A Beginner’s Introduction to Football Betting

Types of Football Bets

Full Time Result

Fans will be able to bet on the full time result of a match. Odds will be offered on team A to win the game, team B to win the game, and for the game to end in a draw. This is the simplest bet and can be found for all football games.

Handicaps

This is a bet that is available to most football matches, where the bettor can place money on one of the teams to win but with a goals handicap. The handicap can be positive or negative, depending on whether the team bet on is the favourite to win or the underdog.

A handicap of -2.5 may be placed on the favourites, in which case the team needs to try and win the game by at least 3 goals. This bet comes with an elevated risk, compared with the "match winner" bets, but the odds will be significantly increased. A handicap of +1.5 may be placed on the underdogs, in which case the bet wins if the team wins, draws or does not lose the match by more than 1 goal. Positive handicaps will reduce the risk of betting on the underdogs, but at the same time it will shorten the odds.

Handicaps are usually a good option for punters who want to bet on one of the teams to win, but they either want to increase their betting odds or reduce the level of risk. In matches where the two teams competing are not evenly matched, the handicaps may be useful.

Total Goals

Everyone enjoys watching a match where the teams score a lot of goals, and punters can try to predict how many goals will be scored in a game with total goal bets. These bets do not relate to which team wins the match, or if the match ends in a draw, it is only connected to how many goals are scored by both teams together.

There are usually multiple totals bets available. The market presents a betting line, such as 3.5, and there will be a bet for the match to end with more or less goals than that number. If a bettor places money on the game to end with more goals, it means that the final combined score of both teams should be at least 4. If a punter places money on the match to end with less goals, the combined scores should add up to 3 goals or less.

Double Chance

The double chance bets are three way bets, where each bet covers two of the three different possible outcomes. The bets will be team A to win or draw, team B to win or draw, or team A to win or team B to win. These bets have slightly shorter odds than betting on which team will win the match, but they cover multiple possibilities so they are safer.

Halves

Football matches are played in two halves, and there is an option for punters to bet on the final result of one of the halves. In both halves, punters will be able to place a bet on either team A to win, team B to win or for the half to end in a draw. It is important to note that the result is only taken from the half. If a team wins the first half 2-0, but then concedes 1 goal in the second half and finishes the game 2-1, they will be counted as losing the second half, because the score from the half is independent from what happened in the first half.

Many More Bets

In certain games there may be a huge number of additional bets to choose from. These may focus on certain team statistics, such as how many corners a team will win, how many fouls a team will concede, how many free kicks the team will be awarded, and so on.

There may be special bets for players, such as will a certain player score a goal, will the player score two goals, will the player assist, and so on.

For fans who want to place bets that are even more specific, there may be bets on events to happen in the match such as will there be a penalty in the match, will there be a red card, will one of the teams come back from going 2 goals down and more. There may even be bets such as correct score prediction, which require the punter to accurately guess the score at full time. This is incredibly difficult to predict but can come with some truly long odds, attracting the attention of many daring punters.