Sports betting is a great way to make money while watching the sports you love.

If you’re new to sports betting, we’ve got just the post for you. Today, we’re going to talk to you about how sports betting works and give you a few pointers on how you can succeed.

It’s a daunting prospect going up against the odds, especially when there’s hard-earned money on the line. Now that sports betting is legal across all 50 states, however, you can put the time in and turn this once-in-a-while hobby into something that actually makes you money.

Your Guide for How Sports Betting Works

When it comes to the big 4 American sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey), betting functions in the same basic way. You’ve got oddsmakers that set the lines and bookkeepers that actually take the bets. How you bet is dependent on your knowledge of the sport in question and, of course, a bit of luck.

Oddsmakers

The job of an oddsmaker is to set “the line” on a given sporting event. By taking into account things like a team’s overall performance, the playing surface, home field/court advantage, weather, injuries, and morale, the predict a score difference between the two teams.

The goal for an oddsmaker is to keep the same number of bets on both sides of an outcome so that the bookie won’t lose too much money. The point spread system is the most widely used in sports betting.

For instance, when you bet on Super Bowl 2020, the line might be set at Green Bay -4.5 over New England. You can either bet on Green Bay to win by 5 or more points or not. If New England loses but the score is 24-21, you still lose the bet.

The other thing that oddsmakers do is set the money line odds on a bet. Using the same super bowl example, an oddsmaker might have Green Bay at -120 odds to win the big game over New England. As a bettor, if you were to put $100 on New England to win outright, and they do, the payout would be $120.

Betting Tips

To become a moderately successful sports bettor, you just have to know a little bit about the sport you’re betting on and how the teams have been playing lately. To become a professional sports bettor, you’ve got to dig a little bit deeper into what can change odds and understand how lines can shift.

In a sport like basketball, there are so many games that lines will shift frequently, depending on how the team is playing. In football, you have to pay attention to what’s going on during the week and know when to jump on a point spread and when to wait to see if it moves.

When you get more in-depth with sports betting, you’ll start to utilize parlays to increase your payouts. A parlay is when you combine multiple bets, decreasing the odds with each one, and increasing your payout when you win.

Be Careful With Your Bets

When you’re first learning how sports betting works, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the possibilities of making serious money from it. However, you’ve got to be extremely careful not to get too invested in gambling of any kind. You could always end up going down a dark path with a few bad bets in a row.

Try to have fun with it, especially in the beginning, and hopefully, you’ll get to a point where you can make bets comfortably.

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