Spreadbetting Summary
Spreadbetting does not involve betting on an outcome as such, you more commonly bet on how different the end result will be from the "spread" offered by the bookmaker. One of the more simple markets and easiest to understand is the total goals market. Here the site will predict the number of goals scored in a game and it will commonly be about 2.6 and 2.7 say, so they think there will be that many goals. Obviously you cant have .7 of a goal, but you can have a distance AWAY from 2.7 goals. If you think there will be lots of goals you would BUY the goals for 2.7 and say its at £10 a point, and you are right there are five goals, then you won 2.3 points (5 - 2.7) and because you bet £10 a point, thats worth £23 to you. With the bet you dont win a set amount of money for being right, you win a number of points, and it is this which is then mulitiplied by your stake amount to give your profit. NOTE The stake amount is NOT the amount of your bet, your bet amount is the number of points muliplied by your stake amount. It is because you do not know how many points will actually be won/lost before the game that the liability can not be quantified hence the dangers and that it is possible to lose more than you deposited.
To explain again lets say the same spread is on another game but you think there will be few goals so you bet and SELL total goals at 2.6, you bet £5 a point this time. You are right it is one nill, so you now win 1.6 points (2.6 - 1) at £5 is £8 profit (£5 x 1.6). BUT there could have been five goals and you would have lost 2.4 (5 - 2.6) points which is £12 (£5 x 2.4) or there there could have been eight goals which is a 5.4 (8 - 2.6) loss and is -£27 (£5 x 5.4). The more goals there are the more you lose and there is no maximum amount of goals. Some markets do have limits though so check that, sometimes even if its 8-3 they might only count the first 8. Hopefully you get the idea though.
You can still bet on events outcomes but to do this the sites fix a total number of "points" on the different events, they may say a loss is 0 points, a draw is 10 and a win is 25 points. In that case the spread may be at 15 and you can BUY if you think the team will win and SELL if you think they will lose. If they win then you win 10 points overall, you won 25 and bought at 15 so 10 points profit. If it is a draw you lose but only lose 5 points, you paid 15 points but still won 10 for the draw so a 5 point loss. If it is an outright loss then you lost 15 points. So to repeat again the monetry value of the bets is worked out by how much you bet per point multiplied by how many points you won or lost. In this example if it was £20 a point, a win would be +£200, and a draw -£100, and a loss -£300. So you see how even though you bet £20, you in fact bet much more, it is your stake mulitipled by the amount of points you won or lost.
