Betting Education
Curious about the types of sports bets? Check out our guide to sports betting, which covers all the need to know topics and terms. Learn about all popular types of bets, including parlays, teaser bets, prop bets, and all the need to know terminology for betting on sports.
A parlay is a single bet that links two or more wagers. To win the bet, the player must win all the wagers in the parlay. If the player loses one wager, he loses the entire bet. However, if the player wins all the wagers in the parlay, the player wins a higher payoff than if the player had placed the bets separately.
A straight bet is an individual wager on a game or event that will be determined by a pointspread or money line.
A futures bet is a wager placed on an event typically far in the future, such as which team will win next year pro football championship game or pro hockey championship series.
Proposition bets, or prop bets, focus on the outcome of events within a given game. Props are often offered on marquee games of great interest. These include Sunday and Monday night pro football games, various high profile college football games, major college bowl games and playoff and championship games. An example of a prop bet is: Which team will score the first touchdown?
A teaser is a type of football or basketball wager in which the pointspread is adjusted by additional points in the player favor on more than one game. In football, a player may move the posted pointspread 6, 6.5, 7, 10 or 14 points. On 10 and 14 point teasers, ties lose. In basketball, 4, 5 and 6 point sports betting teasers are offered.
A round robin is a series of parlays. For example, a three team round robin consists of three two team parlays: A plus B, A plus C, and B plus C.
The most popular sports bets are based on the point spread. The point spread represents the margin of points in which the favored team must win the game by to cover the spread. Bets on the point spread are usually offered at 11 to 10 odds. For example, a player must bet $11 to win $10 for a total payout of $21, or $110 to win $100.
The money line represents the odds of a team winning the game outright without the use of the pointspread. The money line is expressed as a three digit number. For example, minus 150 means a player must bet $150 for every $100 he wishes to win, $15 for every $10, and multiples thereof.
