Online Sports Betting

Online Sports Betting
is part of a mini-series concerning
Online Gambling.

Mini-Series Articles:

Related Topics

Online Sports Betting is as American as Baseball, Hot Dogs, and apple pie. So is fixing horse races, quibbling about money, placing bets using your company's expense account, and installing dog fighting cages in your back yard. If there is a sport, you can bet it is being...bet on. And now in the 21st century it is being bet on, in ever increasing numbers, by dopes on the internet. Since the rapid expansion of the world wide web, sports books have moved online along with all the other gambling trash that used to only crop up in hell holes like Atlantic City. Now, because you are in the comfort of your own home, and the dazzling internet, you don't have to feel so crowded at the local bar when you try to pick your NCAA brackets. No! You can feel like a complete dipshit while you try to figure out how the hell the Friendship University of Central Kansas made it into the tournament while sitting in your cozy den! Don't worry though, that crushing sense of loss you feel when you realize you have lost it all in the first round will always be the same.

Terminology

Discussing odds, over under, and penis length.

Part of an underground network, dog fighting can be found online.

Every year they release a bracket...and every year you come in third place.

Dog racing, the other sport that people bet on that involves dogs.

The online sports betting world has its own lingo and it would probably be a good idea to explain some of the more frequently used terms first before delving into the topic full bore.

Action—the amount of money you will lose.

Angle—trying to predict a winner based on past results.

ATS—“Against the spread,” ATS is like trying to win the lottery.

Book (or Bookie)—the person or site you make a sports bet with. They are a representative of the house (see below) . In cases of online betting, the book is just a file that contains all the bets made for a particular time period.

Breaking Even—the state a gambler is in just prior to betting on a sporting event, or the best possible outcome a gambler can hope for. Any time after, the better is considered “In the red.”

Buck—a sports lingo term for a 100 dollar bet.

Buying Points—some online sports books will allow a player to purchase an extra half point when betting a spread. Since a half point is an invented number, this is paying money for thin air.

Circle Game (Circled Game)—a game that is not receiving action. Online books will keep track of circle games and then offer tempting odds to lure in more wagers.

Cover (Cover the Spread)—this is when a team wins with the amount of points they were supposed to win by.

Cold—~~a person who never wins~~ a person who bets on sports.

Favorite—this is the team or person who is most likely to win and is usually the person you did not bet on.

Food—what your kids will not be eating due to your wager on the Chicago Cubs (it's been 100 years! they're due to win sometime soon!).

Edge—an advantage another better has over you, usually because they paid off a team/player to shave points.

Even Money—something you hardly ever see in Online Sports Betting.

Electric Bill—who cares, you have candles don't you?

Grand Salami—a totally retarded bet where a person bets on all the goals scored in all games played in professional hockey over the course of a single day. See also: The Lottery.

Handicapping—using a crystal ball to determine who you will bet on.

High Roller—what you are not.

House (the house)—the bank. The company that is sponsoring your betting activities and allowing you to play games of chance online. Since all games (including sports betting) are played against the house, you have a low percentage of actually winning.

House Edge—besides being a small amount of money that the house takes from you for each bet you place, it is also the general term for the fact that you cannot win making online sports bets.

Juice—what a bookie or online book site makes on a bet. A commission on all bets made.

Insurance—a side bet, or bets you might make to back up and protect your original wager. If both teams or people you have bet upon turn out to be losers, you are going to need more insurance.

Layoff—how an online book will deal with a bad day.

Limit—most online games have a betting limit. Sports book does not. In sports betting, you are free to wager any amount you wish…up to and including your 13 year old daughter.

Line—the current odds or point spread on a given event. Also, it is something that a bookie snorts off of a hooker’s tits.

Longshot—a team or person who you have a feeling about, but doesn’t win anyways.

Lock—a sure bet. A bet that is sure to make you money. There are no locks in any online gambling game. In fact, there is no such thing as a lock in any form of gambling, so this really shouldn't be mentioned here.

