Betting the totals or Over/Under betting as it’s commonly called, is a popular option for sports bettors of all different experience levels. Beginners enjoy betting the totals for its simplicity, and if you know the two teams playing, it could be fairly easy to win some cash.
When it comes to betting the totals, the oddsmakers will choose a number based on the two teams playing, and you will have to decide if the total amount of points or goals by both teams combined will be over that number or under that number. The oddsmakers do all of the research, and will analyze each team in-depth and come up with surprisingly accurate or close totals most of the time.
In football and basketball, the totals are much higher and there are more points to be had, so betting the totals is quite easy. For a Green Bay Packers vs Minnesota Vikings match up, the total might be 58. You will have to decide if you think the Packers and Vikings will have a high scoring game or not. If you bet the over and the final score is 27-35, it doesn’t matter who won the game, you will have hit the over and won your wager. If you bet the under, you will have lost.
Some sportsbooks even implement half-point totals which prevent the push. A push is when the final score ends up being exactly the projected total at the sportsbook. In the above example, if the total were 58 and the score was 27-31, you wouldn’t win your wager but you would receive your wagered funds back from the push.
It’s fairly straight forward.
Are some sports more challenging to handicap totals for? Absolutely. Hockey can be relatively easy, baseball more difficult when you have to account for pitchers, weather etc, but football is the most challenging. There are so few games in the regular season to gather statistics and so many players and factors to consider and you really don’t get a good feel for a team until a few weeks into the regular season.
