Editor’s note: Ang Sugarol is Fire Quinito’s special series on sports gambling. In our first installment, former UP professor and sports betting professional Ronald Po takes us through the basics of gambling odds, betting lines, and handicaps.

What’s better than cheering for your favorite team? How about cheering for them and getting some money as well? Traditionally, betting in local basketball involved head-to-head wagers as well the “ending” numbers game, which involves predicting the last digits of the final score of the basketball game.

The past few years, underground bookies have emerged to collect bets on NBA, UAAP and PBA games. More recently, legal online sports books have started operating in the country, allowing one to bet on a smorgasbord of sports competitions.

But before you pick up the phone to call your friendly neighborhood bookie, we’ll discuss some basic concepts of sports betting, such as betting lines, odds, and bookie “juice” or markup.

Most sports that we watch –boxing, basketball, MMA, tennis, soccer — feature two teams or players. You can place bets on the outcome of the match, with one team winning and the other team losing. In soccer and a few other sports, the game can end in a draw.

Straight-up bets on a specific outcome are called moneyline bets, which are usually expressed in three ways: Odds, Decimal, or American. These are different formats but they all mean the same thing.

To illustrate these, take the case of the recent fight between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito. Going around sports betting sites (or through your local bookie), you will probably get the following:

Pacquiao -400 (American)
Pacquiao 1.25 (Decimal)
Pacquiao 1/4 (Odds)

Each of the betting lines above means that because Pacquiao was favored to win the fight, a bet of P400 would win you P100. The implied probability of Pacquiao winning is 80%.

So does that mean that a P100 bet on Margarito would win you P400? Actually, this isn’t the case. Typical Margarito betting lines would look like these:

Margarito +300
Margarito 4.00
Margarito 3/1

In these lines, the implied probability of Margarito winning is 25%. If we add this to Pacquiao’s 80%, then we have a total probability of 105%! This is not an anomaly, this is how bookies make their profit. By padding the total probability past 100%, bookies can win some money regardless of the outcome. Typically, bookies would “charge” an extra 5% by padding their lines. Local bookies are less creative, opting to take commissions from winning bets (usually 10%) instead.

Another way at looking at how bookies profit is by illustrating a coin toss. We open betting lines for the outcome of a coin toss. Since this is a 50-50 outcome, betting lines would look like this:

Heads +100
Tails +100

For this event’s bookie, there is no way to make money other than take commissions from the winners. Bookies would normally charge higher for either outcome. So, instead of charging 50% probability, the bookie can charge higher than 50%, say, 51.22%. That would change the betting lines into something like this:

Heads -105
Tails -105 (Bet 105 to win 100)

In this scenario, heads or tails come out 51.22% of the time, for a total probability of 102.44%. So, if the bookie gets action on both sides (one P105 bet for heads and one for tails), he is guaranteed to earn 10 pesos whatever happens.

So you have to understand, even for a fifty-fifty bet, odds are stacked against you.

Now let’s imagine this scenario: the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, starring Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol are coming to town to play a game with Barangay Ginebra. Everyone knows that the Lakers would win over the Gin Kings in that game, so no one will bet on Ginebra, despite good odds. In this case, moneyline bets would not be very smart for either the bettor or the bookie.

Instead, a different betting line would be made available for bettors, which would look like this:

LA Lakers -50 +100
Barangay Ginebra +50 +100

The bookies give Ginebra a 50-point handicap against the Lakers. That means that a wager on LA would only win if the Lakers beat the Gin Kings by more than 50 points. If Ginebra loses by less than 50, then it’s a winning wager for the PBA’s crowd darling.

However, if the Lakers win by exactly 50, the bets get returned (called a push or no action). Bookies avoid this by putting a half-point in the handicap. So, if the handicap is -50.5 for the Lakers, a wager on LA wins if LA wins by 51 or more.

Another betting line that’s present in basketball is the totals, or the sum of the scores of both teams. Typically, betting lines would look like this:

Over 180 +100
Under 180 +100

You can bet on the total to be higher or lower than a specified handicap.

Knowing what betting lines mean is one thing, winning bets is another. If you plan to go ahead and make bets without thinking, you might as well be throwing away money. Here are some tips that I can share for the would-be sports bettor:

1. Find a good bookie. I personally prefer online sports books to place my bets rather than the underground text-your-bet bookie. Google “sports betting” and you will have a wide array of sports books. Some are ok, some are good, and some are downright horrible. For the novice bettor, the differences among these are not that noticeable. Downside to online sports books is the need for a Paypal account or a credit card. A local option is available in Pagcor gaming sites all over the country. There, you don’t need a credit card.


2. Be a sports fan. As a general rule, you should only bet on sports that you ardently follow. I watch some PBA, tennis and the occasional NBA game. I would recommend betting on the PBA because no one outside of the Philippines knows about the PBA. Heck, online bookies don’t even know when the games actually start! More often than not, you will find betting lines that don’t make sense. For example, once in a game between San Miguel and Talk N Text, SMB was favored to win even though their import was injured. Itataya ko ang bahay at lupa sa TNT to win.


3. Bet small and often. For any would-be sports bettor, practice makes perfect. In betting, make small bets and make them often. This allows you to practice and determine how game lines hold with actual results.