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Asian Handicap Betting

There’s a simple reason why anyone who bets on football should know about Asian Handicaps: it’s better value and therefore you’ll make more money.

Background

This style of football match betting was originally used in South East Asia (called hang cheng), but is now widely available through European and offshore bookmakers. Bet365 is probably the UK market leader for this type of bet. Asian Handicap works by presenting the punter with just two betting options, as opposed to the three option Home-Draw-Away method. This is almost always better value to the punter, i.e. the bookmaker makes less margin from Asian Handicap bets.

How it works

The two bet options represent Home and Away, with the Draw being eliminated. The ‘handicap’ is created when each team has plus or minus a number of goals which will balance the chances between the two sides.

For example, a superior Team A could be given a handicap of ‘-0.5’ for a game against Team B, who is therefore at ‘+0.5’. The odds for this match will be close to evens, or 2.0 (give or take some bookie margin). Other handicaps for the same game could be available, such as + or – 1 or 1.5 goals.

To calculate the winner, you just add the handicap to the actual final score.
So if the result is 1:1 and your team, B, had a handicap of +0.5, the result now becomes 1:1.5  meaning that you have won your bet.
If the result is ‘level’ after the handicap has been added, for example if you have a +1 goal handicap and your team loses 1:2, then post-handicap result is 2:2. In this situation the entire stake is returned, i.e. zero profit or loss, or ‘push’.
If you bet on a negative goal handicap, the team must win by more than the level chosen e.g. if you bet on -1.5 goals, the team must win by 2 clear goals for you to win your bet.

The handicap can also be split over two bets. This is designed to give greater accuracy, e.g. a bet of ‘+0.25’ on Team A is the short way of describing a bet equally split over the ‘+0.5’ and ‘0’ handicaps. The two bets will be settled separately, so it’s possible to get half your stake returned whilst the other half will win/lose. The odds offered on Asian Handicap bets (sometimes called Asian Lines) reflect the likelihood of the event occurring, so it pays to shop around because companies will see the risk and likelihood differently.

People who tend to bet on Asian Handicaps really know their football. They often bet larger stakes than other punters, on more ‘certain’ outcomes, i.e. generally avoiding long shots.

Bethawk provides football tips in the asian handicap bet format as this allows punters to maximise profits.

Register for totally free Premier League and La Liga asian handicap tips from Bethawk.