How To Make Bets On Fights
A moneyline bet is the simplest form of betting on a fight. You bet on the boxer that you think will win. You don’t need to choose how the boxer will win the fight or what round they win the fight. Prop betting doesn’t pertain to choosing the winner of a fight, but rather, how a fight will go down. Though, it’s worth mentioning, the two are often related. Prop bets are any bets related to a bout aside from the primary moneyline wagers that focus solely on the outright winner. Money line betting is often the only option for bettors wishing to bet on boxing matches. With a money line bet you simply bet on which fighter will win the match and your potential winnings are determined by the odds associated with each fighter. Bets on the favorite will obviously payout less than the same bets on the underdog.
Wagering on boxing has been very lucrative over the years for bettors. We’ll take a look at ways to minimize risk while maximizing profits, especially for the bettor looking to dip their toe into the pugilism betting pool for the first time.
Boxing betting: Ways to bet
Access USA TODAY Sports’ betting odds for a full list of today’s sports betting odds and lines.
2-way betting: Each individual bout can simply be wagered upon picking a straight-up winner, similar to a moneyline bet in the other major sports, with a favorite and an underdog.3-way betting: Each individual bout can be wagered upon picking a winner or by choosing to select a draw (or tie).Method of victory: If you like a fighter to win, but perhaps he is an overwhelming favorite, you can be more specific to mitigate your risk. There are a few different ways a bout can end. A fighter can win on points, either by KO/TKO/Technical Decision or disqualification (DQ).Round betting: Fights, particularly the big-ticket events, can be bet by picking a winner in a particular round. Rather than betting on the 2- or 3-way betting line, it can be more lucrative to bet on a fighter to finish his opponent in a particular round. It’s difficult to pinpoint, and sometimes it’s good to bet on several rounds to be on the safe side, but it can pay off very handsomely.Boxing betting: Key betting terms to know
Favorite:
The fighter who is more likely to win the fight will require more than your return on investment.
Underdog: On the flip side, this is the fighter not expected to win. It can be more lucrative than taking the favorite, as you will return your stake and plus-money from your wager.Push or Draw: A wager which ends in a tie, which is not a losing ticket, but not a winning ticket, either. You simply receive your wager back.Chalk: This refers to a heavy favorite. For example, -200 and higher is considered heavy chalk.Parlay: If you were to bet two fighters to win on the 2-way line, for example, you would need to win each end of the bet to cash. You can still win a parlay if one end wins and the other is a push.Boxing betting: How do odds work?
Boxing odds can vary greatly. Sometimes the favorite is not too expensive, but other times, particularly in undercard or preliminary events, the favorite can have rather high odds. For example, if you were to bet a heavy favorite at -800, you would need to risk $80 to profit just $10. An underdog wager at +550 would profit $55 on a $10 bet.
Get some sports betting action by placing a bet with BetMGM today. For more sports betting picks and tips, visit SportsbookWire.com.
Follow @JoeWilliamsVI on Twitter, and follow @SportsbookWire on Twitter and Facebook.
Gannett may earn revenue from audience referrals to betting services. Newsrooms are independent of this relationship and there is no influence on news coverage.
Mixed martial arts provides one of the most exciting and high-energy sports experiences in the world. While there is a multitude of different fighting organizations across the globe, nothing compares to the prestige of The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The UFC is the premier organization in all of mixed martial arts. It’s the pinnacle and the big stage where any and every aspiring fighter hopes to find themselves one day.
Betting Site | Bonus | Bet Now | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | up to €30 Free Bet | Go to Site | |
| 2 | 22Bet | 100% up to €122 | Go to Site |
| 3 | 100% up to €200 | Go to Site | |
| 4 | 10Bet | 100% up to €50 | Go to Site |
| 5 | 100% up to €50 | Go to Site |
Whether you’re an adrenaline junkie looking for more action on the fights or you’re a sports bettor looking for a competitive edge, you’ve come to the right place.
