What Is A Moneyline Bet In Basketball

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What Is Moneyline Nfl
What Is A Moneyline Bet In Basketball Tournament
What Is A Moneyline Bet In Basketball Player

Everyone makes moneyline bets without even knowing it. Even non-gamblers make moneyline bets. Betting the moneyline for a game is possibly the most simple way to wager on sports. Bettors just choose a player or team to win. If the bettor chooses the winning side, the sportsbook will pay the amount due. It’s really that simple.

This is a simple wager on which team will win a particular game. Odds compilers will weigh up the relative strengths and weaknesses of each team, factoring in head-to-head records. Alternatively there is a plus bet that goes with the underdog, say at 250. That means if you bet 100 and the underdog wins, you can win $250. Moneyline bets generally involve a higher wager to make money as opposed to point spreads. Moneyline picks are the most common wager instrument in the major sports of NBA, MLB, hockey, and soccer.

There’s no point spread with a moneyline bet. Bettors are just picking the winning side. While placing a wager is simple, trying to understand how the moneyline pays might be a bit complicated. Both sides of each moneyline wager are paid on a different schedule and that could make this kind of bet confusing.

The favorite team or player on the moneyline is the team that’s expected to win. This side of the bet usually listed with a minus (-) sign. The underdog team or player on the moneyline is the team that’s expected to lose. This side of the moneyline is usually listed with a plus (+) sign. These signs signify how either side of the wager will pay. The minus side will pay less than original wager while the plus side will pay more than the original wager.

Example of a moneyline wager

What Is Moneyline Nfl

Low scoring sports like baseball, soccer, and hockey are usually bet on using a moneyline. But they are also popular in football. The best way to explain how moneyline bets are paid is with an actual example. Let’s use this past Super Bowl between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs as an example.

The easiest way to understand moneyline wagers is by using a $100 bet. Using the above example, the moneyline on the underdog Buccaneers was +136. At +136 odds, a $100 wager would pay $136 in profit if the Buccaneers won the game (for a total payout of $236). Bettors often like picking underdogs because they are usually “plus” money. This side of the moneyline bet pays out more money per unit than a wager on the favorite.

In this example, the moneyline on the favorite Chiefs was -156. At -156 odds, a bettor would need to wager $156 to win $100. Since the favorite is considered the team with the better chance to win, a winning wager will usually pay out less than the original amount wagered.

Looking deeper into moneyline wagers

The two sides of each moneyline wager are essentially the opposite of each other. When wagering on the favorite it’s easiest to work from the dollar amount that will return a win of $100. When wagering on an underdog it’s easiest to understand how the moneyline pays based on how much a $100 wager will pay.

Understanding how a moneyline wager pays isn’t simple but it’s not very complicated. That said, it might take running through a few examples before fully grasping the payouts. Moneylines for football and basketball games are often tied to the point spread. When a game has a large point spread it usually has a large moneyline. Both are separate bets but are shown together in a sports wagering app screen and in a brick and mortar sportsbook.

As seen above, lines and odds may be different at various sportsbooks so consider this just an example of point spread line and a moneyline.

Moneyline parlays

Moneyline parlays are growing in popularity. A parlay is a single wager that is comprised of multiple results. The payout for a parlay is greater than an individual wager on each player or game. Underdog moneyline parlays are becoming popular because the payouts can be very large. Moneyline parlays are becoming popular because of the perceived ease of choosing multiple favorites to win. Choosing one winner is difficult and multiple winners at the same time is even more difficult.

I know not everyone is familiar with moneyline betting. Taking a team on the moneyline means you are wagering on a team to win the game outright. The money lines are adjusted based on who is more likely to win the game (based on the point spread).

Let’s use an example. A 4-point favorite in NCAA basketball might be listed at -204 via the money line. This means that you would need to wager $204 to profit $100 on the favorite.

On the flip side, an underdog of 4 points would be listed at +166. This means a wager of $100 on the under would pay you $166 if they won the game outright.

True Money Line: How to use our College Basketball Spread to Moneyline Converter

The chart below plots what the true money line on a game should be based on the posted spread. This was found looking at data on over 20,000 college basketball games and finding out how often the favorite or underdog wins outright at that number (see the table on expected win percentage below for even more detail). What this gives us is what the true money line of a game is given a fair market (e.g. no juice applied by the sportsbook).

Using this data, you should be able to identify when your book has a money line that isn’t properly priced based on historical results. It is obviously possible for these probabilities to change year to year, but with over 1,500 games sampled at each common line, we are confident that our true money line pricing is accurate. Once you get to less common spreads, of course, you have a smaller sample and the numbers won’t be as reliable, but the main goal here is to identify market inefficiencies on the money line on common point spreads.

Another way to use this to your advantage is when picking upsets in the tournament. You won’t always see the lower seed viewed as the favorite. Sometimes Vegas sees “the underdog” in the committees’ eyes as the team more likely to advance. I definitely use this trick for my own NCAA bracket predictions.

Spread to Expected Win %

The table below uses historical data to calculate the true win percentage and money line at each spread. The numbers represent pricing based on a fair market, meaning there would be no advantage to the books. Depending on both the spread and the book you use, a books pricing will incorporate an edge to the money line price. For example, we show a -3 point favorite with a true, fair market money line of -159 and a +3 point dog at +159. In a real-lift situation, the pricing will be more like +130 on the dog and -150 on the favorite. In this case we see some advantage to taking a -3 favorite on the money line at -150 with a true money line value at that number listed at -159.

The fewer games you have at a line, the less accurate the data will be, so we’ve excluded spreads without at least 100 occurrences in our sample. Also note that the higher the money line, the more of an advantage the book applies. In our first example, the book used a 20 cent difference between the favorite and dog price, at a higher spread like -12.5 you are going to see a much bigger difference, like -1100 on the favorite and +650 on the underdog (a 450 cent difference). Using this example, there is no advantage to taking the money line as the built-in advantage for the book is too great.