You can use a lot of different bets to make money in the world of football betting. One of those bets is known as the Asian Handicap. What you need to understand first is that handicapping is the way of making a sports event more even, which in turn makes it more interesting to bet on. So in the betting world, this is done by awarding the underdog some points or goals lead.
Asian Handicaps are relatively new, and they are mostly used with football betting. The Asian Handicap was created so that in theory, each team has an equal chance of winning.
Asian Handicap betting means that the draw is taken out of play, and a competitive market is formed. Instead of deciding between home, draw, and away — you decide which team you think is the best bet on the AH they have been given. The handicap is usually expressed in terms of goals or part of a goal start.
So, a quick example:
1.95 Real Madrid (-0.5) v Juventus (0.5) 1.95
The first figure (1.95) is the odds available and the figure in brackets is the handicap. This means that Juventus receive an imaginary half a goal lead at the start of the match — this helps make it fair. However, if you bet on Real Madrid who start half a goal down, they have to win the match for your bet to win. If you bet on Juventus, you win if they win the match or if they draw. The handicap placed on Real Madrid means that many feel this is the superior team.
Sometimes there’s no handicap given — which means that the chance of either team winning is pretty much even already.
There’s also the 1 Asian Handicap, which means that your team has to win by at least 2 clear goals for your bet to win. If your team only wins by one goal, then you get your stake returned to you. If you select the team that has the goal lead, then you win if they win but you also win if they draw. But if your team loses by just one goal, the stake is returned to you.
There’s also the double Asian handicap — the wager is split in two.
So if you had Inter (-1/2,-1) v Man C (+1/2, +1), this means that half the original stake money is placed on Inter minus half a goal, and then the other half is on Man C minus a goal. Then you just work out the results based on the example we mentioned earlier.
You’ll find that AH bets can be great value for the casual punter, because most sportsbooks vary in the odds set as well the advantage taken in the over-round. The amount of profit the sportsbook will make on these bets is lower than what they would do on a full time match bet. Payouts range from about 90 and 100% of what’s taken in, which means that you can make some good money on these bets.
It sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Keep running things through your head until you get it right, and you’ll be just fine.