Below you’ll find a collection of expert picks, strategy guides, and anything else important that you need to crush the books and start making money betting on the UFC.
Our Expert Picks
It’s no secret that there are UFC experts. We’re not talking about your buddies that scream their “expert” knowledge at the TV during every UFC event at Hooters and say how every fighter is an idiot. We’re talking about ACTUAL experts who utilize their knowledge to win money betting on the UFC. It’s easy to have an opinion as a couch commander, but it’s much more challenging to put your money behind that decision and come out financially on top.
Normally this information is not available to the general public. These experts rarely share their secrets to making picks and certainly do not share their actual picks. Things are different here at The Sports Geek, though. We pull back the wool and give you unparalleled access to our team of experts. They’ll share how they make their picks, why they made those picks, and most importantly, who they are picking for upcoming fights.
How much? Free. Not to sound overly dramatic, but this information should cost thousands of dollars, and we are giving it to you for free. Not a free trial…not just the leftover bets…the actual bets our experts are going to make in real time, completely free. If you’re ready to see what our experts have to say, click on the link below and you’ll be entering the ring with some of the best bettors in the MMA industry for free.
Best UFC Betting Sites
Knowing which fighters to bet on or what bets to make is only half the battle. The other important thing to know is where the best place to place your bets is. In years past, your only option was to go to the closest sportsbook or casino which can sometimes be hundreds of miles away.
Even if you have a sportsbook close by, you’re stuck with the betting lines that they provide and the options of bets they choose to offer. This means no line shopping unless you are ready to test the durability of your car and its gas tank and sometimes the inability to leverage all of your knowledge.
Thanks to Al Gore (or whoever really created the internet) this has all changed. Online sportsbooks are prevalent and give you incredible access to more bet types, more perks, no lines, insane comfort and convenience, and most importantly the ability to shop betting lines to get the most bang for your buck.
Here you’ll find the list of the best online sportsbooks offering action on the UFC. What makes these sites the best? They offer the most bet types, the fastest payouts, and the easiest to use interfaces. Most importantly, though, these are sites you can trust. What’s the point of betting if you can’t be sure that you’re going to get paid when you win? The answer is there is no point which is why we made sure to vet these sites as extensively as humanly possible to ensure your safety.
It’s also important to point out that we DO NOT allow sites to pay for “better reviews” or “to be recommended”. The only way that any sportsbook makes it onto our recommended list is by offering the best and most trustworthy action out there.
UFC Betting Strategy
Understanding how the UFC operates and who the different fighters are is certainly important to be a successful sports bettor. However, it’s only a small piece of the strategic pie. Your baseline knowledge might help you enjoy the fights more, but it’s going to take some additional strategy considerations to start booking winning bets and padding your wallet.
Our experts have put together a comprehensive collection of UFC betting strategy tips to get you started on the road to making money. These betting tips will help to change the way you look at fights. The goal is to get you to look at fights less as a fan and more as an intelligent and sharp sports bettor who cares about making money off the fights.
Being a successful UFC sports bettor is much less about what you want to happen and sometimes not even about what you think is going to happen. It’s about finding value and making the bets with the highest expected value. Click below to see exactly what we’re talking about and elevate your UFC betting abilities to the next level.
The Most Popular UFC Bet Types
To fully understand UFC betting, you need to understand the different types of bets that are available to you. Surprising to some, you can bet on a lot more than whom the winners of the fights will be. Why is this important? Betting flexibility affords you the ability to leverage more specific predictions about how the fight will go which will earn you more money.
How To Make Bets On Fights In Fort
Picking the winner is great, but what if you can pick how the winner will win? If you know a fighter is going to submit the other fighter, shouldn’t you be able to cash in on this and get paid? This is the reason these other bet types are important to understand.
One key thing to remember before we get started is that just because these other bet types exist does not mean that you have to utilize them. There are plenty of successful professional UFC sports bettors that only bet on fight winners. We just want you to be aware that these options exist in case you find situations that you feel you can leverage a more specific prediction to make additional money. The more specific the pick is, usually the better the payout odds will be.
