Best Way to Bet on Soccer: Asian Handicaps, Goal Totals, and Another Way?

We all wanna make a big party out of it when our main team comes on. We get all worked up in the bleachers, singing rehearsed chants, and trying to send our boys the momentum. Some people throw money down.

Football betting has gone to insane heights, with the chance to customize your bet to the risk you desire. Bookmakers and betting exchanges try to get as many bets as possible while leaving themself a built-in vig, so it’s in their best interest to make bets as attractive as possible to as many people as they can reel in. They use all kinds of high-tech analytics, mainly thanks to their data processor partners that they pay a subscription to. 

Let’s dive into how to bet on football.

Asian Handicap

The Asian handicap gives bettors the incentive to bet on two opposite outcomes of a football match, and is therefore the most popular way of betting on soccer. The reason a handicap is necessary is betting contours are well aware of who is most likely to win. The way they get people to oppose the favorite is by handicapping – requiring that favorite to win by a certain number of goals, or the bet is lost. Another benefit to this is the possibility of a draw is eliminated. The system originated in Asia, hence the name.

Gambling platforms like Odds96.in write the advantaged side’s handicap as (+) or (-) for the other. When you do go to bet on a match, there are different “lines” that you’re offered to bet. Here are the most popular of them.

0.0

This is the Draw No Bet handicap, the simplest scenario of all. Suppose Arsenal @ 1.90 is playing against Tottenham @1.95, and you’re betting 100 euro on Arsenal.

Should Arsenal win, you win the bet; if there’s a draw, your deposit is returned back to you. If they lose of course, then your money goes to your opponent.

0.25

This is a handicap used when one team is only slightly more potent than the other, or you just want to hedge your bet. In this case, your deposit is split into two halves – 0.0 and 0.05.

Suppose Sevilla @2.00 is going up against Real Socedad @1.90. When you bet 100 euros this time on the favored team Sevilla, you lose half your stake if there’s a draw. If you bet on the other team instead, you do the opposite – win half your stake. The rest of their bets is returned back to both players.

0.5

In this case, there is no chance of a push. This is a popular offer when the favorite is expected to win. Here,  if you bet on say AC Milan @1.85 playing against Fiorentina @2.00 and Milan is favored for 0.5,  the former has to win the game outright for you to win. Given any other outcome, you’d lose, and the other side would win if Fiorentina won or tied it.

0.75

This you usually encounter if one team is definitely better but not menacingly superior. This is a lot like the 0.25 handicap. Suppose you have Napoli @1.90 visiting Roma @1.90 with Roma bettors enjoying the handicap. In this case, Napoli would have to win by 2 full goals to win the full bet, but once again, the bet is broken up into two halves. In this case, if Napoli only wins by one goal, they win half of the bet and the other half is refunded. 

-1

Here, the chance of a push comes back. Say you have Borussia Dortmund @1.80 vs. Bayer Leverkusen @2.05, and then the stronger team Dortmund wins only by one – both bettors get their money handed back. Dortmund bettors would need the team to win by two full goals instead. Anything less is a win for the other side.

-1.5

Like the former one, but there’s no push. Say Dortmund wins by one goal, a bettor on the team would actually lose.

The same pattern continues with higher handicaps. Still, bookies and exchanges do offer them.

Over/Under on Goals

While the Asian handicap is quite simple as soon as you’ve bet a couple times and gotten the hang of it, the over/under is a simpler way to bet – the total number of goals that will be scored combined in a game by both sides. These are phrased using similar decimals. Suppose the over/under for a game is 2.5 total goals in a Liverpool vs. Arsenal game. If you bet the over, you’re saying there will be more than two scored by Arsenal and Liverpool combined. In betting the under, you’re betting that there will be two maximum.

Many people will enjoy this as it will be simpler, others won’t since you’re not picking a side so there’s less attachment to the players, still others just use this as part of a parlay bet, where lots of numbers outcomes are combined, all of which must win in which case you’d get a huge pay out, though the odds would be long.

Other Popular Markets

These are, of course, not the only bets you can make in a football game. 

• The ordinary pick’em bet: You can still make straight winner bets: 1 for a home win, X for a draw, and 2 for an away win. 
• Double chance: combining two outcomes into one bet. You can bet which team wins and combine that with the likelihood of a draw or bet on the home and away teams in one bet. 
• Both teams score
• Guess the exact final score
• Prop bets: corner kicks, yellow and red cards, final player stats, and first scorer

Significance of Football

Football is by far the most popular sport to bet on on Earth. It’s a simple game that anybody around the globe can play and train to master, since even the poorest of regions can enjoy a game. They don’t even need a ball – a lot of them improvise with a simple bottle or wadded up tape. That’s why it’s such a unifying game. 

Worldwide, people enjoy betting on sports (especially soccer), even more than gambling at casinos, despite that casinos handle more total cash. Meanwhile, in Africa, people don’t even gamble in casino games since they have to be played live while sports are bet on in advance. In Latin America, it just outperforms slots by virtue of love for sports. That’s why it’s by far the most viewed game in the world with the largest volumes of money bet on it. It’s long been used as an opportunity for countries with animosity between them to heal their divisions too.