One of the primary objectives of any sports bettor is to increase the amount of money they win with every bet. Of course, anyone would love to have a 100% success rate, but we all know that’s not possible – even when playing 1,01 odds every day. If you take sports betting seriously, you should try to increase your average win as much as possible, and there are a few tried-and-tested ways to do this.

Find out what handicap means in horse racing. We explain what handicap races are, why the handicap exists and the role of the handicapper. In this bet a handicap is given to the team that is considered better than their opposition. It means that instead of just winning the match, they have to win by greater than the handicap in order to win in this market. By the stronger team having to score more goals, the weaker team in reverse is given an advantage to win in the match.

Simply put, the idea is the following: if you analyze a game well enough, chances are you can predict more complicated things that a simple winner or loser. If you are able to do so, then 3-Way Handicap betting might make the difference between average returns each month and big success.

Best Online Bookmakers For 3-Way Handicap Betting

• The term handicap derives from hand-in-cap, referring to a system wherein players placed bets or money into the cap of a neutral arbiter to reach an agreement as to the relative values of items sought to be traded. Competition handicapping. In a 'result adjustment' style handicap event, the outcome may be adjusted by some factor determined by the handicap.
• Handicap betting is a market offered by most bookmakers and is available on various sports. The whole reason for handicap betting is to give an advantage in points or goals to the weaker team, in any given match. It would be a bit boring if you were to bet on say Man City vs your local pub team, as there's going to be one winner clearly.
• A handicap is a system of betting which basically tries to level the playing field in games that appear to be a bit one-sided. It’s a popular type of betting across a variety of sports, from football, rugby and NFL.

Best 3-Way Handicap Betting Sites By Country

What Is 3-Way Handicap Betting And How Does It Work?

Thankfully, 3-Way Handicap is very easy to understand, especially if you are familiar with other types of handicap betting systems, like Asian Handicaps or European Handicaps. Three-way handicap bets are available in a wide variety of sports, but we’ll only focus on football today. Lots of betting sites from all over the world offer bettors 3-Way Handicap bets, alongside European and Asian handicap bets. There isn’t a significant difference between these three styles.

3-Way Handicap bets focus on the same three outcomes as outright bets: home team to win, draw, or away team to win. The difference between 3-Way Handicap bets and outright bets is that the game doesn’t start from the score of 0-0. One of the teams has a larger or smaller advantage or disadvantage, and have to take this into consideration for the final outcome of the bet. As always, it’s easier if we take a practical example.

3-Way Handicap Betting Example

Let’s assume that Middlesbrough prepare to host Manchester United, which is in good form and need a win, which could see them move into higher place. The outright odds of the game are the following: 6,25 for a home win, 3,90 for a draw and 1,65 for a Red Devil away win. Of course, the 3-Way Handicap options are much more attractive.

If we look at the 3-Way-Handicap section of the online bookmakers for this game, we see we have several scenarios: only one favourable for Man United, and several favourable for Middlesbrough. The one beneficial for the Red Devils is called “Game Starts 0:1” or Boro -1, Draw -1, United +1. In this case, the odds of an away win drop to 1,11, a draw is priced in at 7,50 and a home win at 15,00.

If you take the “United +1” bet here from the 3-Way Handicap slip, your bet will be a winner if the game ends in a draw or if the Red Devils win (essentially an X2 bet), since they do benefit from a one-goal advantage from the handicap. This is one of the ways to use 3-way handicap bets to search for “sure bets” – low odd bets, where the favourites just have to avoid losing.

Of course, the game offers some other great alternatives to use the 3-Way Handicap. If we look at the betting options, we see that we have lots of options where the home team is favoured: Game starts 1:0, 2:0 or even 4:0. These are all great ways to bet against favourites, especially if these favourites are teams which struggle to play well on the road – just like Man United have done this season.

Looking at their away form, they very rarely win by more than 1 goal away from home. Thus, if the game would start 2:0 and we would bet on the home team, even a narrow away win wouldn’t make us lose our bet. The odds of this scenario: 1,36 for Middlesbrough +2 handicap bet.

Such an advantage works in other ways as well. For example, an early United goal could force the home team to start attacking and opening their defence to counter-attacks – and we all know that Boro doesn’t have the best offence in the league. In such a case, United could score a few more goals, and even overturn the 2:0 deficit the bet has them to start with.

