Most of us don’t need anything extra to enjoy football. The beautiful game has enamoured generation after generation, drawn to the atmosphere, excitement and extensive history of the sport. But for those who do want something extra to add to the spectator experience, betting could be the answer.
Make sure that you only ever bet money that you can afford to lose, and if you find yourself unable to stop betting, you must seek professional advice.
Stake
A stake is simply the amount of money that you put down for a bet. If you don’t win your bet, the stake is lost.
Accumulator
An accumulator can be thought of as a number of separate bets, usually four or more, that are packaged together into a single individual bet. When you hear those stories of making huge wins from a small bet, it is usually because of an accumulator.
When you bet on an accumulator, you are betting on a number of different things all happening. Let’s say you bet on a five-fold accumulator. Instead of placing five individual bets, you place only the accumulator. If four of the five selections occur, the entire accumulator fails. However, if all five selections are satisfied, the winnings will be much higher than they would be if the bets had been placed individually.
Handicap
Many football matches are difficult to predict the outcome of; it wouldn’t be much of a sport if the results were easy to guess ahead of time. But every now and then, a game comes along with a very clear favourite to win. Of course, even these games can sometimes go in unexpected directions.
A handicap is designed to give an advantage to the underdog and encourage punters to place bets on both teams. For example, if a team has a handicap of -1 (minus 1), this means that 1 will be taken off their final score and this new ‘virtual’ score will be treated as the real one.
If team A has a -1 handicap and the final score is 1 – 0 in team A’s favour, the match will have been a draw as far as the bookie is concerned.
Half Time/Full Time
As well as being able to bet on the outcome of an entire game, punters can also bet on the outcome at the half time mark. It is therefore possible to place a bet which predicts a draw at half time but a victory for the home team at full time.
Banker
A banker is another term for a sure thing. These are bets on outcomes that seem so likely to occur that they are a near-certainty. Of course, many gamblers think that the bets they’re making are clear bankers, but this isn’t always the case. You can find odds from various bookies on gamblerslounge.com, as well as football betting tips. If you are presented with an alleged banker, make sure that you carefully check the likelihood of winning for yourself.
Although the world of sports betting might seem completely alien at first, you will soon get used to it. Once you know all the terminology, you can then focus on honing your sense for a good bet.
