Popular Wagering Types in NFL Betting


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It’s better to understand NFL betting before you have a punt. Regardless of what sport you fancy and which online sports book commands your attention and loyalty, you need to understand some basic concepts in order to increase your jackpot winning chances. This will help you to make meaningful and successful sports bets using various wagering types.

Introduction: NFL Wagering Types

Jackpot Finder is here to help by explaining some of the most popular NFL betting types. Be sure to check out our online jackpot dictionary for more gambling terms you may want to know.

To make this tutorial practical, we’ll discuss these bets in light of a specific NFL game between Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans.

Moreover, we’ll take look at the betting lines of Bet365 Sports book. These offers one of the easier notations for a novice to understand:

NFL betting

Other sports books, such as Intertops and Bet Online, use different notations. All these notations and how to convert them are explained in “How to understand fractional, decimal and money-line odds guide”. Players should read this before continuing in order to make sense of the numbers below.

Money-line Betting

Money line betting is a very simple bet, sometimes known as “fixed-odds” betting. It’s very popular with American bookmakers. With a money-line bet, punters only wager upon the final outcome of the game. Who actually wins and who actually loses.

Usually, one team is favored to win over the other. Somewhere on the favored team’s betline, the punter should see a plus (+) sign. Meanwhile, the underdog is represented by a minus (-) sign.

Above, you can see the money-line when NFL betting on the Colts is 20/31. While the money line for the Titans is 27/20. When players bet on the favored team, they stand to win less than they wager. Consequently, those who bet on the underdog stand to win more than they wager.

Thus, if the punter places $100 on the Colts and the Colts win, the punter will win $155. However, if the punter places $100 on the Titans and the Titans win, the punter will only win $74. Always remember, there are other jackpot winning strategies which may take your fancy more. Check them out if you want to get a better insight into winning.

Wagering types
Betting on NFL is a real tradition – Image source: Flickr

NFL Betting: Spread Betting

Spread Betting is another very simple bet type. It’s also one of the most popular ways to bet on American football games. The payoff in a spread bet comes from the accuracy of the gamble, instead of just a win or lose outcome. This makes the game more interesting even when a historically strong team plays a historically weak team and the winner seems a foregone conclusion.

Let’s continue to consider the NFL match between the Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans. The Colts are favored to win by 3 points and thus are given a -3 point handicap to be subtracted from the number of points they score in this game. If a punter bets on this spread, the Colts must actually win by at least 4 points for a payoff.

NFL Betting: Bet On The Losers

Alternatively, punters can bet on the Titans who are expected to lose by 3 points. By betting on the underdog, a punter will win when the Titans lose by 2 or fewer points, or if they miraculously win the game.

When the game has a three-point spread and the favored team wins by exactly 3 points, this is known as a push, meaning it is a tie. In an ideal world, the punter would have his money returned. In practice, because the gambling firm has an overhead to cover just by taking the bet, sports books will often inform bettors that “ties lose”. This allows the operator to retain the bet.

Bet365 Sports book makes it clear that players who pick the team will win either $21 or $23 for every $20 wagered. So a bettor who bet $100 on the Colts and won, wins $105. While a bettor who bet $100 on the Titans and won, wins $115. Not all online sports books make this so obvious.

Wagering types
The worse teams are also holding a lot of surprises

Using Over / Under Wagering Types for your Advantage

Over/Under NFL Betting is another popular type of sports bet. Rather than betting who will win or by how much, punters bet on the size of the combined score.

Given our Colts versus Titans example above, readers will see “O 46.0” and “U 46.0”. By selecting one of these bets, the punter will bet whether the combined total will be over or under 46 points.

In either instance, Bet365 pays off this bet at 11 to 10. So a punter who wagers $100 and wins, will receive $110. Not exactly the football jackpot, but then again better than nothing.

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