How To Bet On March Madness: Tournament Betting Guide

You’re new to betting on March Madness and you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’re looking at four play-in games, 32 first-round matchups and some 68 sides to analyze. It’s a lot, we get it – don’t worry, we’ve all been there before. But we’re here to help.

We provide an online betting guide with all the March Madness betting tips and March Madness betting strategy. That way you have everything you need after Selection Sunday so you can learn how to gamble on March Madness like a pro from the first-round games to the final.

How To Read March Madness Odds

When exploring the best ways to bet on March Madness, it’s important to understand how to read the odds. When you check out any March Madness betting site, you’ll see college basketball odds displayed like this:

How To Bet On March Madness Guide: Favorites Vs Underdogs

The odds displayed above are for a traditional moneyline bet. To make this type of bet, you simply have to pick a team to win straight up (SU). At -233, the Bulldogs are the favorite, and you can tell this by the minus sign (-). At +195, the Wildcats are the underdog.

You can see this because of the plus sign (+). This is universal across all sportsbooks. Dogs will always have pluses and faves will always have minuses.

If you decide to pick Gonzaga and bet $100 on them, you’d get a payout of $142.92 – your original money comes back along with your winnings of $42.92. Conversely, that same $100 on Kentucky as an upset would give you $295 – your $100 is returned, coupled with your prize of $195.

Our odds calculator will show you what you’d win based on the offered odds and the amount you bet. You don’t have to bet $100. You have free rein to wager whatever your bankroll can handle.

Wagering On March Madness Games: Betting Options

We’ve already covered the moneyline and how to read odds, so now let’s look at some of the other best ways to place bets on March Madness, as well as popular NCAA Tournament bets you can make. Because there are seven rounds and 68 teams, you have ample opportunity to win some coin if you know how to bet on the NCAA Tournament. 

Point Spread: Choosing A Team To Cover

Unlike a straight-up bet where you are picking one team to win over the other, the point spread allows you to wager on how much a squad will win or lose by. Before the matchup, the underdog is given an advantage and the favorite a disadvantage to create a more even betting field. Spread odds would look like this:

To cover the spread, Villanova would need to win by 10 points or more. For Marquette to cover, they would need to win the game outright or lose by nine points or less.

Totals: Combined Score Betting

Basketball games, whether they’re at the NBA or collegiate level, are high-scoring affairs. Totals betting, aka OVER/UNDER, gives you the chance to bet on the combined score of the game. When teams play each other, you’re looking at collective scores in the range of over 100 points. Odds would look something like so:

UCLA vs UNC Asheville

Your job as a bettor is to determine if the pooled score will be more or less than the oddsmaker’s set number of 120. If you think it will be more than 120, you would take the OVER. If you believe it will be less, you would take the UNDER.

Futures: Who Will Win It All?

Futures bets are wagers that can be made weeks or even months in advance of the event you’re gambling on. In this case, you would make a bet on which school will win the NCAA national championship. Tournament odds for this type of college hoops bet would be like this:

At the online sportsbooks, you would see a list of every NCAA men’s Division 1 team with their national title odds. For the purpose of this example, we’ll only look at 10 schools.

In this scenario, oddsmakers are predicting the Houston Cougars (+650) to make a deep run and take the basketball tournament by storm. Kentucky (+6000), on the other hand, is looking like they don’t stand a chance. When oddsmakers set the college basketball lines, they look at everything from how a team performed the previous year to offseason moves (players graduating, coaching changes). If a school played poorly in the past, you can count on their odds to be high.

The odds will shift as games are played. If you see futures odds that look good, grab them. Taking a team as a plus-money underdog (+) before they become a big minus-money favorite (-) could net you a huge profit if you win your bet.

Parlays: Bundling Your Bets

Parlays are multiple bets on one slip. For instance, you could take Gonzaga SU, Virginia ATS, and the OVER for Tennessee vs Louisiana. Moreover, you can add bets from other sports to your March Madness betting games slip like an NHL puckline or a soccer wager like the Asian handicap.

Our parlay calculator will show you how much you’d win based on the odds, number of bets on your ticket and the amount wagered.

Props: Keeping Your Bets Entertaining

Short for “proposition,” props are bets you make on the occurrence or non-occurrence of specific player and team milestones that may not directly correlate with the outcome of the game. These are bets like:

Live Betting On March Madness

Watching March Madness games is even more fun if you bet on them while they’re unfolding. Live betting lets you bet while the game is taking place. Live betting odds are released before every quarter starts and let you capitalize on new spreads, moneylines and totals.

There are also live odds for props. If you see live betting action you like, take it quickly. Live odds disappear as soon as they appear.

What’s The Difference Between Filling Out A Bracket And Making A Prop Bet?

Although they may seem similar, March Madness brackets contests and prop bets are not related. A Madness bracket is a grid-type contest where you would try to accurately predict the results of each March Madness game from the first round to the championship. As we mentioned above, propositions are special bets on players and teams and don’t necessarily affect the results of the game.

March Madness Basketball Betting Tips

How To Bet On March Madness

Now that we’ve provided you with some NCAA Tournament betting tips and you know how to bet on March Madness, get to betting on the Big Dance. Those college basketball bets aren’t going to win themselves!