By Dexter Foley
Online Betting Terms
Moneyline bet: The most basic wager, in which you pick the winner of a game. The final score does not come into play — only who wins and who loses. If the team you pick wins, you win your bet.
Point-spread bet: A type of wager in which you’re betting on a team to win by a certain amount of points or lose within a certain amount of points. Example, in Week 1 of the NFL season, the Washington Commanders are four-point favorites to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars. If you bet on the Commanders, they must win by at least five points for your bet to pay off. If they win by three points or fewer or fail to win at all, you lose. Alternately, anyone betting on the Jaguars would need them to win outright or lose by three points or fewer.
If the Commanders beat the Jaguars by exactly four points, everyone’s bets are refunded. This is called a push.
This is how the Commanders-Jaguars game appears at DraftKings sportsbook. Favorites are denoted by negative numbers. Underdogs are denoted by numbers with a plus sign in front.
Juice: The juice comes into play on moneyline bets, point-spread bets and bets on the over-under total, and it determines how much you will be paid if your bet wins. It is denoted in the above example by the -115 and -105 numbers listed after the point spreads.
In moneyline bets, the favorite is given a negative number, and the underdog is given a positive number. In the case of the Commanders-Jaguars game, Washington is a -180 favorite to win the game. This means you have to wager $180 to win $100 if you pick the Commanders to win (or $18 to win $10 or $1.80 to win $1). Likewise, the Jaguars are +155 underdogs. This means a $100 bet on Jacksonville to win will pay $155 (or $10 to win $15.50 or $1 to win $1.55).
Multiples of 100 and 10 are the easiest to understand, but your wager can be any dollar amount you want. The possible payout will be calculated for you no matter how much you bet.
In point-spread bets, the juice is assigned to each team to help the sportsbooks lock in profits. In essence, think of it as a tax on your wager. Generally, each side of a point-spread bet is assigned -110 odds, though as we see here, that’s not always the case.
One more key thing to remember: In sports betting, you get your payout based on the odds while also getting your original stake returned to you. So if you bet $105 on Washington to cover the four-point spread and it does, you will get back $205 (your original $105 stake plus the $100 your winning bet paid out at -105 odds).
Total: When you bet on a total, also known as an over/under bet, you’re betting that one or both teams will score more or fewer points than the number assigned by the sportsbooks. Usually, the total is listed after the point spread with an “o” or “u” displayed in front of a number:
The total for the Commanders-Jaguars game is 43.5 points. If you bet the over, you think the teams will combine to score at least 44 points. If you bet the under, you think the teams will combine to score 43 points or fewer.
There are numerous totals bets you can make. You can bet on the teams’ combined points in one half or one quarter. You can also bet on the point total for each team.
