What Is Sports Betting?

You are correct! If your team loses by 10 points, you win. And, if your team loses by exactly 11 points then you would get your wager amount refunded. If you are interested in learning more, you will find some great sports betting tutorials and much more at OddsShark.com Enjoy!.

The bookmaker makes money by taking a certain portion of the money that is bet (usually 5 to 10 percent). This take is called the vigorish (also known as “the vig”, or “the juice”). The profit made has nothing to do with the actual odds that a particular team will win (or beat the spread).
 
Going into spreads and money lines can be a little confusing, so let's start with something more familiar, which will demonstrate how bookies make money.
 
Let's say I offered 200 people the opportunity bet $1.00 on the flip of a coin, which has a fifty-fifty chance of coming up heads. But let's say that 150 people bet on heads, and only 50 people bet on tails. As a bookmaker, I would tell the people that if you bet on heads, you will only win $0.30 if heads comes up. However, if you bet on tails, you will win $2.90 if tails comes up.
 
If heads comes up, I pay the 150 winners $1.30 each (their original wager of $1.00 plus the $0.30 they won), for a total of $195. If tails comes up, I pay the 50 winners $3.90 each (their original wager of $1.00 plus the $2.90 they won) for a total of $195. Either way, I keep the extra $5.00. As unfair as that might sound, it is exactly what bookmakers do. The favorite is not necessarily the team who is most likely to win, but is the team who is most heavily bet on.
 
Now, to add complexity, let’s discuss the money lines… Typically, the two teams will be listed, with a positive number next to one team and a negative number next to the other team. This is called the money line. The team with the negative number is the favorite. Let's use the coin flipping example above to present a money line:

Heads -340
Tails +290

What this means is that if you want to make $100 when heads comes up, you will have to bet (approximately) $340 on heads. However, if you want to make $290 if tails comes up, you will only have to bet $100 on tails. So basically, the negative number represents how much you have to bet in order to win $100, and the positive number represents how much you will win if you bet $100.

Bookies know that this is somewhat confusing to most people, and that many people aren't willing to do the math in their head to figure it all out. That is why most sports books offer spreads as an alternative to money lines.A spread is basically the same thing, except that you can count on an almost even money bet if you beat the spread. That is, if you see:

Redskins -9
Cowboys +9

that means that the redskins are favored by 9 points. Regardless of who you bet on, you will almost double your money if you win. I say "almost", because the bookie still takes the vigorish (a cut of the money).

The early odds are set by expert oddsmakers. They analyze a game and try to determine who is going to win and by how much. However, the final odds are actually determined by bettors. If the early spread is 9 (like in the example above), and all of the sudden people start betting heavily on the cowboys, the bookie will change the spread to 8, and to 7, and eventually to whatever number they need to make sure that they have collected an equal amount of wagers on each of the teams. That way, no matter who wins, the bookie will have enough to pay the winners and himself.

I hope this has helped answer your questions. Now, I have a question for you? Would you be interested in learning more about a great Sports Betting System?