstly, at home matches, athletes are actively supported by their native fans. When a team plays on a foreign field, the opposing team’s fans boo it with every attack.
Secondly, the psychological factor and the attitude of the athletes play an important role. Many are sure that if it is necessary to win on the home court, then even a draw will be a good result on the opponent’s field. That is why some teams pre-set themselves for a draw in the away match. In addition, on the home site, I want to perform as best as possible, because their fans are watching the athletes.
Even for an outsider in a home match, the odds increase
It may sound surprising, but there are teams that play better away than at home. Most often, these are large well-known teams, for example, Real, Barcelona, Bayern – they can equally win both at their home stadium and away.
Matchup edges
The term matchup means competition between two players in individual sports or a confrontation between two players in opponent teams. Most often, this concept can be found in basketball. Let’s try to briefly describe the matchup strategy – it consists in the fact that before the start of the match the bettor must draw up a list of leader-commanders who, as a result, can arrange a competition among themselves.
When you select matches for betting according to the matchup strategy, you have to keep in mind the following factors:
- The team has a clear leader with good defensive qualities (if we are talking about basketball, then an athlete must score at least 18 points in one match).
- The athlete is in excellent physical shape (keep in mind that even if the most important leader is injured, he will no longer be able to withstand the competition)
- The athlete’s leadership status is also recognized by other specialists – partners or coaches.
- During the game, the opposition of the leaders should be visible from the first minutes – While watching the broadcast, the rivalry is noticeable from the first minutes.
You also have to know that not all the oppositions can be called matchups – for example – mass media often talked about the confrontation between Michael Jordan and Brian Russell.
But in the end, Michael Jordan always left Brion Russell in the second position, gaining the necessary individual points and ensuring the victory for his team.
Recent play
To make predictions for the future, you need, first of all, to choose well-known teams and make sure that the player knows the rules, competition conditions well, and also has an idea of the main tactics of the teams and the athletic form of the players.
For betting, it is better to choose those competitions or teams about which there is a lot of information on the Internet. For example, it is not difficult to find news about the Champions League matches, as they write a lot about it and always discuss it.
Markets on the TOP tournaments are usually distinguished by bookmakers separately in the bet lines.
Any prediction starts with an in-depth analysis – for each sport, there is a different set of factors. If you take football as an example, then you need to take into account the following: statistics of the last matches of the teams, the composition of the players and the presence of injuries or disqualifications in the teams, weather conditions during the match, and much more. This information will help to make the most accurate sports forecast, but it is important to take into account that each sport has its own characteristics, and one of the integral factors is always unpredictability, which makes it impossible to predict any sporting event accurately.
Moneyline strategy: Betting favorites vs Betting Underdogs
The money line bet is one of the easiest to bet on. A Win Bet is a bet on a team to win. The chances of winning are great – since in almost all sports, with rare exceptions, there is a winner and there is a loser. Nothing is easier than betting on a money line. When betting on the money line, it doesn’t matter to us how the team or the athlete won – because the fact of victory is important.
When you bet for example on MMA you always face the main question – if you should place a bet on the favorites or the underdogs.
Many experts believe that it is more profitable to bet on underdogs. The fact is that the formation of the bookmaker’s line, in addition to the probability of the event and pre-match layouts, is also influenced by the amount of “loaded” money. The more they bet on the favorite, the more the coefficient for his victory decreases, thus increasing the figure for his loss. That is why it is more profitable to bet on underdogs.
If you bet on favorites – you have to be sure that you analyzed all the factors – because you will have high chances to win only if you know exactly that this sportsman or a team is the best – but you can’t be sure anyway. That’s why betting on favorites is always a big risk because even the best team cam fail the game.
Moneyline odds different
It is not easy to understand how the money line is paid, however, it is popular among bettors. The main feature is that the money lines for football and basketball games are often tied to the difference in the number of points. When a game has a wide range of points, its money line is usually large. Both bets are separate bets but appear together on the sports betting app screen and in the regular sportsbook. Keep in mind that each sportsbook offers different odds for each game.
FAQ
How do you read a Moneyline bet?
The main thing is to remember the basic rule: the higher the handicap on the favorite, the more likely it will be that he will win. That is, the higher the handicap, the lower the money line betting odds on the favorite, and the higher the outsider betting odds.
What does a +200 Moneyline meaning?
It means that you will make a profit of $200 if you bet $100 and were correct.
What’s the difference between a Moneyline and a point spread?
The difference is that in Moneyline betting there are favorites and underdogs, but you do not give or get points – the line is inflated to show the underdog and the favorite. In the point spread, you will be getting points for underdogs and giving points for favorites.
Last updated on 31 Oct 2022 - 12:52
