Sports Betting – Money Lines Betting
Sports betting can be an extremely exciting and rewarding adventure if you apply it correctly and minimize the chances of losing your bets. While point bets deal with which team will win and by how many points or scores, money line bets are exclusively concerned with which team will win a specific game or event.
To better explain betting money lines, we can take a loot example. Here are the hypothetical baseball odds between the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers:
Chicago Cubs +120 Los Angeles Dodgers -130
Right away, we see that the Dodgers are the favorite team (indicated by the minus sign) as opposed to the Cubs, who are the underdog (indicated by the plus sign).
Betting the money line in this case, bettors betting on the Dodgers risk $130 to win $100, while bettors betting on the Cubs risk $100 to win $120.
Don’t be intimidated by the betting money lines. Although they are usually expressed in $100 increments, you don’t need to bet that much money all the time. You can also bet money lines with just $5, $10 or $20.
Line bets are typically used for various sports where the point spread is irrelevant. Boxing, auto racing, baseball, hockey, soccer, and tennis all involve betting money lines. Although there are marginal wins to bet on in these sports, they are so close that it would be virtually impossible to produce a point spread for each and every game.
Keep in mind that the difference between the money line odds on the favorite team and the underdog will increase as the odds of the favorite team winning increase. So when the odds are in favor of a specific team, you may be risking just $100 to win $550 for the favored team, while you may need to risk $700 to win $100 for the underdog.
These large betting differences occur because bookmakers really only make money when the underdog team wins. Sportsbooks realize that most people will bet on the favorite team and they need to hope that enough people will bet on the underdog to cover their possible losses on the favorite team.
Betting is generally used on almost all sporting events, even those that have a point spread implemented, such as football and basketball. Although you can still place your bet with the point spread, betting basically gives the bettor a different option when deciding whether or not to place a bet.