Betting Odds For Dummies

• Sports Betting For Beginners
• Understanding Sports Betting Odds
• Betting Odds For Dummies

So, you want to bet on the Super Bowl? Join the club. Every year, the number of people who bet on the biggest game in North American professional sports continues to grow, and so does the amount of money that rides on it.

Sports Betting For Beginners

The American Gaming Association estimates that nearly $5 billion was wagered on Super Bowl 51 between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. And what an emotional ride it was for anyone who had some cheddar invested in the outcome!

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Under bettors and Falcons backers were probably counting their winnings when Atlanta led 28-3 late in the third quarter. But then New England stormed back to win in overtime, covering the point spread and sending the game over in the process. All three of those things (the Super Bowl going to OT for the first time, the Patriots covering, and the game going over) led to a great night for most of the betting public and a miserable evening for the bookies.

It’s also the classic example of why so many of us love to bet on the Super Bowl. Although there are people who strictly bet on sports in attempt to make money, the majority of us are simply trying to make things even more interesting. And when it comes to gambling on sports, there might be no better feeling than cashing a big ticket on the big game.

So yes, we understand why you want to bet on the Super Bowl this year. If this is your first time, or if you don’t quite have a grasp on all the ins and outs of betting on professional football, this Betting on the Super Bowl for Dummies guide can help you have a more enjoyable experience. Maybe you’ll even be able to impress all your buddies at this year’s Super Bowl party.

How to Bet on the Super Bowl

Wow, where to start on this one? The Super Bowl might feature the most ways to bet on a game of any event in the world, thanks to the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of prop bets that are always available.

I’ll actually discuss the props in a different section a bit later, but for now, let’s just focus on the four most common ways to bet any NFL football game.

1. Point Spread

Forgive me if you already know this, but the point spread is a handicap intended to level the playing field between the favorite and underdog. For example, if a team is a 7.5-point favorite, that means the favorite will need to win the game by more than 7 points in order to cover the point spread. If the favorite doesn’t win by more than 7 points, the underdog has covered the spread.

The advantage of the point spread for bettors is that it allows you to bet on a favorite at nearly even odds, and it also gives you a chance to win a bet on the underdog even if the underdog doesn’t win the actual game. Most sports betting sites offer point spread bets at -110 odds (risk $11 for every $10 you hope to win).

Taking the underdog on the point spread has been a profitable Super Bowl betting strategy in recent years. Dogs have covered five of the last six Super Bowls, eight of the last ten, and twelve of the last sixteen.

2. Over/Under

If the point spread is still a bit too complicated for your liking, or if you’d rather cheer for points being scored (or against them), over/under is your best bet. This is when you wager on whether there will be more (over) or less (under) points scored than a number posted by the oddsmakers, otherwise known as the total.

The over is always a popular bet in the Super Bowl, because the majority of the betting public wants to see lots of touchdowns. Even with oddsmakers posting some pretty high totals in recent Super Bowls (last year’s over/under was set at an all-time high number at fifty-eight), over bettors have cashed tickets in four of the last five years.

3. Moneyline

The moneyline is simply betting on which team will win the game. You’ll have to risk more money than you hope to win if you take the favorite, and you can win more than you risk if you take the underdog.

Understanding Sports Betting Odds

A nice thing about taking the moneyline is that you are backing each team’s biggest goal in the game. NFL teams don’t care about covering point spreads, so it’s not unusual to lose a point spread bet on the favorite when they let down their guard late in a game and allow the opponent to score an easy touchdown.

4. Teasers

Teasers are an underappreciated way of increasing your winning percentage while also enjoying action on multiple outcomes, such as the point spread and over/under.

There are different variations of teasers, but the standard teaser enables you to move the point spread or over/under of a game six points in your favor. In exchange for those “free points”, you’ll need to combine at least two different outcomes onto your one ticket and have to get them both right in order to win your bet. A standard two-team, six-point teaser pays around -110 odds at most betting sites.

Let’s use this year’s Super Bowl as an example. At the time of writing, New England was a 5.5-point favorite to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, and the over/under was at forty-eight points. Using a two-team, six-point teaser, here are the different ways you can tease Super Bowl 52.

• Patriots +0.5 and Over 42
• Patriots +0.5 and Under 54
• Eagles +11.5 and Over 42
• Eagles +11.5 and Under 54

As you can see, using a teaser in this situation enables you to simply ask New England to win the game, not cover a certain number of points. You could also move the Eagles up over the key numbers of seven and ten (they’re called key numbers in NFL betting because of how often games are decided by that amount of points), looking to capitalize on the fact that none of New England’s Super Bowl wins in the Tom Brady era have been decided by more than six points.

