If you’ve been watching the PLL Championship Series, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about sports betting. Thanks to the PLL’s deals with Genius Sports, bettors now have the chance to place bets on future odds, money lines, over/unders and the point spread via sportsbook apps, such as the PLL’s official betting partner DraftKings.
Now not every lacrosse fan may be familiar with the terminology and way that sports betting works, so if you’re a newcomer to the sports betting realm, here’s a few things to keep in mind if you choose to bet on the PLL Championship Series.
Before we dive into types of bets we need to set ground rules and establish how you make money with bets. First, the odds of each bet are based on the likelihood or probability of an event happening. Plainly, the less likely the oddsmakers feel that something is to happen, the more money you can make off a bet should you win.
Futures Bets
The PLL released it’s PLL Championship futures odds back on June 25 with the Whipsnakes being the favorite to win the Championship Series with 3/1 odds. So what’s that mean?
Futures bets are those placed on events that are happening far in the future (seems obvious right?). Usually you’ll find those types of bets on things like who will win a leagues championship. To put it simply, the less likely something is to happen the higher the odds, and the more money you’ll make.
The formula to understanding how much money you are going to make on futures bets might seem complicated, but it’s simple. Take the Whips 3/1 odds for example. For every $1 you bet, you will get $3 back if the Whipsnakes win. So if you bet $10 on the Whipsnakes to win the championship, you would get $30 plus your original $10 should they win.
The future odds will also be commonly shown in the “+” format. For example, before the series the Waterdogs were listed as +1000, which means they have 10/1 odds and for every $100 you bet, you can win $1000.
Keep in mind though, odds can change. At the start of the PLL Championship Series, Chaos LC had the second-best odds to win the championship at 4/1 or +400. Now after an 0-2 start, their odds are at +1000, making them long shots to win in Vegas’ eyes, but a low risk, high reward bet for bettors who think they can still win the championship.
Straight Bet
Straight bets are on a single game, and can be broken down into one of a handful of categories: money line, point spread, totals. A money line is a simple bet on who you think will win. The underdog’s odds will have a plus sign (+) next to it, while the favorite will feature a minus (-). How does this impact the amount of money you will make off of a money line bet? Betting on an underdog will make more money for you than betting on the favorite will be.
Point Spread
Point spreads are another type of straight bets you can make which, when broken down, break down to what the point differential at the end of the game are. For example when the Redwoods LC and Atlas LC’s Saturday matchup currently lists Redwoods (-1.5) as the favorite and Atlas (+1.5) as the underdog. This means that if you place your bet on the Redwoods they must win by two goals or more to cover the spread. If the Atlas lose by one or win, the spread wasn’t covered, and you would not have won a bet on the Redwoods.
Totals
Totals bets are made on the total amount of points to be scored in the game. Your bet would be placed on either the teams combining to score more points (over) or less points (under) than the given number. Going back to the Redwoods-Atlas game, the current over/under is set at 21.5. If the final score is 12-10 that’s a total of 22 goals, meaning if you bet on the over you would win. If the total points scored ends up being less than 22, then it would hit the “under” and you would not win. So far of the nine games played in the PLL at the time this article was written, only one game has hit the over.
Parlay
Parlay bets are something else you’ll see mentioned. Parlay bets are simply multiple bets wrapped into one. If one of these multiple bets doesn’t hit though you lose all your money. So if you parlay the Whipsnakes moneyline over the Archers with the Whipsnakes also covering the spread, but they don’t cover the spread, then you would lose all your money on that bet, despite getting on right. The appeal of parlays is the ability to win even more money when making multiple correct bets.
Prop Bets
Finally we’re going to end with prop bets. These are the one off bets that are based around more specific things such as “How many goals will Ryan Drenner score during the Waterdogs game against Chaos LC?” A bet like this will usually be an over under bet featuring a number such as 2.5. Other types of prop bets can be things like “Who scores the first goal of the playoffs?” Sometimes for this type of prop bet you will get options such that list two players and leave an option of the field. For example a prop bet on who scores the opening goal could give you the options of Matt Rambo, any faceoff athlete, or anyone else. All four of these options would have different odds based on the likelihood.
So now that you have a brief understanding of what each type of bet is you can start thinking about whether you want to place a PLL bet. Check back on prolacrossetalk.com for more betting analysis and check our social media for the Pro Lacrosse Talk team’s daily PLL picks against the spread.
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