Marker—credit you may or may not have with an online casino. Since most online sports betting is done via credit cards, your marker is as high as your credit limit.

Mortgage—the amount you lost on the Patriots.

Nut—the amount you have decided to bet for the day. Usually this is everything you own.

Odds–this is the likelihood that your team sucks.

Overlay—a fictional bet where somebody claims to have inside information or an advantage over the online sports book site and the bet is a lock. This has never happened but since it is talked about (often in dreamy tones) by gambling addicts quite often, it is mentioned here.

Payoff—the return a person sees on a wager. Usually the online book will see a payoff.

Prop Bet—a special event that an online book will make special arrangements to allow betting on its outcome. Example: who will be America’s Next Top Model.

Puppy—the opposite of a favorite. The team you bet on and the team that is expected to lose.

Rank—sports teams are often ranked by experts. These rankings directly affect the odds a team will receive when being matched up against another team. As a side note, experts don’t know anything.

Session—the length of time you spend gambling online. Unlike other online gambling, sports betting sessions generally take a very short amount of time; just long enough for you to pick some losers.

Sharp—an expert gambler. When listening to a sharp, if you bet on their recommendations, you will lose. If you bet against their recommendations, you will also lose.

Spread—the predicted scoring of a sporting event. Usually the spread is predicted by somebody who has no idea of what they are talking about.

Sports Book—a website that takes sports bets. They sometimes pay out as well.

Tout—a professional advice giver.

True Odds—a ratio that any good gambling site will never let you see, much less give you.

Underdog—the team expected to lose. Often online books will offer incentives to lure you into betting on an underdog. You will. The underdog will still lose.

Underlay—the kind of bet where you expect to win because everybody told you it was a lock, but you end up losing, schmuck.

All of these terms, while not exclusive, are the generally accepted expressions inside the sports betting world. Since sports betting has moved into the technological era and sports book is now available online, these terms have migrated over along with the seedy creeps who speak the slang themselves. Now, go and chat with your buddies on AOL and start using these terms, see how cool you are?

Differences

When people think of bookies, they see an image similar to this. Now, bookies look exactly like the computer you are sitting in front of.

Online sports betting is different from most games of chance you play for money on the internet. While games like blackjack and bingo do have a basis in betting on an activity’s random outcome, there is some element of skill involved that a seasoned player will gather over the years. Also, in those games, you are playing against another gambler. Since any given team can beat any given team on any given game day, this skill can be gained, but not to the levels gained in other sorts of online gambling. Because of this, most normal people without a working knowledge of a sport would probably not bet on a game…because they don’t know anything about the sport. Since this is counterproductive towards profit, bookies (the people or site you place your bets with) have invented several ingenious ways to make any sport accessible, even to the novice bet placer.

Odds

Odds are what make online book a game of chance. Sure, a team can beat any other team on any given day, but for the sake of argument, a favorite will win 90% of the time. This makes online betting rather drab and monotonous, while also lowering the amount of money bet overall. Since betting is what keeps these book sites alive, they have to find ways to make the betting more interesting.

Odds are just one of several ploys that muddy the water just a bit as far as who bets on what. Ambiguity in betting, would, at first seem like suicide, but by increasing the payout, you can find a sucker under any rock or, in the case of online betting, in front of any work terminal.

Example of a situation requiring Odds:

Syracuse is a favorite to win over El Paso (it doesn’t matter what sport) and everybody is pretty sure that Syracuse is going to cream them, sports books will offer to pay more money out to people who are stupid enough to bet on El Paso. Book sites are running the odds at 2:1 which means for every dollar that somebody bets on El Paso, they will get two dollars in return, minus the percentage that the house takes from every bet.

The teams go ahead and play, and just as predicted Syracuse beats El Paso. The people who bet five dollars on El Paso are only out five dollars. The sports book is only out the money it needs to pay the people who took Syracuse. But, here is the kicker, they only have to pay out half of what a Syracuse backer bet. So if a Syracuse fan bet 2 dollars, the bookie only has to pay the fan back 1 dollar for the bet. This is how book sites stay in business.

