Saturday, October 24, 2009

Understanding point spreads

By Simon M Skinner

Every sport that you are able to bet on will have a point spead system.

Inexperienced bettors who do not understand college football point spreads may not understand the system. Point spreads are of interest because sports analysts often refer to these although one must bear in mind that you are not legally allowed to bet in all areas of the US.

A knowledge of point spreads will increase your understanding of the sport and of the teams and this will also increase your chances of maximizing your betting wins.

Understanding college football spreads means that you have to understand sports betting in general. All sports have a point spread or line associated with them. These are determined on a game-by-game basis between the two teams that are playing each other.

For example, if the University of Oklahoma is playing the University of Texas then there is going to be a point spread associated with the game.

Any two teams are rarely equal in skills and experience one team will therefore have a better chance of winning the game depending on the teams this can be a large number.

In a game between OU and UT, the point spread is going to be less because the teams are pretty well matched in regards to skills and competition level.

Because it is often obvious that there is one team that is much better than another, there is the point spread. If you were allowed to simply bet on the better team, then 50% of the time all bettors will win. The point spread means that the team has to win the game by a certain number of points.

One final example would be if UT is favored, on the point spread by 8 over OU, then UT would have to win by 9 points. If UT wins by 8 then it is essentially a draw, also known as a push. You would neither lose nor win if they won by 8 points.

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