Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Point Spreads - An Explanation

By Simon M Skinner

Every major sport that people bet on has a point spread system.

Inexperienced bettors who do not understand college football point spreads may not understand the system. Point spreads are of interest because sports analysts often refer to these although one must bear in mind that you are not legally allowed to bet in all areas of the US.

A knowledge of point spreads will increase your understanding of the sport and of the teams and this will also increase your chances of maximizing your betting wins.

Understanding college football spreads means that you have to understand sports betting in general. All sports have a point spread or line associated with them. These are determined on a game-by-game basis between the two teams that are playing each other.

For instance if the University of Texas is playing the University of Oklahoma then a point spread will be associated with that particular game as these are 2 major college football teams.

Any two sports teams are never equal in skills, playing ability and competition experience. One team will always have a chance of being winning the game and this difference is represented by a poiint spread.

In a game between OU and UT, the point spread is going to be less because the teams are pretty well matched in regards to skills and competition level.

It is always obvious that one team is going to be better than the other and that is why we have the point spreadsystem. If bettors only gambles on the better team, then on average and according to probability bettors will win 50% of the time. The point spread evens the odds for bettors and for teams. The teams have to win by a certain number of points to win the game.

One final example would be if UT is favored, on the point spread by 8 over OU, then UT would have to win by 9 points. If UT wins by 8 then it is essentially a draw, also known as a push. You would neither lose nor win if they won by 8 points.

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