There are millions of other ways to figure odds on a match, game, or activity. For every new way somebody invents to weigh a wager, there are a million idiots who are willing to try that new way because they are sure that it’s a lock bet. Most sports book sites only stick with a few tried and true methods.

Over Under

Sports bars and personal computers are putting casino sports betting out of business.

This is a very ambiguous term for trying to predict a statistic or outcome of a game. Usually, when betting with online sports books the Over Under is the combined score of any given game. The Over Under is just another way to liven up a usually monotonous process.

For online books, the goal of when offering bets for Over Under is to entice more people to come and bet on a simple outcome. The trick is to get as many people as you can to bet on the Over Under so that they can be groomed for more hardcore betting later on.

Some online books will change the Over Under depending on how many bets are made. They do this in half points increments so as not to alarm any noob bettors, but also to cover their losses should a large amount of people get lucky.

Virtually any number can be bet upon when betting online book, but here are the major ones that are used:

Game final score.

Total number of home runs that two (or three, or twenty) players will hit during a season.

The combined negative total of a golf match.

A football team’s season rushing total, or in the case of the Oakland Raiders, that team’s total negative yardage.

Other Forms of Betting

You see this, you run.

Now that he has come clean, Pete can bet on sports from the comfort of his own home without fear of some dirtbag bookie rolling over on him.

Besides odds and over under, there are several other more obscure types of betting. Again, all of these methods are just a way to liven up an otherwise boring venture, but some of them can become quite complicated and can depend on a huge number of variables to determine their outcome.

Prop Bets—see above.

Teaser Bets—combining any number of bets so that they are dependent on one another. Only hardcore losers and noobs will take a teaser bet.

Parlay Betting—when a person will bet on a given set of matches or games, usually 10-20 games per session. Depending on the number and odds of each game, the online book can adjust the point spread to make the parlay more attractive to the sucker.

System Bets—this is where a set of events are bet upon. Usually used during playoffs or tournaments, this betting is almost always a loser for the novice better. An example of system betting is that office pool you do every year for the NCAA tournament and always end up losing. Guess who wins it every year? Yep, that same asshole because he is in on it with the book maker.

Online Book Issues

Either somebody is about to get arrested for online book, or they are about to get lucky.

Online book betting is just like any other form of betting; if somebody invents a system to deliver book to a set of individuals, one or more of those individuals or the book himself will attempt to cheat. It’s a plain simple fact of human behavior. Also, besides cheating, since online book making is illegal, there are all sorts of vicious little dramas that play out every day. Some of the more major ones include:

New Jersey has an ongoing struggle against the federal government where they desire online sports betting to be legalized in direct violation of the Wire Act. Since Delaware has somehow managed to keep online sports betting legal, you can see where New Jersey might be butthurt.

	“	If one state is allowed is allowed to legalize betting on sports events, all states should be allowed the same opportunity	„
	—Sucks to be you, Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey

The popularity of Fantasy Sports as an online hobby has now moved into wagers placed upon teams, individuals and even leagues of fantasy sports players. Nothing is more sad than betting on people who are betting on people…unless you play the stock market. Since this type of betting is relatively new and considered the “flavor of the month” by online sports books, several institutions, including the NCAA have issued statements saying that they will not sanction sports played in jurisdictions where betting on sports fantasy leagues is allowed. Again, it must be stressed that all forms of online gambling are illegal in the United States and made so by both the Safe Ports Act and the Wire Act…so what the NCAA is doing is more like empty posturing rather than anything productive.

If you have ever made a bet online on anything that has to do with professional football in the United States, the NFL wants to speak with you. If you think that the government is wishy-washy concerning how to deal with online gambling, they are pikers when compared to the vague outlandishness that is perpetrated by the NFL. Since Delaware has legalized sports gambling (what?) the cronies behind the largest sports behemoth in the history of professional gaming are raging because they don’t want Delaware to have this delicacy all to themselves.