Money Line/Match Bets
While we did lead off telling you about how there are so many different bet types out there besides picking the fight winner, this does not mean that we can forget the most basic UFC bet available. The Moneyline or Match Bet is the bet where you pick the winner of a fight. This is the most popular bet type, and also the simplest to figure out and understand.
If fighter A is fighting fighter B and you bet that fighter A will win, all fighter A has to do is defeat fighter B and you win your bet! It does not matter how they win, what round they win in, or anything else. The only thing that matters is the fighter you bet on walks away with the victory.
Now, while the bet itself is simple to understand, there are a few things that may be a bit more confusing that you need to understand. Not all bets are paid out the same. Imagine if there was a fight between Anderson Silva and a 10-year-old boy that you could bet. The sportsbook also says that they are paying out even money (the same amount) for each fighter. What would happen if a sportsbook allowed this?
We’ll tell you. Everyone would bet on Anderson Silva, and when he destroyed the 10-year-old, the sportsbook would be out of money and no longer be in business. Obviously, they won’t allow this to happen. What they do is adjust the payouts to try and get the right amount of money bet on each fighter so that regardless of who wins the sportsbook pays out the same total amount.
How do they do this? They use what are called Money Lines. A money line is a number that dictates to you the sports bettor how much you will be paid out for a correct pick. This number will also show you whether or not the fighter is favored (based on bets) or is an underdog. Moneylines can be represented as American Odds, Fractional Odds, or Decimal Odds.
This will change depending on where you are in the world. These all mean the same thing, but for the sake of this discussion, we are going to use the American Odds. If you’re betting online at one of the sites we’ve recommended, you will be able to change the betting odds to whichever format you are most comfortable with.
Sportsbooks will continually alter these odds to “sweeten the pot” on the side of the bet that they need more bets on. For example, in our above example at even money, everyone would be betting on Anderson Silva. In order to try and get some bets on the 10-year-old (yes we know this is an insanely exaggerated example), they will shift the money line to pay out less for a bet on Anderson Silva and more for a bet on the 10-year-old. This should deter bets on Silva and encourage bets on the kid.
This means for you the bettor that you can’t just bet on who you think is going to win the fight. You need to make sure that the risk and reward are something you feel brings you value. For example, let’s say that Conor McGregor has a fight coming up and he is -380. You feel he is most likely going to win. Should you bet this?
Well, you have to realize that -380 means that Conor is the favorite and tells you that a $100 bet will only get you about $26 in profit if you are correct. Now you have to take a step back and look at how certain you are that Conor will win. If you think that payout is worth the risk, make the bet! If that doesn’t sound great to you, wait to see if the line moves and offers you a better price and a bigger payout.
Remember, on the other side of the coin the fighter who is an underdog will offer a much sweeter payday if you bet on them and they win. In that same fight against Conor, his opponent might be +340. This means that if you bet $100, you will win $340 in profit for a correct prediction! It’s important to realize this is done because the fighter is not expected to win.
Money Line bets are not just about picking the winner. It’s about picking a winner that is offering you a payout that you think is better than it should be. This is called finding value in your bets. In the above example, if you would be happy only getting $20 for a Conor win on a $100 bet, then this bet is a great value. If you think it’s only worth it to bet if you get $30 or more for a Conor win, then the bet does not have value and should be avoided.
Bets To Make With Girl
Value is a whole other can of worms we get into in the strategy section above, but for now, that should be enough for you to start to begin to understand Money Line bets. If you skipped the strategy section and this concept confuses you, or you want to learn more, we recommend going back and reading that section.
Place a bet on a fighter, and if they win, you win your bet. It’s that simple. The only part where it gets complicated is on exactly how much you will be paid for that correct prediction. You will always be paid something though with a correct pick.
