Rugby betting is the practice of placing bets on one of the two rugby teams partaking in a given match. Each match splits the two teams into a favourite, which is the team that is expected to win the match, and an underdog, which is the team expected to lose. Each team is given odds based on their chances of winning the match, and gamblers place bets using these odds as guidelines. There are two basic types of gambling when it comes to rugby betting: money line bets and spread bets. Here, we’ll go over some of the basics of both.
A money line bet is a type of betting in which the bookmakers, that is, the people that create the odds, give the favourite and the underdog different odds for winning. The favourite’s odds are negative, while the underdog’s are positive. It looks something like this:
Team A vs. Team B
Team A: -150
Team B: 200
This means that for every one hundred and fifty dollars you bet on Team A winning a match, if your pick wins, you are paid one hundred. For every hundred dollars you bet on Team B, if they win, you are paid two hundred. These odds are actually fairly close, and would represent a match between two teams where one does not have a huge advantage. You might sometimes see large disparities in the odds, such as when an undefeated team goes up against a team with a mediocre record. Odds from -500 to 500 are not uncommon.
Another type of rugby betting is called spread betting. In this type of betting style, bookmakers attempt to even the odds by giving the underdog a handicap in the form of points. A bet placed on a favourite will require that the favourite win a match by a certain number of points, based on how likely bookmakers think they are to win and by how much. Conversely, a bet placed on the underdog for a given match will pay out even if the underdog loses, as long as it is within the point threshold.
For example, suppose that bookmakers think Team A is likely to win by ten points. They might make the odds for a game something like this:
Team A: +9.5
Team B: -9.5
This would mean that if you were to place a bet on Team A, they would have to win by at least ten points in order for your bet to pay out. If Team A won, but by any less than ten points, you would lose your bet. If you bet on Team B, and they either won the game or lost by less than ten points, you would still win your bet.