Michael Vick and dog fighting. For more coverage on this, see here and also see the section titled “Michael Vick” below.

	“	No one will be betting on professional sports games	„
	—Barney Frank, Democratic rep from Massachusetts.

Rodger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, in his typically impeded and inarticulate manner, wants to assure fans of the NFL that state lotteries will still be allowed to show likenesses of NFL logos on their scratch off tickets, state run bingo games, mega and super lotto games, and on several local games. Sure they do, as long as you can license a picture of a queer looking Viking on a scratch off card and make money on it, it’s okay.

	“	the league is not intending to be "high and mighty" on gambling, but wants to distance itself from gambling on the outcome of games.	„
	—Roger Goodell wants to take the high road.

Horse Racing

About the only sports betting that has a system that is set down with the correct list of priorities is horse racing. Many states have legalized horse racing and several tracks, because of this, book makers are way ahead when it comes to ease of betting, explaining odds, and getting people online to do it. in a case where a system works and can be taxed, the United States federal government has pretty much left horse racing alone. This may have to do with the fact that horses cannot be bribed or told to take a dive, but it is also more likely that organized crime has had something to do with it.

While horse racing can be bet on using the internet, most of the betting done in this sort of gambling is done at the track because of the sport’s widespread stance of legal betting. It is far more exciting to lose your money while you are depressed, drunk, and far away from home than it is to do it online. However, even though most bets are placed at a track, you can still find several book sites that will take your money. Because of the low amount (comparatively) of betting done in online horse racing, scandals and cheats are usually contained to IRL events such as steroids, jockey tampering, and even drugging/poisoning; anything to get an unfair advantage.

Michael Vick

	“	im 15 can we make like a dog fighting chat club??? on mirc ?????? my msn is [email protected].. any dog fighters talk to me babies	„
	—some dingbat on undernet.

Michael Vick and his troubles with dog fighting have been covered so much that the topic is literally beating a dead horse. There is no need to rehash the drama here. However, it must be noted that Michael’s dog fighting involvement must have been tied to the internet in some way, shape, or form, and you know he was betting or financing a “house” book for his dogs…that is just the way the system works.

Dog fighting is a gambler’s sport…there is no other reason for it, and if you look hard enough, you will find sites or IRC channels dedicated to the activity…oh fuck it, just go here and find out about dog fighting.

Today's Line

Sports Betting Disclaimer - Encyclopedia Dramatica does not undertake any responsibility and/or liability for any losses and/or damages sustained by any person or persons using services on our site and we shall not be responsible and/or liable for any losses or damages due to any information or otherwise contained on this web site or through links, sponsors and email correspondence, whether due to inaccuracy, error, omission or bad judgment or any reason whatsoever. We do not take responsibility in any way regarding picks and predictions posted on this or any site, so if you lose your house, your wife leaves you, you end up on a street corner downtown, sucking dick for crack rock while you live behind a restaurant dumpster, it isn't Encyclopedia Dramatica's fault. If you feel you have complaints, comments, or wish to contact us, please see this page, where your issues will be resolved. We advise all viewers to use discretion when viewing our picks and predictions page. If you encounter gambling problems of any kind, please contact the gambling help authorities in your area. This website is NOT responsible for the losses of any of its users or traffic in general. The gambler is to be responsible for his or her activity and transactions online. It is the mere and sole purpose of the site to recommend the best sports betting and gambling alternatives online, poke fun at them, and to display this information for entertainment purposes only. But you won't do that, sucker.

Video

This guy offers odds on how much of a scam sports betting sites are.
Isn't it odd that he is offering odds...on a website?

I wonder how Staples Office Supply Company feels about
this hack job of a video?
Seriously, the video looks like it was made in five minutes...

If you're so successful with your online gambling, why are you
wearing a really old polo shirt and using your crappy office job's
conference room to shoot your video?