Sports Betting School

The Asian Handicap market is a type of bet that gives an advantage or disadvantage to a team or player. The market exists to help balance the odds when there is a strong favourite, and therefore, the odds on the standard moneyline bet are very poor.

Let's take a football match as an example:

There are many Asian Handicap markets, but they all involve adjusting the score of one team by adding or subtracting goals from their final tally. Let's say you were to bet on a team at -1.5. This would indicate that the number of goals that the team scores would be reduced by 1.5 goals. So if they scored 4 goals in the game, this would be reduced to 2.5. You could also bet on +1.5, which is the opposite meaning the goals they have scored increase from 4 to 5.5

The final score is altered by this amount when the game or match finishes, and it is then that your bet is calculated. You are therefore betting that your team can overcome this disadvantage and still win, or that with the advantage, they will win. This is not the easiest market to understand, so the following example will help clarify it.

Let's look at the fixture in the English Premier League between West Ham and Chelsea.

Chelsea are strong favourites priced at 1.75, West Ham are outsiders at 5.5, and the draw is 4.2.

There are many other types of Asian handicap bets which involve adding or subtracting whole numbers or quarter numbers. For more information, check out the link below

The European Handicap market shares similarities with the Asian Handicap market in many ways, but there are also notable differences. The market also exists to help balance the odds when there is a strong favourite in the match, and it adds either an advantage or disadvantage to the teams' scoreline in terms of the number of goals they have scored.

The primary difference is that the European Handicap market only offers full-number handicaps. By this, we mean +1/+2/+3 etc. Whereas Asian handicap markets can include quarter, half or whole number handicaps. Because of this, it's possible that after the result has been changed by the handicap, the game could result in a draw. This will also be classified as a losing bet if you have bet on one of the teams to win.

You are again betting that your team will overcome the disadvantage or win with the advantage. Once again, this may be clearer with an example:

For more information on European handicap betting, please visit the link below.

One of the tools you can use to help you with sports betting is to take advantage of the various betting calculators that are out there. These range from very basic ones, which will just add up the bets for you, say if you wish to place an accumulator bet. Which is placing a number of bets together so all the odds add up to make one final odd, which is the odd you use to place a bet, to more clever ones, which help with betting strategies such as the Matched Betting calculator. No matter what bet you are trying to place, there will be a calculator that helps you. Check out the links below for our betting calculator.