Horse Racing, greyhounds and snooker specialist with thirty years experience of writing about sport across multiple platforms. A QPR and Snooker fan
The Asian Handicap
This is the (belated) third part of my series on Asian Handicap betting.
In the first part, I explained what AH betting is, and in the second I pointed out why I think that AH betting offers better value than standard 1X2 betting.
(You can read more about Asian Handicap Betting Options Here)
In this blog I am going to explain the type of game where I find AH betting can be especially good.
Many people who bet on football will probably know the type of game I mean, there is a favourite for the game but you don't think that they will win, or at least you think there is no value in the price.
You quite fancy betting on the other side, who are reasonably well priced, but then the draw would be a big worry to you.
At the time of writing (I started to write this blog before the weekend of the 17th and 18th of January) there had been 210 Premier League games in the season, the shorter priced of the two teams had won 111 of them, but this leaves 99 where the shortest prices team did not win.
Of these, there were 60 draws and 39 wins for the shorter priced of the two won.
So if a punter had been able to identify these 99 games, then there is certainly a possibility that money could have been made.
If a punter wanted to win on all of these 99 games then he would have to find a way to win whether the game was a draw or whether the less favourite team won.
There are a couple of options here, he could lay the favourite, he could back both the draw and the outside team or you could back the outsiders on the Asian Handicap.
Laying the favourite is an option, it certainly covers the options desired and if the odds are right, it can be a way of getting a good return for the outlay.
For example, 12 of the losing favourites were 1.5 (1/2) or shorter, so on these games it would have been possible to double the one risked by the layer.
But of course this is only 12 of the 99 games, on the rest, a layer would have to settle for a lower return than that.
The other problem with laying is that it has to be done on an exchange, which not all bettors like, it is not possible to walk into a high street bookmaker and lay a team to lose a match.
Backing the two outcomes is also a possibility here, but if you are unsure which one is most likely, then to get the same return regardless of which of the outcomes occur you will have to do something called dutching.
Take for example, the game where Swansea hosted Newcastle back in October, Newcastle were the outsiders but got a draw in the game.
If a bettor had £10 to bet on this game and wanted to secure an even return regardless of whether the game is a draw or a Newcastle win, then he would bet £5.31 on the draw and £4.69 on Newcastle (securing a profit of either £4.96 or £4.97 because of rounding).
The problems with dutching are that it is quite complicated to work out how much to place on each outcome, you can't usually use the technique in tipping competitions and some bookmakers might see the unusual stakes that are being risked as a reason to close accounts or restrict bets.
In a situation like the one I describe, I often think the best bet is to back the outside team on the Asian Handicap.
Very often the line will be such that both a win for the outsiders or the draw will be a win and return nearly double the amount staked and sometimes even the outsider losing by a single goal will give a return even if sometimes this only cuts the loses of the bettor on the individual bet, over a complete season of making these bets, the times when this happen could make a difference between being profitable or not.
It is true that not all bookies offer Asian Handicap odds, most high street bookmakers do not for example, but there are a variety of online bookies that do offer them.
If you are someone who likes to play on OLBG then there is a whole tipping competition league just for your Asian Handicap betting.
