Football Handicap Betting: A Complete Guide

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You may have heard of handicap betting in sports and you’re wondering what it really means or how it is done. This is a bet that was made popular by the Asians involving a predictive balancing of matches between two teams.

For instance, there are times that two unevenly matched teams play, so that it is easy to predict that the superior team would win. When such matches are featured, it is generally easy for bettors to all back the bigger and better team. Book makers work at making bets more interesting and perhaps seemingly unpredictable by using handicap.

Handicap betting is also known as line betting or point betting. Its essence is to level up the disadvantage faced by weaker teams when they encounter bigger and stronger ones. Under normal circumstances, most people would back the bigger teams that it is common knowledge that they have the skills and talents necessary to win. However, with handicap, the odds are evened up to give the weaker team a chance.

This also has the effect of giving the backers of the smaller team more incentives to bet. Handicap works by giving virtual advantage to the weak team while allocating the strong team a virtual disadvantage.

The concept is to give people incentives to bet that the weaker team would win because the odds against them have been leveled through the allocation of the handicap virtual advantage over the strong team.

If you’re wondering why bookmakers go this extent, bear in mind that without such virtual strengthening and weakening of the weak and strong team respectively, no one would actually back the weak team unless they are some diehard fans of the club. The absence of handicap makes such betting exercises boring and easily predictable.

Handicaps are usually shown as brackets after the name of the club in fixtures. For example, the bookmaker could present a match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace as:

Crystal Palace (1.5) vs Manchester United (-1.5)

This is actually telling you that the bookmaker’s declaration is a handicap of 1.5. They are allocating a 1.5 advantage to Crystal Palace and a 1.5 disadvantage to Manchester United. This means that Crystal Palace is starting the match with a 1.5 goal advantage.

Since the goals are not up to 2 and not just 1 goal, you can conclude that there wouldn’t be a draw since there are no half goals in football.

If you’re betting that Manchester United would win, they must win with at least 2 goals for you to win the bet. That is, more than the 1.5 goal handicap.

If your wager is on Crystal Palace, they have to win the match, draw it or lose by just one goal for you to win the bet. The one goal is less than the 1.5 goal handicap allocated to the weak team, so they must not concede by more than a single goal.

The advantage or disadvantage is allocated to the team that you are betting to win.

Let us have a look at another example:

Wolves (2) vs Liverpool (-2)

What does this show you? It indicates that Liverpool as the bigger team must win with 3 goals margin or more. That is if your wager is on Liverpool.

It also means that if you’re betting on Wolves, they won’t lose by more than 1 goal. So your expectation is that the margin of their loss won’t be more than a goal. A loss of 2 goals would void your bet.

You can see that there is no decimal in the handicap. If the game ends in a draw, it voids the bet as this is a no draw handicap.

Handicap League Betting

Handicap isn’t limited to just matches, they can be used in betting on clubs at the beginning of the league. Just like in the ordinary handicap, you bet on the outcome of the league with respect to the performance of clubs. This is done at the beginning of the league.

The odds are assigned before the league commences, punters wager on the clubs that they believe would emerge champions. As usual, the Handicap allocation takes cognizance of the strength and composition of each team in the league.

The rating handicap is assigned by the bookmaker who would assign a zero handicap to the league’s favorite. Other teams are assigned based on the bookmaker’s expectations on their likely performance, taking cognizance of their fitness at the beginning of the league and what new talents they have signed.

As usual, the weaker teams are assigned significant ratings. In leave handicap, all teams are involved while in matches, the two teams are handicapped.

Popularized By Asians

Asian handicap which is a more popular term is no different from handicap. This system of allocating benefits was made popular in Asia. That’s why people talk about Asian handicap.

Some punters wonder if this is a legal form of betting. The reality is that handicap is legal and approved by gambling controlling bodies as a form of betting.

It is important to also know that handicap is not limited to just soccer, it can be applied to many other sports such as basketball and handball.

Asian handicaps usually feature decimals giving punters the opportunity to get their stakes back while European handicap features whole numbers. It is instructive to know that you can access handicap betting through Exchanges as well as Sportsbooks. Exchanges would give you better odds in bets that Sportsbooks.

Football handicap is increasingly popular with many punters following the league and match handicaps in the quest to express their knowledge of the teams and the game.

How Can You Get BTC?

Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency. You can get the coin from nearly every cryptocurrency exchange. But before you do, be sure that you have your own wallet where you can store your BTC. Some popular wallets are: Exodus and Atomic wallets which can be downloaded to your device. This is where you store your coins after purchasing them from the exchange. This is important, especially if you’re buying a high volume of coins. The exchange is not the safest place to leave your digital currencies as the private keys would not be with you.

You also have the option of online wallets such as Blockchain.com. This is not as secure as the desktop wallets that you can download to your device but still better than leaving them at the exchange.

Buying Your Bitcoins

Use any popular exchange such as Binance, Gemini, Coinbase, OkEx and others to purchase BTC with your credit card. The procedure is simple.

Search for Bitcoin and click on ‘Buy’ depending on the platform.

Pay with your credit card

Check your account balance at the exchange. You’ll see the volume of coins you bought in your account balance.

Click on the ‘send’ button to send the coins to your wallet earlier downloaded. You’ll see a field for the destination walled address.

Go to your Atomic/Exodus/Blockchain wallet and get your wallet address and paste in the destination field at the exchange.

Crosscheck the address before clicking ‘Send’

How Do You Start Gambling With Bitcoin?

You now have your bitcoins in your own wallet from where you can send some to the casino where you want to gamble. To do this,

Get the casino BTC address linked to your account

Send some of your coins to the wallet

Start playing the games of your choice when your BTC account is funded.

What Strategies Are Available To Win Games?

You may have come across different strategies, such as those that advise that you double your bets when you lose and so on. The fact about gambling is that you do not know if you would even win anything on a particular day. So such strategies are of little help.

All forms of gambling are less than guesswork but more skills and luck most times. It would do you a lot more good if you bet with only what you can afford to lose when you gamble.

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