Over And Under – The Easy Path To Making Big Money

Over and under betting on sports offers probably one of the easiest ways to bet on sports. Smart bettors can really clean up when making the right choices.

Basically, an "Over or Under Bet" is a wager on what you believe the total number of points, runs or goals of a game will be. You bet against the casino's handicappers who have determined the number of runs (we'll use runs for this article instead of points or goals) that will be scored in the contest.

Casino sportsbooks usually employ very good oddsmaker and handicappers that take all game factors into consideration when calculating the final total of runs will be.

An over/under total runs wager would seem you were playing at 50/50 odds. It looks like there are only two options to the wager. You either bet that the runs total will be over or under the amount posted by the casino sportsbook.

However, there are actually three options. They are over the posted total by the casino sportsbook, under the total posted by the casino, and the exact match of the total posted. That third option, the exact match is where the casino can make a lot of money.

Invariably, the casinos will find themselves in a position where one side of the bet is a little more heavily weighted. To help prevent large losses, the casino will slide the over and under total points depending on the amount of money coming in on either the under or over side of the total. This adjusts the money to keep the casino in the middle of the money bet creating offsetting wager amounts.

The beauty of over and under betting is you go "mano-a-mano" (head to head in Spanish) and test your handicapping ability against the professional oddsmakers of the casinos. Here's the way it plays out.

• The casino or bookie predicts the number of runs that he thinks the total will be
• You do your own handicapping or guessing (don’t recommend you do that) and predict what you think the total will be
• You compare results and bet place your bet on the over or the under

You might be thinking how do you predict the total number of runs to be scored in the contest if you don't really know how to handicap games.

There is a simple way that you can use to try and predict what you think might be the minimum and maximum number of runs to be scored in the game.

This is over and under strategy is a bit simple and I say it is unreliable, however, many people have used it and have found it to suffice for many bettors.

Here's how you do it:

We have two teams matched up for tomorrow's game

Team A is the home team and Team B is the road team.

(1) calculate the average number of runs scored per game at home for Team A.

(2) calculate the average number of runs given up at home for Team A.

(3) calculate the average number of runs scored by Team B in their away games

(4) calculate the average number of runs given up by Team B in their away games

Let's use a few real numbers for this example

(1) average number of runs scored per game at home for Team A = 4.8

(2) average number of runs given up at home for Team A = 4.3

(3) average number of runs scored by Team B in their away games = 3.9

(4) average number of runs given up by Team B in their away games = 4.6

Now take the two smaller of the numbers and add them together to determine the smallest amount of runs to be scored.

In this case we add 4.3 + 3.9 = 8.2

Next take the two larger of the numbers and add them together to determine the largest amount of runs to be scored.

In this case we add 4.8 + 4.6 = 9.4

Now add the two results together and find the average of the two.

It looks like this (8.2 + 9.4)/2 = 8.8

If the casino's predicted total number of runs is lower than your averaged total, you might want to wager on the "over".

If the casino's predicted total number of runs is higher than your averaged total, you might want to wager on the "under".

The greater or the smaller the difference in the casino's total and your averaged total might imply that you can increase or decrease the amount of your wager accordingly.

Now this is an overly simplistic method to betting the over and under and there are absolutely no guarantees that this system will produce any desired results. With that said, you can at least create a starting point to begin your handicapping at.

Depending on the particular sport, over and under bets can vary tremendously. As you can imagine, calculating the over and under for basketball can be quite challenging due to the sheer number of points that are scored. Because there is a higher variance in the number of possible points scored in basketball, it's harder to predict the total than say in hockey or soccer where the combined total might be between 4 to 6 goals.

Betting the over and under totals can generally be a less risky bet. You can make it safer if you are knowledgeable about the sport being played and how to factor in other parameter the way the casino oddsmakers do.

Good luck!

PS - As always, I recommend using a betting system to make your picks. Why go through all the trouble? Check this betting system out – sports betting system