Getting to know all the different types of football betting nowadays can be a tough task. With such a huge market and with so many different types of bets, knowing which ones will be of the best help to getting you some serious profit and bashing the bookies, can be tough. But by doing your research and being clued up on all the different types of bets you can make, you are more likely to be able to apply the right bet to the right circumstance. We are going to explore one of the less explored markets in footy betting – handicap betting. This is slowly becoming more popular but there’s still a lot for many beginners and novices to learn about this type of betting. Luckily we have got everything worth knowing about handicap betting below.
Handicap Betting explained
Handicap betting is essentially the bookies accepting that one team is far superior to the other. If you fancy a team to absolutely hammer another team then a handicap bet can be a great way of getting better odds on a very one-sided affair. With handicap betting the bookies will place a ‘handicap’ on one team in which they need to overcome and still come out on top of their opponents for your bet to win.
How does it actually work?
To better understand how these bets work it is worth using an example. Let’s take the best ranked international team in the world, Belgium, as an example. And let’s take a struggling international side, San Marino, for instance. If these two teams were playing each other the odds are going to be about 200/1 in favour of Belgium winning the game. And there’s not even any point in placing a bet on San Marino as an outright. Handicap betting gives you a slightly different option here and levels out the odds. An example of handicap betting options bookies may offer on the game may be Belgium -4 at evens. This means Belgium must overcome San Marino by 5 or more goals for much more handsome odds. This is a much more attractive bet.
Different examples of handicap betting-
Whilst there is the bog-standard handicap betting option in footy betting, there are also another couple of extra handicap bets which are now available in the busy market, we have explained a few below:
3-way handicap betting
The 3-way handicap betting opportunity offers punters the chance to wager on a handicap tie option as well as a win. This means that you get the chance to win your bet even if the match ends in a draw as long as you have predicted the correct virtual deficit and this has been made up effectively. Say you are betting on a -2 deficit. The team you have applied the deficit to must win by 2 goals or more for your bet to win. If they only score 1 goal your bet will fail because they haven’t beat the handicap for Chelsea to win whilst they also failed to reach the right goal deficit for the handicap draw bet.
No draw handicap betting
This option eliminates the chance of a draw completely and is the flip of the 3-way handicap bet. With this bet you will find the wager is in 0.5 increments to allow for a clear winner when there is a draw. By giving a team a 0.5 handicap it means if the game ends in a 1-1 draw, the team who had the handicap would win the virtual scoreline and therefore win the bet.
Asian Handicap betting
This type of bet is popular as it essentially splits two markets into one bet. It firstly offers punters the chance of winning their stake across two chances. This type of bet essentially eliminates the draw in the bet, but then split the handicaps for extra chances of winning in return. An example of asian handicap betting would be your wager being split across two stakes, for example you want to bet on Team A having a handicap of +1 and +1.5 against Team B. The game ends 2-1 to Team B. With Asian handicap betting your first stake of the wager (+1) will be returned as the game effectively ended 2-2. Whilst your +1.5 wager will return a winner as the game will have effectively ended 2-2.5.
