Sports betting has become a very popular form of entertainment all over the world. Currently, some experts believe that the entire sports betting industry is worth several hundred billions of dollars and there are no signs that the growth of this industry might be slowing down anytime in the future.

Besides that, more and more people around the world are taking on this form of entertainment and for every beginner, it is very important to know and understand all the terminology from this industry in order to have the full experience.

Watching sports has become a very fun form of entertainment and sports betting is just one of the aspects that complete that experience besides good snacks, agood chair, amazing friends and many others.

Winning a significant amount of money by just guessing the outcome of some sports game is avery attractive idea for many sports fans and because of that they often try their luck with sports betting.

As we have mentioned, it is very important to know the terminology that is relevant for sports betting, otherwise, bettors will not have the right information and they will not be able to place bets correctly on the games that they have selected.

Information for Beginners

Starting with sports betting is not easy and most bettors start with placing simple bets and they do not bet a lot of money. However, there are cases in which people that do not have a lot of experience with sports betting place their bets on things that they do not know what they are and more than often they end up losing the money that they have abet. In order to avoid that kind of situation, we will bring you the overview of the most important terms for people who are starting with sports betting.

1. Bookie

The term ‘bookie’ refers to the central figure in the sports betting industry. All other things in the sports betting world revolve around this term. More than often, bookies also called sportsbooks or bookmakers. In essence, a bookie is a person or an organization that provides the odds for the games that people place the bets, takes bets and that provides the payouts after the successful bets.

One of the main tasks of the bookie is to determine and offer the odds for different games. In this regard, people who are just starting with the sports betting need to be aware of the fact that odds can be represented in several ways.

The representation of those odds depends on the place where a bettor is placing a bet. Because of that, the representation of odds is not the same in the United States and Europe. Because of that, bettors need to be able to find the right type of odds that are available in their region.

2. Moneyline Odds

Odds are often represented in the form of moneyline This moneyline form represents odds in the form of numbers and each number represents how big payout for those bets will be. In this case, it is important to mention that the negative number indicates that a team carrying those odds is the favorite for the win in that match.

On the hand, a team that carries the positive number or positive odds is characterized as anunderdog which means that they do not have a lot of chances to win in that match.

In the case when the odds are -110 for a certain team, that means that you will have to bet $110 in order to win $100. On the other hand, if the underdog team has the odds of +150, that means that a bettor will be able to win $150 by placing the bet in the amount of $100.

3. Favorites

The betting term ‘favorites’ or as chalk in some areas is the term that depicts the team that has more chances of winning in certain matches. However, the term ‘favorites’ is not only used to describe the team that has more chances for winning the match but also for other sports betting offers in which one team has more chances to achieve some goal than their opponents.

When it comes to betting, the odds that will be assigned to the favorites are often much lower than the odds assigned to their opponents and that is a clear indication that the team is actually a favorite. The bigger the difference is between the odds of the favorite and their opponents is the indication of how big favorite that team is.

4. Underdogs

The opposite of favorites are underdogs. In the world of sports betting and in the world of sports, in general, the underdog is a team or a player whose chances of winning or achieving some good result are not that good. In the case of sports betting, the high odds will indicate that a certain team or a player is theunderdog in that match.

The most popular trend in the world of sports betting is betting against the underdogs as it is believed that underdogs usually do not have the capability of skills to upset the favorites even though that happens sometimes.

5. Handicapper

In the world of sports betting, a handicapper is a person or an expert who spends his or her time analyzing sports betting professionally. However, recently, this term has also carried the meaning of any person who places a certain kind of bet. Some believe these people to be sharp bettors or people who place bets with a lot of insight and skills gained through detailed analysis of sports events, games, individual players and other aspects of sports betting.

They often believe that they have an edge or an advantage over other people who bet and that confidence comes from the fact that they spent a lot of time deciding what to bet and on what game or match to place bets. According to many sports bettors, they are older bettors who have big experience in betting industry and who have found certain strategies that allow them to place successful bets.

6. Juice

In the world of sports betting, the betting term ‘juice’ refers to the commission that the bookmaker takes after it proves that a bet that a bettor has placed is unsuccessful. In sports betting industry, the betting term ‘juice’ is also known as ‘vigorish’ or ‘the take’. The amount of the size of the ‘juice’ is different depending on the bookmaker and itranges from a small amount of the bet to a large piece of the bet.

For bettors who are finding the right bookmaker for them the term ‘juice’ is very important because they are choosing the right bookmaker based on this issue. Almost all bettors are looking for bookmakers whose juice or the take is not big because bettors will not be losing a lot of money if or when their bets prove to be unsuccessful.

However, it is also very important to mention that the type of the ‘juice’ might change from time to time depending on the bookmaker. At acertain time, bookmakers might take the ‘juice’ only from the losing bets. However, that can change as bookmakers change their policy and their juice might take a certain percentage of each bet from both, the loser as well as the winner.

