One of the more recent terms to spring up in spread betting is the Asian handicap. When you look at football across the world, it is one of the few sports where a tie is actually a fairly common occurrence, but when looking at traditional fixed odds betting the ties are treated as an additional outcome to the game itself; this results in bettors losing if they place a wager on either team to win and the game ends up in a tie. The beauty of Asian handicaps is that the chance for a tie is limited through the use of a handicap that forces a winner regardless of the score, and which creates a situation where every team has a 50-50 shot at winning the game, even if there is a tie.
Since the bookmaker’s goal is to create a handicap that creates a scenario with each team’s odds coming as close to 50% as possible, they generally offer payouts close to even money. Asian handicaps work by starting at a quarter goal and going as high as 2.5 or 3 goals in matches where there are large discrepancies in ability, which makes this a more interesting form of spread betting as it uses quarter goals to get the line as close as possible. Basically, when used against the posted total for the game, a handicap actually predicts the final score of the game. It is a newer form of spread betting, but it is nevertheless a popular way to participate in sports betting on games that would otherwise result in losses.