Sport betting is the general term for forecasting the final results of some sporting events such as football (often known as soccer), American football, basketball, volleyball, hockey, horse racing, etc. As a rule, supporters of authorized bookmarking think that it's like a hobby for some people. It adds the interest in sports competitions and in this way sports betting is beneficial for teams and individual players. On the flip side, opponents are afraid that because of a lot of cash involved fantastic gambling can blur the boarders between real and fixed games and the true quality of sports games will be affected.

There are several formats for presenting odds:

Decimal odds format (can also be know as the European format) which is popular in Europe, Canada and Australia represent the ratio of complete pay-off to the stake. The even bet within this format is 2.00.

Fractional odds format (some professionals call it the UK format) which is preferred in Great Britain represent the ratio of the sum that was won to the stake. The even bet in this particular format is 1/1.

Money line odds format (most of US based sites name it "the American format") which is popular in the United States. Money line odds will be the sum won a hundred stake if positive and also the stake must win 100 if negative. The even bet inside this format is 100.

Propositional bets are placed on predicting the specific result of the match. For instance, a bettor tries to predict the range of scored goals by a football team or some individual player.

Parlays bets are a combinational bet which usually consists of several bets as well as in case of success the bettor get a big pay-off. Let's look at the example. If you want to bet for the outcomes of 5 different football matches, you can include five different wagers in a five-team parlay. If you fail to predict even one outcome correctly, you lose your bet. But if you manage to predict correctly all of the results you will get a large pay-off.

With teasers you may combine your bets on two or more games. You can customize the point spreads for two different games, but in the case you will get a lower return on your bets in the event of winning.

Goal line, puck line or run line bets are alternatives to money line prices in football, hockey and baseball, correspondingly. One example is let's analyse the baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies. The run line may appear like this: Kansas City Royals -1.5 (+100), Colorado Rockies +1.5 (-120). If you're taking Royals on the run line, you can avoid risking $200 to win $100 on the moneyline, but will collect only should the Royals win by 2 runs or more. Similar to this, a run line wager on the Rockies are going to pay if Rockies loses by no more than a run, but it entails the bettor to risk $120 to win $100.

Future wagers (in accordance with the name) are your bets on future events. For instance, you are certain that Team A is sure to win the championship within the next season. It's important to place this bet ahead of the beginning of the season. You won't get your money (if you win) ahead of the end of the season. As a rule, odds for such bets are calculated as a ratio of paid units to wagered units.

In head-to-head bets you attempt to forecast competitors results against each other. You don't bet on the normal result of the competition. These types of bets are mainly employed in Formula One races when you attempt to predict the position of drivers among-the others (as a rule, you bet on 2 or 3 drivers).

In totalizators your odds vary in real-time depending on the percent of total exchange that every possible result received. The return rate of the bookmaker is additionally taking into consideration. As an example, should the return rate of the bookmaker is 90%, 90% of the total money placed on the winning outcome will return to bettors and 10% shall go to the bookmaker.