Available Wager Types At New York Sportsbooks
New York-friendly sportsbooks based overseas are highly regarded for their wide variety of available betting lines on all the major professional and collegiate sports. Those myriad choices are of little value to the would-be bettor, however, if the different available wager types at these legal sports betting sites is not understood. The purpose of this guide is to give first-time users and returning veteran bettors a more thorough grasp of the plethora of betting options found at legal New York sportsbooks like BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes.
The three sites mentioned are the best internet sportsbooks (for New York players) based outside the US, where a hodgepodge of federal laws and state laws makes regulated domestic sports betting online a practical impossibility if not outright banning the practice. Boasting a winning combination of security features unauthorized websites can’t promise, complimentary offers and bonuses brick-and-mortar sportsbooks can’t match and the legality domestic platforms can’t offer makes BetOnline, SportsBetting and 5Dimes stand in a class of their own. But in practical, everyday terms, it’s the assortment of available wager types at New York sportsbooks like those we recommend to our readers that make them stand out amid an entire industry.
In the next few sections we’ll take a closer look at the different types of wagers available at all the top-rated legal offshore sports betting sites, show how these wager types work in terms of the real world betting lines available and, finally, give examples of typical betting lines of each variety.
Betting the spread is another of the popular wager types available at New York sportsbooks and those serving other markets as well. This method of wagering, like betting straight up, is concerned with victory and defeat (or a yes or no question, if you prefer to think of it that way), but unlike the prior method, betting the spread takes the margin of victory into account. Linesmakers, or “bookies,” as they are colloquially known, will often offer some of their most appealing odds on spread betting lines because they are primarily intended to give bettors more incentive to take the underdog in a given matchup.
One of two outcomes are possible in order for a bet against to the spread to be considering a winning wager. First, a bettor can pick the outright winner in the contest, same as under normal moneyline odds. Second, a bettor can pick the team or player that loses the contest, provided the loss is within an established number of points that the favorite gives them as a handicap (that’s why it’s called the spread). This may be easier to understand in the form of an example.
Say the Jets are set to host the Philadelphia Eagles in a regular season NFL game and that New York has better chances to win outright. A point-spread betting line on this game might show the Jets with odds of -170 to win outright but only +140 to win by more than two touchdowns. The bookies at a New York sportsbook would accordingly list the spread at 14 points – meaning the Eagles’ actual final score will be boosted by 14 points for the purposes of betting. If a bettor wagers $140 on the Jets and they win 35-7 then that’s going to be a payout of $240, but if Eagles lose 35-21, then Philadelphia will have covered the spread and any bet on them will win instead, even though the Eagles still lost the game.
Betting the total, otherwise known as betting on the over/under, is the third of the most commonly available betting types offered by nearly every sports betting platform, whether a brick-and-mortar sportsbook or website serving New York bettors. Unlike the previous two betting types we’ve already examined, totals betting does not concern itself with whether a team or player wins or loses but instead whether the final combined score of the two sides is greater than (over) or less than (under) a predetermined number predicted by the bookie. Various reasons exist for why betting the total is popular betting type among sports gamblers, but the main one is that it enables player to avoid having to choose the winner in the contest while being a supplemental means of earning extra winnings.
The means by which totals betting occurs is quite simple in practice. A bettor chooses the “over” or “under” side of the projected total combined score, and if the score is indeed higher or lower than that looked-for amount then the appropriate bet wins. However, a third outcome is possible when betting the total, and that is the “push” – which basically occurs when the final score exactly matches the projected amount. In the case of a push the money wagered by bettors on both sides of the betting line is refunded.
An example of this betting type in action would be a final combined total score of 42 in a hypothetical matchup between the Buffalo Bills and the Atlanta Falcons. If the projected total had been 40 points, a bet on “over” would win, whereas a bet on “under” would lose. Payouts would, of course, be based on the moneyline odds associated with the totals betting line.
Though we’ve looked at the main three available betting types offered by the legal offshore sports betting sites serving the New York and American sports wagering market, there are different ways to bet as well. Some of them, like prop bets (short for propositional) can be thought of as “spin-offs” or supplemental “tie-ins” to the main types of betting, while others – namely mobile betting via smartphone and live, in-game betting – are entirely new variations or enhancements of traditional forms of wagering.
In the next few sections we’ll take a more in-depth look at these different ways to bet on sports available at New York-friendly sportsbooks, with the hope that our readers will give them a try the next time they decide to bet on their favorite teams online.
Player prop bets are among the most enduringly popular of all the different wager types available across the sports betting landscape. The simple fact is that popular athletes cultivate a heroic aura that attracts legions of dedicated fans, many of which could safely be assumed to be interested in placing wagers on the successes of these beloved athletes. That’s where player props – which consider the performances of individual players irrespective of or only tangentially related to the final outcome of a given contest.
Wagers of this type include such things as the number of passes a quarterback will complete in a football game, the number of strikeouts recorded by a pitcher in a baseball game or even, as a corollary, the number of own-goals scored by a member of a soccer team. Bettors place wagers of any of the three main betting types (moneyline, spread or totals betting) related to these questions of individual statistical performance, with payout for a winning bet correlating with the prop’s own moneyline odds.
Team prop bets are similar to player prop bets except that they focus on elements of statistical performances of the entire team (or special portions of the team in question) rather than the solo performance of an athlete. Common bets of this wager type include question like “will the Giants defense block a field goal?” or “will the Yankees win the American League pennant?” Again, bettors place their wagers on whether or not they think the selected outcome will occur, with winnings being awarded based on the moneyline odds associated with the team prop betting line.
The leading legal sports betting sites that accept US players generally and New York bettors in particular – those being the Antigua-based SportsBetting and BetOnline and the European Union-based 5Dimes – have all heavily invested in developing new, technology-based betting options. What separates mobile sports betting apps at New York sportsbooks from the other wagering types we have already looked at is that mobile sports betting isn’t really a different betting type at all. Mobile betting is just what its name indicates – a mobile app that lets the bettor take their hobby with them anywhere.
These mobile sports betting apps are available for free via direct download directly from their associated websites, and the direction the developers decided to take in this case is to create a 1-to-1 replication of the desktop version. That means that your sports betting experience will run fasters on your smartphone or tablet than using a browser version, enhancing your ability to do everything else related to wagering. These apps are available for Android and Apple iOS mobile phones and other smart devices.
Live in-game betting, unlike mobile betting, is a totally different type of wagering than any other variety we’ve looked at so far. That’s because all the other wagering types, regardless what kind it is, all assume one thing in common: the odds are made well in advance and are “locked” at a predetermined time before the start of the contest in question. All that changes with live in-game betting, however, as advances in computing power has enabled the leading New York-friendly sportsbooks in recent years have enabled the development of algorithms and platforms that can calculate and list new odds in real time based on the on-field/on-court action as it happens.
Not every game will be available for the live betting wagering type, but most matchups between marquee teams will have this option at SportsBetting, BetOnline and 5Dimes, the legal New York sportsbooks. Bettors interested in this wagering type should be aware that, because the odds are subject to constantly change throughout the contest, you will need to be “quick on the draw” if you want to lock in a bet when it’s at its most favorable. Some players, especially those coming from a gaming-oriented background, like the faster-paced, more skills-based approach to sports betting in that it favors a lot of quick decision making. Of all the different wager types we’ve discussed, live betting may not be the best one for your style, but it’s a free option that is at least worth a try.