Props Betting: Betting to Win on Non-Team Sports
While basketball and American football are the two most popular sports among punters, there are also betting types for non-team sports like golf, tennis and boxing. Let us look at our betting options for non-team sports.
The betting types for non-team sports fall under the category of "Proposition Betting" or props betting. Proposition betting in turns covers both "Betting to Win" and "Matchup Betting." This is a broad subject, but here we will explain only Betting to Win.
"Betting to Win" is the most common type of sports wagering for non-team sports. You just bet on who you think is going to win an event or tournament before it begins. This is also called "Future Betting" and is made before the start of a tournament or event. The earlier you make your bet, the wilder the odds you are likely to get. As the tournament or event draws closer, the odds will swing one way or the other like stocks on Wall Street. Thus in boxing, Oscar de la Hoya may start out a 12/1 three months before a match. But the odds may fall to 7/1 if he is attracting too many bets or seems likely to win. If Oscar is getting too many wagers on his side, the bookies will try to attract bets to his opponent by lowering the Golden Boy's odds.
With future bets, remember that once you place a bet, your bet is locked to the odds that were in effect at the time you made your wager.
Further, in some non-team sport events, not all contestants can be listed. For example, in tennis there are scores of players in each tournament - most of them unknown qualifiers and wildcards - that it is impossible to set odds for them all.
In that case, the sports bettor can wager a "collective" bet on these unknowns by specifying a "field" bet; that is, if any of the unknowns with no set odds wins, the field bettor also wins. Since there are many players in the "field," the odds for it aren't as fantastic as one would expect for a big underdog. On the upside, you do get to place your wager on a lot of competitors.
As a final note, betting to win on non-team sports has one big advantage over team sports: frequent availability. Tennis and golf have tournaments all year round. That is not the case with either the NBA or the NFL. So you can make future bets on tennis and NASCAR more often.