How to Understand Football Betting Options at a Casino

Gambling at the casino can be a fun way to spend a day. Placing a wager on a sporting event while at the casino, though, can be somewhat confusing. It's much different than betting your buddy five bucks that your favorite football team will defeat his. There are several factors and types of bets to consider before you put your money down. It's important to know what you're looking at and what you're betting on before you make your wager. Here is how to understand football betting options at the casino.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Know what you're looking at. If you're at the casino and you want to make a wager on the upcoming New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Eagles game, you'll probably see something like this:New York -3.5 -150 1:00 pmPhiladelphia +3.5 +180 46The first number, the fraction, indicates which team is favored to win. Whichever team has the negative number is the team “giving” points to their opponent, making them the favorite. The second number is the straight up, or what is referred to as the “money line” bet. The third number, found underneath the time, tells you the over-under. This is the prediction of how many total points will be scored by both teams at the end of the game. The bottom team, in this case Philadelphia, is the home team.

2. Learn what an 11-10 bet is. All this simply means is that for every $11 one bets, he can win $10. These bets are mostly used for spread and over-under wagers. For example, if I bet $110 that the Giants will cover the spread and they do, I would win $100 more, for a total of $210.

3. Understand the spread and what it means. The point spread indicates how much a certain team is supposed to win by. In the above example, New York is giving away 3-1/2 points. This means that if you're picking New York to win, they must win by 4 points to “cover the spread.” To fully understand this, pretend the game has begun with the spread in play. At kickoff, the score would be:Philadelphia 3.5New York 0This means that you should only put money on New York if you believe they're going to win the game by more than 3 points. If you think that Philadelphia will lose by three points or less or that they'll win the game, you should place your wager on Philly.

4. Know what you have to wager for the “money line” bet. The money line is one way in which the casinos make their money. Since New York is at -150, you would have to bet $15 in order to win $10 (a total of $25). Because Philadelphia is +180, you would win $18 for every $10 you wagered.

5. Understand the over-under and how much you have to wager. The over-under is possibly the most simple wager you can make on the football game. In the above example, the over-under is 46. If you bet the under, you're saying the total score of the football game will be under 46 points. Placing a wager on the over means you believe the final score will be over 46 points.

6. Find out the parlay options for the casino. A parlay bet is when you bet that more than one event will occur. In other words, you would wager on more than one game and have to win all of those bets to win money. The advantage to this is that the odds are greater and thus pay out more. The disadvantage, of course, is that parlay bets have a greater chance of failing, since you're wagering on more than one game. Different casinos pay out differently for parlays, so find out if it's worth your money before you consider one of these bets.

Tips & Warnings

• Only bet on football if you feel you know enough about the sport and the league. You can lose money quickly when wagering on sports.