Action points simplified

Betting on sports is popular as it not only heightens the excitement of a game but also helps satisfy the urge to wager. For some, though, a simple bet on which team will win no longer cuts it. Thus, into the world of sports betting entered the amped up and more thrilling world of action points.

Action points is a bet not only on which team will end up victorious over the other, but also by the number of points it will win over the opponent. Most bookmakers may cap this spread to a maximum of ten, but there may be others which will go higher. To further illustrate the concept, if you wager +3 for a team in a game, you lose if the other team beats your chosen team by four points. Conversely, you beat the spread and therefore win if the opposing team only beats your team by two points.

After you choose the spread, you then decide on how much to wager per point. In doing this, you evidently have to take into consideration your risk appetite, how much you are willing to lose, and the size of your account. This is so because once you have decided on the spread and the bet per action point, the bookmaker will protect itself by computing the total amount you stand to lose and then freezing said amount in your account until the final results are tallied. Obviously, the amount you are allowed to lose cannot be greater than your account balance.

Let us now look at an example. A bet of $11/$10 means that you stand to lose $11 for every point not covered by the spread, while you would win $10 for every covered point. Thus, when the bookmaker uses a cap of 10 points, this means that you stand to lose a maximum of $110 in every game, while your maximum possible winning is $100. For games then where the final scores of each team are not too far off from each other, the amount you stand to win or lose may not be much. But for games where the final scores may be too far apart, the cap imposed by the bookmaker would also serve to limit your potential losses.