Online Baseball Betting

How to bet on Baseball Games Online

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No professional sport offers bettors as many opportunities to make money as Major League Baseball does. With each of the 30 MLB teams playing 162 games throughout the season, there are 2,430 regular games every year.

Of course, before you can wager on just one of these contests, it's important to know how MLB betting works first. And one of the best places to start learning is with online baseball betting. That's said, here's a closer look at how you can make wagers online and hopefully collect major cash in the process.

Signing Up/Depositing at a Sportsbook

The first and most obvious step towards getting started with MLB betting involves finding a sportsbook and making a deposit. There are plenty of online sportsbooks out there, but this doesn't mean that you should just pick the first one you see.

Philadelphia Phillies v Washington Nationals

Instead, you should do a little research and find a book that not only offers lines on the games, but also a few prop bets too. Additionally, you should make sure that their customer support is responsive by sending an email. A couple of other aspects to consider are the promotions and bonuses. After all, it's always nice to be able to earn bonus cash on your bets.

Once you settle on a good site, you merely need to sign up and make a deposit. The latter requires that you have an accepted banking method and ensure it has funds available to deposit.

Understand the Lines

When you're all set to begin wagering on baseball games, the next step is to begin learning how the lines work. And before we begin this discussion, it's worth checking out what a typical MLB line looks like:

Washington Nationals  (-135)  Over 6.5 (-120)
San Diego Padres  (140)  Under 6.5 (100)

The first number in this line represents the moneyline while the second is the over/under. Below you can see an in-depth explanation of both the moneyline and over/under.

san-diego-padres

Moneyline - Most baseball wagers deal with the moneyline, which simply calls on you to guess the winning team. However, you stand to win different amounts of money based on what team you pick. In the case of the favored Nationals, you are betting $135 to earn $100 in profit. As for the underdog Padres, you're wagering $100 to earn a profit of $140. Or, if you only wager $10, you'd stand to win $14.

Over/Under - The over/under (a.k.a. totals) is a wager based on how many runs the two teams will combine to score. In the above line, you could either bet on both teams scoring more than 6.5 runs, or under this number. By taking the over, you'd be wagering $120 to earn $100 in profits, as indicated by the number in parentheses. If you took the under, you would win a $100 profit for every $100 wagered.

Run Line

When you deal with football and basketball betting, you're going to see a fair amount of point spreads. However, with MLB betting, you'll see a run line instead. If a baseball game has a run line, it'll look like the following:

Washington Nationals  -1.5  (115)  Over 6.5 (-120)
San Diego Padres  +1.5  (-125)  Under 6.5 (100)

As you can see, Washington now has a -1.5 next to their side of the line. This means that if you wager on the Nationals, they not only have to win the game, but also win by 2 or more runs. If successful, you'd be earning a $115 profit for every $100 wagered. As for San Diego, they'd need to lose by one run or less for a successful bet. You would win $100 in profit for every $125 wagered on San Diego.

Prop Bets

One more subject worth covering here is prop bets. These are simply wagers that are separate from the overall outcome of a game. Many prop wagers deal with a team's odds of winning their division, their league pennant, and the World Series.

For example, the Kansas City Royals might be given 4-to-1 odds of winning the American League Central Division. However, they may have 48-to-1 odds of winning the World Series.

Once you understand the basics of MLB betting, the next step involves learning as much strategy as you can. Assuming you want to be successful, keep in mind that it takes quite a bit of work to win major profits through baseball wagering.