Some will say you should never tease NFL totals, but I think it makes sense if you believe the spread and total are co-related. For example, if you think the Eagles’ best chance of winning is in a low-scoring game, a ticket of Philadelphia +11.5/Under 54 makes a lot of sense. If you like the Patriots to win a high-scoring affair but aren’t sure about them covering the spread, Patriots +0.5/Over 42 looks like the way to go.

Where to Bet on the Super Bowl

You don’t need to go to Las Vegas to bet on the Super Bowl. Remember the $5 billion that I mentioned in the intro was wagered on Super Bowl 52? According to American Gaming Association estimates, only 3% of that money was wagered at a Nevada sportsbook.

The remaining 97% of Super Bowl wagering (so, roughly $4.5 billion) was conducted either through the use of an online betting site or a local bookmaker. It’s not hard to understand why. Both of these options are virtually available at your fingertips (if the local bookmaker doesn’t have a website, you can call him instead) and don’t require you spending thousands of dollars on a trip to Vegas just to bet $100 on the Super Bowl.

Nothing against local bookies, but we strongly recommend using an online betting site to bet on Super Bowl 52. You’ll have access to the most betting options and be able to take advantage on some sweet Super Bowl promotional offers like sign-up bonuses. It’s also good that betting sites require you to deposit your money up front before you wager, protecting you from getting carried away and betting too much on the Super Bowl. (Remember, just because it’s the biggest game of the year doesn’t mean you need to make your biggest bet of the year.)

Just make sure to use a betting site that has a strong and reliable history of paying its customers. If you’re not sure which sites to trust and which ones to avoid, check out our reviews.

Super Bowl Prop Bets

At the time of writing, not many prop bets had been posted for the Super Bowl, but that’s because I wrote this the day after the conference championship games. Give the oddsmakers a few days, and they’ll have tons of props posted for the big match. They always do, and people always love to bet them.

Prop bets are extremely popular for Super Bowl betting because they’re so easy to understand. You don’t need to know how many yards a team gets penalized for face-masking its opponent, or even what that yellow line across the field represents. If you’re just looking to have some action down on the game and join in the fun, here are some of the simplest things you can bet on.

• Coin toss (heads or tails, which team will win it, etc.)
• Length of the national anthem (over/under a certain amount of time)
• Color of the Gatorade that gets poured on the winning coach
• Which song the halftime performer will play first

If you’re feeling a bit more advanced than that, there will be a lot of in-game props that you can wager on. Although the odds are still based on the likelihood of something occurring, these props are usually enough of a guessing game that everyone, regardless of their football knowledge, has a chance of winning. Here’s a few:

• Will the first score be a touchdown or a field goal/safety?
• Over/under a number of passing, receiving, or rushing yards for a particular player.
• Will the longest touchdown be over/under a certain number of yards?
• Will there be a score in the final two minutes of the first half?
• Will the jersey number of the player to score the first touchdown be odd or even?

There are also always a few props at super long odds, and you may want to sprinkle a little bit on those just in case they come through. Anyone who bet on last year’s Super Bowl to go to overtime (the ‘Yes’ on that prop paid 15/2, since no Super Bowl had ever gone to OT before) had themselves a pretty nice payday.

Super Bowl Live Betting

Live betting is a recent phenomenon that has taken NFL wagering by storm. In case you’re not familiar with live betting, it’s when you bet on a game that has already started, and at odds that have been adjusted based on what’s happening in the game.

There are many appeals to NFL live betting. You can often get better odds on a team after the game has begun (if they fall behind early, for example), and you can bet on things like what the result of the next drive will be. Another thing that I like is that you can get a “fresh start” at updated odds, just in case the bets you placed before the game began aren’t going so well.

One live bet I recommend looking to make on this year’s Super Bowl is betting on the Patriots if they are losing early in the game. If New England is down something like 7-0 or 10-3 in the second quarter, you should be able to get them around even money to win the game, no longer needing to cover the 5.5-point spread. If the Pats fall behind by even more than that, you’re looking at the potential for an underdog return with the pre-game favorite.

Betting Odds For Dummies

As we saw in Super Bowl 51, and again in the AFC championship game against Jacksonville, New England does not panic when it finds itself trailing. The Patriots’ veteran experience and excellent coaching gives them an advantage in the second half of games, more of an advantage than the live betting odds usually suggest.