Wager Types At New York Betting Sites
When you first get started betting on sports, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the gambling options and bet varieties available to you. While these can vary from sport to sport and sportsbook to sportsbook, you will almost always find four basic wager types at New York betting sites. These include spread bets, straight bets, over/under bets, and proposition bets.
Each of these wager types are functionally different, but they all share one common aspect that is critical for any New York sports bettor to understand: the American moneyline. Before you can successfully start betting on all your favorite Empire State teams and players, you’ll have to understand the moneyline and what it means when applied to all the different bets on the table.
The American Moneyline Wagering System
If you’ve ever placed a sports bet – and, living in the historical US sports betting capital, most New Yorkers probably have – then you’re probably at least passingly familiar with the American moneyline wagering system. The moneyline is what sportsbooks in US markets use to attach a financial value to their offered wagers in a way that both describes a given bet’s payout ratio and often establishes the line’s favorite per the trend of the associated action.
The American moneyline wagering system used by all the top betting sites in New York (and the rest of the country) is based on the number 100, or more specifically, $100. It works like this: For any given bet, the attached moneyline – usually presented in parentheses beside the bet in question – will either be a positive or a negative number. If it is a positive number, this represents the amount of money you stand to win on a $100 bet. If it is a negative number, this is how much money you have to wager to win $100. (Bear in mind that these numbers are not betting minimums – they merely represent the ratio of risk-to-payout. Most NY sportsbooks will accept bets of as little as $0.25.)
Compared to the international fractional and decimal betting systems, the US moneyline is the easiest to calculate and understand at a glance once you’ve got the above basics down.
Straight Moneyline Bets
Straight moneyline bets are the main wager types at New York betting sites where the moneyline actually shows you which team is the favorite. In the case of a straight moneyline bet (also called a straight bet or straight-up bet), you simply pick which team you think will win outright. There is no handicapping, and the sportsbooks guarantee action on both sides of a given straight wager by giving the underdog a much better value. That is, the payout for an underdog victory is substantially better than the payout for a favorite.
In straight bets, the favorite will always be shown with a negative moneyline, while the underdog will always be shown with a positive moneyline. Let’s say you come across the following straight wager at your favorite betting site in New York, for example:
- Boston Red Sox (+145) at New York Yankees (-185)
Here, the Red Sox are underdogs, and a $100 wager has a $145 payout if Boston wins. As the favorites, the Yanks require a $185 wager to earn $100 with a win. Regardless of which side wins, victorious bettors will receive both their winnings and the return of their initial risks. In other words, if you bet $100 on the Sox to win and they do, you would receive $145 in winnings plus your $100 initial investment for a total of $245. Similarly, a Yankees win would earn $100 plus your initial investment of $185, for a total of $285.
Point Spread Bets
Point spread bets represent the wager type with which American audiences are most familiar, as this is the mechanism that the popular media uses to handicap NFL and NCAA football games, among others. With point spreads, the favored team “gives” points to the underdog. Here’s an example of what a spread bet might look like at your New York betting site of choice:
- New York Giants -3.5 (-110) at Philadelphia Eagles +3.5 (-110)
In this scenario, the Giants are 3.5-point favorites, meaning that in order to win the bet, they have to actually beat the Eagles by 4 or more points. Conversely, the Eagles will win the bet even if they lose by as many as 3 points. As you can see, the moneyline (in parentheses) is the same for both sides, meaning that you’ll have to wager $110 to win $100 (with the sportsbooks keeping the extra $10 as the house take, or “vigorish”).
Many online NY sportsbooks will manipulate the moneyline up or down on such spread bets to entice more overall action or increase their takes, but -110 is the most common moneyline for these kinds of wagers. Sportsbooks also generally use a half-point scoring system for these sorts of wagers, as this prevents any given bet from “pushing,” which results in all action on the pushed bet being refunded. Financially, this is almost always an unfavorable position for bookmakers.
Over/Under Bets
Over/under bets are the last of the “big three” wager types at New York sports betting sites (including straight bets and spread bets). Unlike the other major wagers, however, over/unders are not concerned with the winners of any given game. Instead, over/unders have to do with the total points scored between two teams at the end of the game, which is why they’re also called totals bets. Your sportsbook will assign a value to a game’s outcome, and you simply wager whether the final scores will add up to be more than (over) or less than (under) that number.
- New York Islanders at Pittsburgh Penguins O/U 6.5 (-110)
In this example, your bookmaker has chosen 6.5 goals for the over/under bet. If you believe the Islanders and Penguins will score 7 or more goals between them, you choose the over. If you think they will score only 6 or fewer goals between them, however, you take the under. For over/unders, the most common moneyline will be -110, though sportsbooks can always alter this on either side of the wager.
NY Player Prop Bets
With all of the stars that the Big Apple attracts, it’s no wonder that one of the most popular wager types at New York sports betting sites is the player prop. NY player prop bets are typically posted at most sportsbooks on the day of any given game, and they add dozens of betting options to those games by focusing in on bets having to do with individual player performances.
Player props can range from anything and everything, with different sportsbooks offering different options. With player props at betting sites in New York, you can put money on things like how many hits a player gets, how many TDs a QB tosses, how many strikeouts a pitcher throws, how many assists the winger will deliver, how many saves a goalie will rack up, how many rebounds the big man will haul in, and more. Most player props will be of the over/under or “yes/no” wager varieties, and the moneylines will usually be balanced on both sides of a given gamble.
NY Team Prop Bets
Team-based proposition bets are a lot like player props in structure and style, with the key difference being that they focus on the statistical achievements of the entire team over the course of any given game. NY team prop bets can include anything and everything team-based, from how many turnovers a team commits and how many hits a club racks up to how many shots on goal a team takes, how many penalties a team commits, and much more.
There is virtually no limit to the team props that New York sportsbooks can offer, and each book will have various different props to choose from. Remember to always shop around between legal online betting sites for the team props that most appeal to you.
Other Bet Types
In addition to all of the above, there are lots of other bet types to consider when browsing the boards at your favorite betting sites in New York. Most leagues will have plenty of futures bets available year-round, and there are always “specials” to think about, too. Additionally, you can usually combine multiple single bets into parlays, where your payout potential increases significantly.
All of the top New York sportsbooks also offer live betting for most contests, which is an extremely popular way to bet on sports over the Internet. (For more information about live betting, one of the most exciting wager types at New York sports betting sites, you can check out this primer.)