Just like it is the case with any other experience, people who arestarting with sports betting need to be aware of certain terms that are crucial for all bettors no matter from what part of the world they are placing the bets. The following part of this piece will be dealing with the terms that are specific to the part of placing the bet. Those terms will help any bettor to place the bets in the best way that they can.

Placing the Bets

Placing the bets is one of the most important aspects of the sports betting processing and the betting terms that are related to this aspect can bring a lot of understanding for a bettor about what and how he should place a bet.

Some terms are already familiar because they are being used in sports in general while some other terms are completely new and they are restricted only to the sports betting industry. Because of that, it is very important to understand all the terms in order to have a chance to win certain amounts of money by placing bets on different sports events.

1. Accumulator

Is one of the betting terms that bettors will come upon most often. A betting accumulator is actually a series of games or matches or better to say, single bets that the bettor has grouped together. With accumulator, each of the single bets is grouped into one big bet and because of that, bettors have the opportunity to win huge amounts of money.

However, in order for the accumulator bet to be a successful or in order for a bettor to win bigger amounts of money, all of the single bets in that accumulator would have to go through. In the case of failing on only one of the single bets, the accumulator will be considered as a failure and a bettor would lose the bet.

Handicappers or people who have a huge experience in sports betting industry are often placing bets in the form of accumulators because they allow them to win bigger amounts of money which is something that it is not that easy to achieve while placing only single bets.

2. Half Time/Full Time

Is also one of the betting terms that have been very popular among the bettors. This term refers to a certain kind of offer that bookmakers provide for the bettors. With this offer, bettors have the opportunity to place their bets on the outcome of the first half and the end of the second half of the same game.

According to many bettors, this is one of the toughest bets for players to bet successfully on because it involves a lot of variables and because the situation in the game often changes without any rules. This bet is considered to be a single bet even though a bettor is making two predictions.

However, it also needs to be said that even though the bettor is making two predictions, the odds that are offered for this betting offers are not provided for both predictions but only for one general prediction about what will be the score at the halftime and who will win the game in the end.

3. Over/Under

Just like Half Time/Full Time, this betting term is also referring to one type of the betting offer. With this offer, bettors have the opportunity to place their bets on whether or not there will be over or under a certain number of goals or the number of goals will be the same as alimit that the bookmaker has offered. For many bettors, this is one of the most popular bets, especially when it comes to betting on soccer matches.

However, over/under betting offer is not only applied to the number of goals in certain matches. This offer is also used when it comes to the basketball games to determine how many points there will be in total at the end of the game. Besides that, this betting term or betting offer is also used for the total number of games in a tennis match.

When it comes soccer and over/under offer, it also needs to be said that bookmakers are often also providing the opportunity to place the bets on whether there will be over or under a certain number of corner kicks, yellow cards, red cards, fouls, and other aspects.

4. Asian Handicaps

In general, handicaps are betting offers that are provided in the cases when one team is ahuge Handicaps usually give asmall advantage to the underdog in a certain game and majority of those handicaps offer give the underdog team a one-goal advantage. Asian Handicaps is one of the types of that offer. When it comes to the Asian Handicaps it needs to be mentioned that draws will be refunded.

In order to explain Asian Handicaps, we will be using an example. In the game where Team A is facing Team B, team A is a huge favorite for the win. The Asian Handicaps for this game can be +2.5 for team B which means that in order for team B to lose this game, team A will have to win that game with three or more goals.

5. European Handicaps

Is also one of the types of handicaps offer that bookmakers often provide. This is also an offer that is provided for matches in which one team is one huge favorite for the win and the other team is the underdog who has very little chances for a positive result in that game. When it comes to the popularity of European Handicaps, it needs to be said that Asian Handicaps is much more popular than the European version of this offer.

The main reason for that is the fact that when playing Asian Handicap and if the game finishes draw, a bettor will be refunded for the amount of the bet that they have played in that match. On the other hand, with European Handicaps, that is not the case and if a bettor places a bet on this offer and the game finishes draw he will be losing the entire amount of the best that he made. That is the only difference between these two types of handicaps offers.

6. Parlay

Is also one the betting terms that depicts the type of the offer that the bookmakers are providing. With this offer, a bettor will be combining a series of thewager which will provide him with the opportunity to move the money that he used for placing the bet from one bet to the next one.

In order for the parlay bet to be successful a bettor will have to win all the best and if only one of those bets proves to be a failure, he will lose the entire amount that he has previously bet on this offer.

With that being said, it also needs to be mentioned that parlay bets are some of the most popular bets in the entire world. The main reason for that is the fact that parlay bets allow bettors to win bigger amounts of money than they would usually have the opportunity to win when betting on single bets. However, these bets can sometimes be tricky as it takes a lot of skills to win all the bets.

In this betting terms overview, we have presented you with some of the most important betting terms are required for all bettors to understand. Without the understanding of these betting terms, it will be very hard for any bettor to place any bets and to win those bets. However, there are many more betting terms that we did not mention and bettors should educate themselves on the meaning of those betting terms as well in order to fully understand the process of placing the bets.