Point spread betting in hockey. The point spread in hockey odds is often referred to as the puck line. In the NHL, the puck line is almost always set at 1.5, meaning the favorite needs to win. The spread already reflects it by the time you see it. You will see games where there is no numerical spread, but simply a “pick-’em,” which means that either team can simply win the game for a bet on them to “cover.” It’s also important to note that the spread doesn’t necessarily represent a numerical opinion of.

• Who Will Cover The Spread
• What Does Cover The Spread Mean
• Nfl Teams Covering The Spread
• What Does Cover The Spread Mean In Football
• What Is The Spread In Betting

Dictionary entry overview: What does spread over mean?. SPREAD OVER (verb) The verb SPREAD OVER has 1 sense. Form a cover over Familiarity information: SPREAD OVER used as a verb is very rare. What does Cover the Spread Mean? – How To Read The Point Spread. The point spread is an estimate of the final point difference between the teams in an event. A handicap of the point spread value is given to the favourite team so bettors can choose sides at equal odds.

There are two types of bettors in the sports betting industry and each of them has their own unique way of doing things. Some bettors strictly bet money lines. They say that the winner of the game should be the only thing that matters. However, the majority of the betting industry lives and breathes with betting the point spread on NFL and NBA games. They will tell you there is nothing sweeter than cashing a winning point spread ticket because they were able to “beat the Vegas line”. That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but watching your team cover the spread does feel nice.

Who Will Cover The Spread

What Does Cover Mean?

If you hear someone using the term “cover” they are referring to a short form for “cover the spread.” A team can only “cover” when a point spread line is available to bet on. Depending on if you bet the favorite or underdog, covering the spread could mean winning by a certain margin or losing by less than a specific number.

How to Know If a Team Has Covered the Spread

I will pull no punches here. If you asked a few causal bettors (squares) to describe what it means to cover the spread, you would be shocked at how many of them don’t get the answer right. I’m not sure how this is possible considering they probably enjoy betting on the NFL, but this confusion is just one of the many significant reasons that sportsbooks makes the amount of money that they do.

Let’s use an example from the NFL to help squares understand what it means to “cover the spread.” If the Chicago Bears go into Lambeau Field as seven-point underdogs against the Green Bay Packers, then the Bears would be the “getting” points. This means that if you bet on the Bears, any result other than a loss by eight or more points, would cash your ticket. If you like the Packers, you will be “laying” the points, which means the only way to cash this ticket is if the Packers win by eight or more points – which means they will have “covered the spread.” If by chance the Packers win the game by seven points exactly, the game is deemed a push since neither team covered the spread.

How is Covering the Spread Different fromWinning Outright?

There is a saying amongst bettors that goes like this: “good teams win, great teams cover.” This statement couldn’t be truer. The difference between sharp and square bettors is that they know the only thing that matters in regards to a game is how much a team wins by and loses by. Square bettors tend to think that the better team will cover the spread easily. Sure, they may win the game outright, but teams never concern themselves with how much they win by. The sooner you can understand that concept, the sooner you will be prepared to efficiently bet on the point spread.

The successful handicappers pride themselves on their ability to continuously get better at calculating how much a team should win or lose by. Each of these handicappers has their own unique power rankings/formulas to calculate this data and they trust it more than anything. They also know when the risk is worth the reward, which is vital when betting the point spread since the prices remain relatively the same throughout the year. This means that you would need to hit at around a 52 percent winning clip in order just to break even betting -110 lines.

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Easily the most popular type of betting for NFL football is “spread” betting or more commonly known as betting against the spread. Bettors who are new to NFL betting or betting in general may be a little confused with NFL spread betting, but it is pretty easy to understand once it is explained to you. We will explain what betting against the spread means below.

What Does Cover The Spread Mean

What is Betting Against The Spread?

For each NFL game the oddsmakers set a number of points in which the favored team is favored by. Bettors can then either choose for the favored team to win by more than the number of points set, or bet on the underdogs to lose by less than the number of points they are underdogs by or win the game straight up. For example, the spread could be set on the favored team at 6.5 points. This would mean in order for a bet on the favored team on the spread to win they would need to win by more than 6.5 points (7 or more) in order to win the bet. It also means that a bet on the underdog team would win if the underdogs lost by less than 6.5 points (6 or less) or won the game outright.

Example of NFL Spread Bet

Below is an example of what NFL spread betting would look like:

Nfl Teams Covering The Spread

Matchup

• TeamsSpread
• Dallas Cowboys -2.5
• New York Giants +2-5

What Does Cover The Spread Mean In Football

The negative (-) sign indicates that the Cowboys are the favorites, while the positive (+) sign indicates that the New York Giants are the underdogs. With the spread set at 2.5 points, a bet on the Cowboys would mean that they would have to win by more than 2.5 points (3 or more) in order for you to win that bet. A bet on New York would mean that the Giants would have to either lose by 2.5 or less points (2 or less) or win the game outright in order for your bet to win.

Here is another example with a screenshot taken from 5Dimes.eu during Week 3 of the 2013 NFL season:

Here you can see that the Rams are +3.5, while the Cowboys are -3.5. So for this example the Cowboys are 3.5 point favorites, while the Rams are underdogs of 3.5 points. If you were to bet on St Louis you would need them to lose by 3 or fewer points or just win the game outright. If you were to bet on Dallas you would need the Cowboys to win by 4 or more points.

If the Cowboys were to win by 3 points, lets say 30-27, any bets on the Rams +3.5 would win. Even though the Rams didn’t win the game they covered the spread of 3.5 points.

Now if the Cowboys were to win by 4 points, lets say 31-27, the Cowboys have covered the spread and anyone who wagered on Dallas would win their bets.

Other NFL Spread Betting Information

You may often notice that the spread is sometimes set at an even number such as 3, 6 , 10, etc. In this case if the favored team won by the exact amount set for the spread the bet would be pushed, and all bets would be returned. For example, if the Patriots were 3 point favorites and they won by a FG (3 points) than this would results in a push, meaning no matter which side you bet on you would get your money returned to you.

The most common NFL spreads are usually set between about 2.5-10.5 points, but you will also almost always have games each week with spreads lower than 2.5 and higher than 10.5. In the event that the oddsmakers feel the game doesn’t need a spread, it would be set at 0 or what some call a pick’em (both teams are given even odds to win for this type of bet).

The odds given on the spread are usually -110 unless otherwise noted. It is not uncommon to see one side of the spread being -105, with the other side being -115. If you don’t see any odds listed for each side of NFL spreads you are supposed to assume the odds are -110 on each. Not sure how to read NFL betting odds? Check out our Sports Betting Odds guide.

What Is The Spread In Betting

Now that you know the basics of NFL spread betting you’ll want to check out our Sports Betting Strategy guide which has some great NFL strategy articles written by a professional bettor.