What are the different types of bets available?

This text is based on our personal experiences and represents our opinions.
When you go into an online bookmaker to look at the market selections for a sporting event, then you will generally first land upon fixed odds outrights. This is the basic format of most betting, especially for newcomers to betting online, but just as markets are vast, so are the different types of betting. What are the different types of bets available? As mentioned, fixed odds are one of the prime ones. This is where a set market price is offered on the straight outcome of an event. For betting on a football match for example, you will have three fixed outright options. You can bet on a home win, a draw, or an away win. Each outcome will have odds assigned to it, you make your selection by adding it to your betting slip, enter your stake and place your bet. This is the simplest and most straight forward type of bet available, and it is the most common anywhere you look online. It represents good risk factor, good value and is straight forward enough to dip in and out of quickly, as well as being user friendly for new punters to get to grips with. However, there are other types of bets which are worth exploring.

Multiples, such as doubles and trebles, are a way to boost your betting power. What are the advantages of betting on multiples? Let’s take a look at a treble. On the weekend’s Premier League fixture list, you pick out three match winners, say Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United. These would probably all be very strong favourites to win their respective matches, so not too much profit margins there, but there is a way to boost it up a little bit, by playing a multiple as this provides extra coverage. Multiples give you the chance to win bigger profit for smaller stakes. But, while that sounds great, understand that the chances of pulling them off are slimmer than individual bets. Multiples are linked single bets, and with a Double for example, the winnings from the first selection is then staked on the second selection. If you have done a treble, then the accumulated winnings from your first bets is staked on the third selection. Here you can see how the profit can grow so quickly. When you look at four selections and above, your accumulators are named by the amount of selections made (fourfold, fivefold, six fold etc). With these accumulators, you need all results to come up, so the bigger the accumulator, the bigger the prize, but the harder it is to pull off. One wrong result and you lose it all.

Full Coverage bets This is a great way to add coverage to your individual bets. Let’s say that you pick three football matches, instead of an treble, you could play a Trixie instead. This means that you are making three selections, but are actually covered by four bets, two doubles, and a treble, giving you full coverage on your selections. A Yankee is four selections covered by eleven separate bets (6 doubles, 4 trebles and a fourfold accumulator). The more selections you make, the more coverage you have. Unlike an accumulator, a full coverage bet doesn’t require all selections to win. On a Trixie, only two of your selections have to win to get something back. On a Yankee for example, you only need three selections to come up in order to get some kind of return (which obviously won’t be anywhere as big as if all four selections won). So this provides some good coverage. You can expect to shell out more on the initial stake than in an accumulator, as you have to essentially wager on all combinations of bets (e.g. eleven in a Yankee). So a Yankee would cost you an £11 stake if you bet £1 as your base unit, however you do have better coverage than an accumulator.

Spread Bets are more commonly found in North American betting markets, and they offer bigger rewards but with bigger risks predominantly. For Spread Betting, the bookmaker will set a points spread on an American Football match for example, say of 31-34. You have to then decide whether you think the points total on the match will be under 31, or over 34. Then you bet units of stake, say for example £1. If you bet that the match will end under 31 points, then for each point under that number, you will win you stake multiplied by the difference. So, if there was only 10 points in the match, you would win 31-10 = 21 x £1 = £21 profit. If however the match ends 5 points over 34, then you would lose £5. The more right you are in spread betting, the more you will win. The more wrong you are, the more you will lose. This is a form of betting which is popular, but with its own lingo and intensity, time is often needed to ease your way into this riskier form of betting.



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Top Betting Sites in the UK (in our experience)

Bookmaker	Review	Website
	Bet365 Review	www.bet365.com
	William Hill Review	www.williamhill.com
	Paddy Power Review	www.paddypower.com
	Sportingbet Review	www.sportingbet.com
	Betvictor Review	www.betvictor.com