What is Spread Betting

It can be a real score such as a batsman's runs, so a Spread Bet Exchange could give a spread of 35-43 on how many runs Trescothick will score in an innings. You can then bet more than 43 runs or less than 35 runs.

It could be an artificial scoring, such as for a football match it could be 25pts for a win, 10 for a draw and 0 for losing. So for Nottingham Forest to beat Derby Town the spread might be 18-20, and of course everyone would buy that result and win 5 points because Nottingham Forest always beat Derby.

Spread bettig is different to nortmal betting because you can bet on something failing as well as succeeding.

Iff you (insanely) think Derby will be really lucky and scrape a draw you can sell the bet and will win 8 pts if Derby draw.

The Spread Betting exchange wins because they win on the spread. The 2 points spread is their profit. Two points out of twenty five points is Eight percent in this case.

Another example: If you think a Manchester United striker is rubbish and everyone else in Surrey thinks the Man Utd striker is brilliant, you can bet he will not score by selling his goal minutes in a match or selling his top goal scorer position over the season.

You can bet an amount of money per point, so 50p or one pound a point or if you are flash and rich you can bet 500 pounds a point, I have seen this done at a Sporting Index evening.

You can have a limited bet or a full bet. A limited bet limits your losses and winnings.

For example I bet on Van Nistlerooy's goal minutes when Manchester United played Millwall in the FA Cup Final 2004, he scored 2 times, (one was very dodgy), and so his total goal minutes was 64+81. I had bought his goal minutes at 36 I think. which gave me a profit of 109 points. Unfortuantely I had bought the bet on a limited win/loss basis, which meant I only won 100 points. When you start out limit your losses.

A spread bet can increase your winnings on a "sure thing". Please let me know of any sure things by the way. ; ) For example I have won alot of money on a horse called Jewel in the Sand using conventional bets. When it became well known the odds reduced to 5 to 3 etc which make the returns on your stake much lower. I then noticed that you could spread bet on the yards that the horse wins by. I bet that Jewel in the Sand would win by more than 2 lengths over Masa. At 10 pounds a point I was risking: I made 77 pounds as the horse won by 9.7 lengths, giving a win of 7.7 points.

In running bets: An in running bet is a bet which odds change all the time. Football bookings bets are usually in running, so if you had bought bookings in a game and you realised that it was actually going to end as a nil nil draw you could close the bet early and reduce your losses.

Please be careful when betting, go for low risk, high return bets, and only bet what you can afford to lose.

These tips are not guaranteed in anyway. If you are not sure don't bet.