Different Types of Bets Explained

Let’s start with the most obvious bet of all. Whether you’re betting on a football team to win a game, placing a darts bet on a player to win a match, or a horse to win a race, it doesn’t get any simpler than this: your selection either wins or it doesn’t, at fixed odds. When betting on US Sports such as NFL or basketball, it’s known as the moneyline.

It’s not all about the win. Placing a bet on a horse to Place means you’re betting on it to finish in the Top 3 or Top 4 in the race; it doesn’t matter in which exact position as the payout will be the same.

The same goes for golfers. Betting Top 6, 7 or 8 means you just need your player to finish within that range. It goes without saying that betting on a golfer for a Top 6 finish would be at higher odds than a Top 7.

Here you’re betting on a team or player to win a tournament rather than an individual match. So Rory McIlroy to win the British Open, England to win Euro 2024 or the Miami Dolphins to win the Super Bowl, are all future bets.

Live betting doesn’t refer to a type of bet as such but rather to any bet placed after the event is in progress.

Doubles/trebles/Four-folds

With these acca/multiple bets, you’re putting together two (double), three (treble), four (four-fold) or more selections in the same bet. The odds on each selection are multiplied by each other to get the odds for the acca as a whole. So if your selections were Everton (odds of 2.0), Liverpool (2.5) and Chelsea (3.0) all to win, the odds on the treble would be: 2.0 x 2.5 x 3.0 = 15.

The problem with acca bets is that you need all selections to win for the acca to win though some Sportsbooks these days offer acca betting insurance, which means that if just one selection lets you down, you can get your stake back as a free bet.

Here you’re betting on whether the total goals or points for a particular team or across both teams will be over or under a certain amount. For example: over/under 2.5 goals in a football match or whether the LA Lakers will score more or less than 120.5 points in the basketball match.

Also known as player bets, these revolve around the performance of particular players within the match. For example, that Phil Foden will score a goal, that Kylian Mbappe will provide an assist, that Harry Maguire will get a yellow or red card or that Cole Palmer will have two or more shots on target. 
In a sport like (NBA) basketball the prop bets could revolve around a particular player scoring a certain number of points, providing a number of assists or even securing a certain amount of rebounds. 

Specials generally means betting on non-sporting events like political elections, Miss World, X-Factor or the Oscars though occasionally it can also refer to sports-related markets. Like who will be the Next Manager of a named football team or which club a named player will move to next. 

Multiples are pretty straightforward in that however many selections are in one, you need them all to win. But there are other types of bets that involve multiple selections in the same bet but don’t require all selections to win for you to win.

In the case of a Trixie, you’re placing bets on three selections which will then make up: three doubles and a treble, so four bets in total.

Similar to a Trixie, it also contains three selections and those selections are used to make three doubles and a treble. But additionally, the three selections are also included as singles, bringing it up to seven in total. 
Yankees
With a Yankee, you have four selections making up a total of 11 bets: six doubles, four trebles and a quadruple.

It works the same way as the Yankee in terms of how those four selections become 11 bets as doubles, trebles and quadruples. But like with the Patent Bet, those four selections are also placed as singles, bringing the total number of bets up to 15, hence the name.

A flag bet is made up of four selections and used to place the same 11 bets as you would on a Yankee: 6x doubles, 4x trebles, 1x four-fold.

The difference here is that there are an additional 12 bets in play (taking the total up to 23) because there’s the potential for six pairs of Up and Down bets to be placed. ‘Potential’ because though you pay for the Up and Down bets in advance, they’ll only come into play if the first of those four selections wins as a single.  

If the first single wins, the stake of it is used to fund a bet on the second selection. If that one wins, the stake is then used for the third bet and so on.