Over Under Round Bets
A popular UFC bet you can make is the Over Under Round Bet. This bet allows you to wager when you think the fight will finish. For example, in a three-round non-title fight, you may be able to bet whether or not the fight will finish before or after 2.5 rounds. If you bet that the fight will finish under 2.5 rounds, you need the fight to finish before the 2 minute and 30-second mark of the third round.
It does not matter if it’s by submission or KO or TKO; as long as the fight finishes before that mark, you win your bet. If you bet the over on 2.5 rounds, you need the fight to last at least one second past the 2 minutes and 30-second mark of the third round.
What happens if you think the fight is going to go the full three rounds and go to the judges? You bet the over. Remember, all it says is that the fight has to last AT LEAST 2.5 rounds. Basically, the reason this is set at the 2.5 mark frequently and not at the 1.5 (halfway) point is it’s essentially a bet whether or not the fight is going to go the distance or not. You still do win if the fight ends in the last 2 minutes and 30 seconds as well, though.
These bets are great to make if you have a good idea of how you think the fight is going to go. Let’s say you think that two fighters don’t have the power or skills to stop each other and it’s going to be a big snooze fest. You might now have a prediction on who you think is going to win, but you can now bet that the fight will go the distance and make money on the boredom of the rest of us.
Prop and Victory Bets
Prop bets (proposition bets) are the collection of random bets that don’t fall into the above categories. Victory bets are a type of prop bet. Before we get into victory bets, let’s talk a little more about prop bets.
Prop bets are bets where something is proposed, and you bet on whether or not it is going to happen. For example, you might bet on which fighter will throw more jabs. This bet does not have a direct effect on the outcome of the fight (though it helps) and is independent of who the fight winner is. If you bet that fighter A will throw more jabs, and they throw 100 more than fighter B, but fighter B knocks fighter A out with one stiff right, you still win your bet.
The most popular prop bet in the UFC is the victory bet. Victory bets are bets on how the fight will end. For example, if you think the fight is going to end by submission, you could wager on that. Typically, the victory bets are attached to a fighter so you’d actually be betting that a particular fighter would be winning by submission.
Bet On Fights Online
There are times that you will see victory method bets available and not attached to a fighter. In this case, you are just hoping that the fight ends in the method you selected. These are rare, though.
As predicting the exact way a fight will end is much more challenging, the associated payouts will reward you handsomely. Expect to get paid well if you hit one of these victory bets especially if it’s tied to a particular fighter.
Pairing Complementary Bets
We briefly touched on this with the victory bets above, but we wanted to expand on the concept. You are not limited to only making one type of a bet on a fight. You’re free to make several different bet types if you have a strong prediction of how the fight is going to go.
For example, let’s say that in an upcoming fight you think that Michael Bisping is going to knock someone out clean early in the fight. Why just bet Bisping to win? You can place a bet on him to win, and you can place a bet on him to win by knockout, and you can place a bet for him to win under 2.5 rounds. That way, if you are correct, you’ll collect a huge payday.
If you happen to be mostly correct about a prediction, you’re still going to make money. Let’s say in the above example fight Bisping wins in the first round but does it by submission. You’re going to lose your victory bet, but you’re going to win your moneyline bet, and your under 2.5 rounds bet.
The Big Picture – UFC Betting
Betting on the UFC can be both fun and lucrative as long as you know what you’re doing. Sports betting does not have to be gambling but can be a way to make some serious cash by leveraging your knowledge base (or the knowledge base of our experts here :) ). Gambling is betting on a game of chance while sports betting can be a profitable long-term endeavor.
Take this information and combine it with your own knowledge and research and hopefully, you’ll have a long and successful UFC sports betting career.
We also hope you check back often to see what our experts are picking and how that lines up with your thoughts and predictions. Whether you use our picks or not, it never hurts to see a different angle of how someone educated in the sport is looking at a fight. It may help you to get more confident in your pick or may save you from making a big mistake in case you missed something.
Good luck friends!