Why Pointspread Bettors Usually Lose.

Pointspread betting by far is the most common way that people bet. The most popular sports that people bet on are football and basketball. Baseball and hockey work a little different in that betting the money line is the traditional way of wagering on those sports.

Luckily, due to online sports books, betting the money line on football and basketball is readily available. We always bet moneyline underdogs no matter which sport we are betting. There are a number of alternative bets like run line betting in baseball, the grand salami in hockey and proposition bets in football that I will address later.

Let's take a look at tonight's pointspread on the NBA game between the Lakers and Celtics. The line has wavered a bit but let's say that the Lakers are favored on the pointspread by
-6 (-110). What that means is that if you bet on LA, they must win the game by 7 point for you to win. On the other hand, if you bet on Boston +6(-110) then Boston can lose the game by 5 points and you would still have a winning ticket. If the Lakers win by exactly 6 points, that is called a push (tie) and you get your original wager back.

Moneyline betting means that you bet a team to either win or lose regardless of the points. If you bet the underdog then you will always win more than you bet. You will see later in a future blog why this is the only way to go.

The problem you put yourself in when you make a pointspread bet is that you immediately put yourself in the hole because of the (-110) which is called the vig, vigorish or commission. If you want to win $100 on the Lakers, you have to bet $110. If you win, you win $100, but if you lose, you lose $110. Just to break even you have to win 52.38% of your bets. They may sound easy, but it is not. To really make good money, you will need to hit 55% of your bets or higher.

Now I will tell you that anyone can have a hot pointspread streak for a few day, a week or even a month. But when you see and hear about touts winning 70-80% or more of their bets, its usually based on a small sample of wagers unless they are outright lying. Most of these touts are great at marketing their service, but just average handicappers. Forget the enticing hype. Long term if you hit 55-60% of your pointspread bets, you are doing great.


The lines makers are very good at setting lines for games. They use incredibly complex computer algorithms to try to split the betting so each team receives 50% of the betting action. If there is a lot of money being bet on one team, then they will adjust the line accordingly to attract an equal amount of money on each side. This is not an exact science, but overall they get fairly close when they set the lines.

The important thing I want to drill down is that you do not want to start in the hole by betting the pointspread on a game unless you are making a small bet just to have some action or fun.

For the purpose of making serious money you want to focus on the money line !