Trying to educate myself.
Over/under
The vig
The spread etc…
In: 1
Over/under is pretty self explanatory, you’re betting that the score will be above or below a certain number. It’s usually put at a half point to avoid ties.
The spread is more conceptual. For a sports book to make the most money the bets have to be the same on each side. To accomplish that they usually have you make a bet where one team will be awarded extra points for the purposes of the bet. So if the spread is some team minus four, you aren’t betting whether that that team will win, you’re betting whether that team will win by at least 4 points. For positive spreads your spotting that team extra points, a team whose plus six will have 6 extra points awarded for the purposes of the bet.
Sportsbooks are quite good at analysis and hire smart people for that, but they do sometimes get it wrong. So they compare it to the bets coming in. If they initially have a spread of minus thirteen for some team but still have 80 percent of bets taking that team they may widen the spread, say to minus 18, to try and get the bets on each side to balance out, but you’re locked in for what it was when you placed the bet.
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