How To Bet On Sports Online: Betting Guide for Beginners

In the old days, if someone wanted to bet on sports legally they’d have to fly to a city like Las Vegas to find action. Today, more and more people live in jurisdictions with legal sports betting and there are more bet types and sportsbooks to choose from than ever before. I’ve heard too many stories from older sports bettors to call this time we’re living in a golden age, but in terms of options and convenience, there’s never been a better time to get into sports betting.

How Does Sports Betting Work? 

People betting on sports place a wager with a sportsbook on something to occur during an event and if the outcome they wagered on occurs, they receive their original wager back along with their winnings. Of course, if the outcome doesn’t occur, the bet loses and the sportsbook keeps the wager amount. The most common thing to bet on is who will win a game or other event, but sportsbooks offer a lot of other options including individual player performances within a game or throughout the season, awards markets (i.e MVP awards), how many points will be scored in a game, and the margin of victory.

How to Choose The Best Online Sportsbook

Every sportsbook has a different look and feel to it, but more importantly they differ in the odds and betting options they offer. Odds Shark offers comprehensive sportsbook reviews which can be useful for someone shopping around or feeling confused about the process. Whether you visit our sportsbook review page or not, please be sure to do your homework and make sure you’re choosing a trusted sportsbook where your money will be secure.

Once a bettor has identified the sportsbook(s) they'd like to sign up with, they’ll need to create an account and deposit funds prior to wagering. Bettors can remove funds from the account back into their possession via a withdrawal process. Each sportsbook offers slightly different deposit and withdrawal processes and timelines. Often sportsbooks offer bonuses to build customer loyalty and incentivize new customers to choose them, so keep an eye out for generous offers prior to signing up.

What Are The Most Popular Bets to Make?

What are Parlays?

A parlay is a wager where two or more bets are tied together into one bet for a larger payout. If any one of the selected bets loses, the parlay loses. However if the parlay wins (if every bet selected wins) it pays a lot better than if the bets were made individually. Parlays allow bettors to risk a little bit of money in order to win a lot. For more information about parlays and my personal opinion on if they’re a good bet, click here.

How Do You Live Bet?

Live betting, also known as “in-play” betting gives us the ability to bet on events that have already started. For instance, we can place wagers on who will win a football game while it’s tied in the third quarter or, if you believe a basketball team will come back from a 10-point deficit, a wager could be available at more lucrative odds than before the game started. Live betting odds are often found in a separate “in-play betting” section of each sportsbook’s app, but be careful because the odds change quickly as the game unfolds.

How to Read Betting Odds

How much a bet wins is determined by the odds set by the oddsmaker at the time of a wager. If odds change after a bet is made, it does not impact the original bet. Most sportsbooks in North America utilize American odds (i.e. -120 or +240) which are expressed as a + or - sign followed by a whole number (usually 3 or 4 digits). If a bet has -240 next to it, that means it will cost a bettor $240 to win $100 (and get the original $240 wager back), while a +240 wager means a $100 will win $240 (and the original $100 wager back).

A “favorite” is the team/athlete expected to win, while “underdog” or “dog” describes the team/athlete more likely to lose. For instance, if the Cincinnati Bengals are considered a much better team than the New England Patriots, a sportsbook might offer -410 odds on the favorite (Bengals) and +320 odds if the underdog (Patriots) wins. Similarly, if the Lions are small favorites over the underdog Rams, a bettor might see Detroit with -180 odds and the Rams with +150 odds. In a situation with no true favorite or underdog like a coin flip or a game with two teams perfectly evenly matched, a bettor could expect to see -110 odds even though each side has a 50/50 chance of winning because sportsbooks essentially charge a tax on each bet. Point spread and over/under bets can typically be found with odds around -110, while moneyline bets often have more dramatic odds as outlined above.

While most sportsbooks have American odds as their default, odds in the app can be changed to decimal odds or fractional odds. A team with odds of -110 would be expressed as 1.91 odds in decimal form or 10/11 odds in fractional form. Our odds calculator is a great resource for bettors looking to understand the differences between odds.

Betting Advice for Beginners

Being a winning sports bettor long term is a lot harder than it looks. Sometimes people win their first few sports bets and start thinking it’s easy before being faced with a rude awakening after a few more wagers. The internet and social media tend to glamorize professional sports bettors and make betting seem easy, but the truth is that professional sports bettors are very rare. Below are some tips that professional bettors live by and new bettors can lean on as guidance.

Manage Your Bankroll

Picking winners doesn’t guarantee someone with terrible bankroll management a profit. For instance, two bettors can both be 51-42 picking NFL point spreads and one of them can be profitable while the other person can be broke. Bankroll management requires discipline and consistency as well a thoughtful plan with betting limits. New bettors should be aware of the dangers of chasing losses and betting outside their means. Betting on big underdogs or unlikely parlays can be a lot of fun, but too many long shot bets can be costly to a bettors bankroll. For more information on managing your bankroll, click here.

Research, Research, Research

The internet is full of resources to help you get an edge while sports betting, so take advantage of what’s at your fingertips. Betting on a game without research out of boredom because it's on television is a recipe for failure. If you’re not sure if you’ve researched a game enough prior to betting it, ask yourself if you’re betting the game based on information or emotions. Below you can find our individual sports betting databases, which will allow you to discover your own trends and answer questions like, "How have the Chicago Bears done Against the Spread (ATS) while at home over the last two regular seasons."

There are a lot of great analytic resources outside our website too, for instance Kenpom.com and Barttorvik.com for college basketball bettors. 

Practice discipline

Sometimes the best bet someone can make is not making a bet. I always say if someone is on the fence about whether or not to make a bet, then they shouldn’t pull the trigger. In other words, if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. There will always be other opportunities to bet games tomorrow, next week and next year so don’t make the mistake of placing too many bets. Sometimes research leads to less clarity, but bettors shouldn't feel like they have to bet something just because they’ve invested time into researching it.

Pay Attention to Line Movement

Line movement can tell a bettor a lot about how sportsooks, the public, and sharp bettors view things. For instance, if a point spread in a football game has moved from -6.5 to -7.5, that tells us there’s been a significant shift in the odds and it should make us curious why that shift took place. Remember all line movement isn’t created equally so a bettor shouldn’t react to line movement if they don’t understand why the movement took place. Sometimes lines move because of personnel issues (i.e. an injured superstar) while other times it moves because respected bettors have sharpened the number with their wagers. Some publications publish betting splits which can help us determine why lines shifted and which sides the public is on. In general, fading the public is a strategy worth considering because the majority of bettors don’t win long term.

Track your bets

Tracking wagers allows bettors to notice blind spots that are hurting profit margin or other trends they can take advantage of. For instance, maybe a bettor is hitting 56% of their NBA bets, but they're doing way better betting totals than betting point spreads. Or perhaps a bettor's MLB record is stronger on the weekend than it is on the weekdays because they have less responsibilities and more time to focus on analysis. Or, maybe the system someone uses to analyze NHL games is total crap and needs to be calibrated before they keep losing more money.

Shop Between Sportsbooks

We shop around before making day-to-day household purchases, but many recreational bettors don’t shop around prior to making sports bets. Shopping around is one of the simplest and most important habits for a new bettor to develop. Line shopping requires a bettor to have multiple sportsbooks and view the odds at each one prior to making a bet. For instance, if someone is betting the New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox, the Yankees might be -140 at one sportsbook, -135 at another sportsbook and -133 at another. In this scenario the sportsbook offering -133 odds is a better deal. While the difference between -133 and -140 doesn’t seem like a lot, that money adds up in a big way over time.