An away goal overturning the 2:0 star has odds of 5,50. Primarily, this bet could also be looked at as an Asian Handicap bet, Manchester United -2,5. 3-way handicap bet is, thus, just another way to make use of handicaps to win as much money per bet as possible.

Advantages Of 3-Way Handicap Bets

Handicap bets of any type actually open the doors for larger-odds betting. Just think of it: one well-placed handicap win could bring you odds of 4.00 or 5.00.

If you’re looking for smaller odds, you could need as many as 3 or 4 bets to obtain such odds, and we all know that adding games and predictions on the betting slip drastically reduce win chances.

Handicap betting can almost be seen as trading: your win rate, at the end of a period, could be just around 50%, but this could still bring you good profits if your average odds are over 2,00.

Summary And Recommendations

That being said, take a look at the 3-Way Handicap section before you place your next bet on the best football betting sites. Now that you understand how these bets work, you can easily find lots of options each weekend where a handicap bet could bring you quite some profits.

Usually, even favourites can have good odds to win away from home, and if we add even a -1 handicap , the odds become even greater. And teams like Liverpool, Man United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern or Juventus have no problem putting a few goals past their opposition.

If this isn’t your cup of tea, look at it from a different perspective: how often do teams like Inter, Milan, Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester City win by two or more goals away from home? Is their away form really that good to warrant bets on them? Or are you better of trying to anticipate a surprise?

These are all betting ideas where a 3-Way Handicap bet could be ideal. After a careful analysis, these types of bets can quickly improve your win rate, and also increase the size of your account with it.

As a fast-paced end-to-end game, basketball offers bettors an exciting way to try and make a profit. To help those who want to learn how to bet on basketball get started, we’ve explained a few basic bet types that are vital to basketball betting. Continue reading to find out more.

Money line basketball betting

Money line markets are the most common and simplest market for a bettor to understand the cost of a bet. This form of basketball betting is simply placing money on a certain team to win the game. For example, look at these money line odds for Boston Celtics vs. Utah Jazz:

In this example, the Utah Jazz (1.364) are the favourites to beat the Celtics (3.440) at home - in American odds this would be -275 and +244. If you staked £10 on the Jazz, you would get a return of £13.64 – which includes your £10 stake. The profit would be £3.64. However, if the Celtics had won, you would win nothing and lose your £10.

If the Celtics win, your return would be £34.40 including your initial £10 stake, which would leave you a profit of £24.40.

Handicap basketball betting

Once you understand how to bet on basketball using the money line, betting on the handicap can become a valuable tool when one team is heavily favoured over their opponents. With handicap basketball betting, to counter the perceived bias in ability, bookmakers offer a handicap to level the playing field.

The handicap number (displayed as either + or – a value, such as +7.5 points) is factored into the final score to determine the game’s outcome for the purpose of the bet. This means that the handicap result is sometimes different from the actual result. For example, look at these two handicap bets:

Golden State Warriors: (+7.5) 2.050
Indiana Pacers: (-7.5) 1.862

What Does Handicap Mean In Betting Nba

If the Pacers won the game (100 – 96), bets on their handicap would actually lose. This is because for the purpose of this bet they started the game with -7.5pts, and therefore we have to subtract 7.5 from their final score. This makes the match outcome 92.5 – 96 in the Warriors’ favour.

If the Pacers won 104-96, the adjusted handicap result is 96.5-96, which means the Pacers still win. This is referred to as “covering the handicap”.

Totals basketball betting

What Does Asian Handicap Mean In Betting

Totals betting (also known as Over/Under) is a bet on whether the combined points scored in a game will be over or under a set number. For example, look at the totals odds for the Sacramento Kings vs. Miami Heat below:

Over 210.5: 1.962
Under 210.5: 2.110

What Does Handicap Mean In Basketball Betting

If you bet £10 on the game to be over 210.5 points, and the result was 116-98 (an aggregate total of 214 points), you would make a return of £19.62 (£9.62 profit). If you had backed the total score as under 210.5 with the odds of 2.110, you would have lost the bet.

Despite this article outlining the basic forms of basketball betting, giving a solid grounding in understanding how to bet on basketball, there are more advanced bet types that can be implemented now you know how to bet on basketball.

Money Line betting video explainer

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