WHOSCORED BETTING PAGE
This page is here to explain the key things you need to know when it comes to betting, as well as how to use the wealth of information you can find on WhoScored.com to your monetary advantage. When you’re ready to go,
click here to start placing bets.
The Basics
With all bets, there is a risk of losing, and the likelihood of losing is reflected in the odds on that bet. When betting on something that is likely to happen, the odds are short and there will be a low return on a winning bet, while long odds and big payouts will result from gambling on a less likely occurrence.
When you win a bet, you will be returned your stake (the money you originally invested in the bet) plus your winnings, which are determined by the odds and how large your stake is.
Odds Explained
Odds are usually in one of two formats – decimal or fractional – and from the odds you can learn a lot about what you are betting on. With decimal odds, simply multiply your stake by those odds to find the total amount you will receive back. For example, a stake of one pound on Arsenal to win at odds of 1.65 will return £1.65 in total (including stake).
Arsenal’s fractional odds would equate to 13/20. This literally means that a stake of £20 will pay out a £13 profit, thus meaning that a £1 stake will pay out 65p on top of that stake – a total return of £1.65.
From the odds, you can usually infer how (un)likely a bet is to occur. When the odds are short it implies that that event is likely to happen, whilst long odds will usually mean that it is unlikely. Of course, odds do not tell the whole story and with a bit of research it is possible to discover where odds are generous.
Bet Types
On the big betting websites there are often hundreds of different markets to bet on; ranging from things as specific as the total number of corners in a match to bets as simple as who will win. The main types of bets that WhoScored.com’s top betting facts are restricted to are explained below:
3-Way – This is as simple as it comes. You are betting on the result of the game i.e. which team will win. There are three options here – home win, away win, and draw. The home team usually has an advantage in that they play in front of their own fans, but it is worth having a look at each side’s home/away record when placing these bets.
Over/Under – With these bets, you are gambling on the number of goals in the match to be over/under a certain tally. The most popular of these bets is over/under 2.5 goals, where you bet on there being at least 3/no more than 2 goals in any given game. For bets of this type, you are not betting on the outcome of the match, and so these bets are often favourable, as a match can be a complete upset but still have lots of/few goals scored. You can bet on 0.5 goals, 1.5 goals, 2.5 goals, 3.5 goals, etc. with increasingly long odds for the less likely goal tallies.
Double Chance – Here, you bet on two possible outcomes of a game, but you are effectively betting against one result. That is, you can bet on a team to either win or draw a match, and you will win your bet if either of those results occur, or in other words, as long as the team does not lose. You can also bet against the draw, and say either the home team will win or the away team will win, but often – as draws are so hard to predict – the odds on these bets are very short.
Half time/full time (HT/FT) – Extremely difficult to predict, here you are betting on both the result at half time and the result at full time. That is to say, you are betting on a team to be winning/losing/drawing at half time AND winning/losing/drawing at full time. You can bet on any combination of these occurrences, giving 9 different options for bets here. When a team is a strong favourite to dominate a game and thus have very short odds, it can sometimes be worthwhile to bet on that team to be winning at both HT and FT, which is less likely and thus will have longer odds. Meanwhile, if it is noticeable that a team markedly improves after half time, it is sometimes worth betting on that side to be drawing at half time but winning at full time.
Handicap – There is usually always a favourite in any given football match, and handicap betting can help even out the odds in such matches. With handicap betting, the underdogs will be given an advantage in that the bookies will have them start the match a number of goals ahead (or the favourites a number of goals behind). For example, if Liverpool are favourites to beat Wigan, you may wish to bet on Wigan to ‘win’ if they start with an advantage, or if Liverpool have a record of beating Wigan by a large number of goals, you may wish to bet on Liverpool to win with Wigan starting a couple of goals ahead. What you are effectively doing with handicap betting is backing a team to win by at least/no more than a certain number of goals. These amounts come in ±0.5 goals ±1.5 goals, etc., so if you expect England to beat a team like Andorra by at least 2 goals, betting on England to win with a -1.5 handicap would increase the odds whilst remaining fairly likely.
Using WhoScored.com
WhoScored.com is packed with information on football from the world over. In particular, each tournament page includes ‘upcoming top facts’ for the next round of fixtures, highlighting trends in that tournament, such as unbeaten streaks and runs of games without scoring. While the top facts will show up patterns that you might not otherwise notice, two teams may have conflicting facts (such as both having won their last ‘x’ number of games), so a little more research is often needed.
One could also consider the league table, recent form, results in other competitions, home/away record, goals scored/conceded, and a whole range of other factors when deciding whether a bet is worth pursuing, All of this information can be found on either a tournament or team page through WhoScored.com.
Finally…
Now that you are ready to get going, you can opt for a regular bookmaker (e.g.
Bet365) or try out one of the websites that use an exchange model (e.g.
BetFair). Betfair has information on their website regarding how to make the most of their exchange market, including how to ‘lay’ a bet.