25. Implementing Asian Handicap Betting

Asian Handicap Betting has been developed specifically for use with Home Win and Away Win betting, whereby the obviously stronger team in a match is handicapped. Unlike "Fixed Odds" betting, where the return offered can sometimes be very poor, this scheme enables the Bookies to offer you a reasonable return across all matches. Asian Handicap Betting does not allow you to bet on a Draw as being the match outcome; you can still use Fixed Odds Betting for that, where the Odds are generally quite reasonable anyway.

In reality, the method of handicapping adopted in Asian Handicap Betting is to allocate a "goal" (or "ball") advantage to the team perceived to be the "weaker" of the two. This means that the handicap in Asian Handicap Betting is applied the other way round to the way it works with horse racing (where a weight is added to the stronger horse). For the purposes of this discussion therefore, when we refer to the "stronger" team we mean the one that is NOT being given the goals advantage, and conversely the "weaker" team is the one being awarded the goals advantage.

A further issue that needs to be cleared up before we proceed with this discussion is that there are in effect two types of handicapping offered within Asian Handicap Betting, these being:

1. "Straight" handicapping: both "Whole" number and "Half" number handicapping (where the half is NOT rounded up to the nearest whole number for the purpose of establishing the "handicapped" result but, instead, is simply read as the straight fractional answer that results); and
2. "Quarter" number handicapping: where special rules come into operation (the full range of possible "Quarter" handicaps being: ¼, ¾, 1¼, 1¾ and 2¼, either for the Home Team or the Away Team).

Asian Handicap Betting has not "eliminated the possibility of a Draw result", as some people still insist on putting it. It has simply eliminated the possibility of you betting on a Draw as the outcome. The true match result may still end in a Draw, and with Whole number or Quarter number handicapping even a "handicapped" result may end in a Draw!

An initial problem with Asian Handicap Betting is, regrettably, that the handicap may be indicated using one of the following 2 different notations, both meaning precisely the same thing:

1. "0:1" (which means that a 1 goal advantage is being given to the Away Team), or
2. "-1" for the Home Team and "+1" (the opposite value) for the Away Team (which, as we said, also means that a 1 goal advantage is being given to the Away Team)!

An added complication is that where Quarter number handicapping is employed with the latter notation, a variation of the notation creeps in. We deal with that under the section entitled "Quarter" Asian Handicap Betting.

Please don't let the above put you off; Asian Handicap Betting has many advantages to offer and is well worth the effort of trying to master its complications. For those who are new to Asian Handicap Betting, however, our advice is that you should always consider "Quarter" number handicapping as an entirely different type of bet than "Straight" handicapping, and learn the rules for each type separately. In this way you will avoid being unnecessarily confused by the decidedly different rules between the two bet types, and you can put your foot into the water by concentrating on one or the other first, with less fear of placing a bet you didn't intend. Our further advice here is to start with the "Straight" handicapping first.

We are aware that there are many other Websites offering advice on how Asian Handicap Betting works, but we believe that most of them are very difficult to follow. To overcome this, and initially only for our internal consumption, we prepared our own tables to see what the effects of each of the different outcomes would be against each handicap variant. Those tables have been reproduced on this Website (separately for Whole, Half and Quarter number handicapping), and we trust that with their help you can see clearly how it all works.

We are not claiming that our attempt to explain how Asian Handicap Betting works are any better than those of any others; ours is just an alternative way of looking at it. Fortunately there are some Bookies who have gone a long way to making it clearer on the betting coupons what you may get out of each bet, because they know that Asian Handicap Betting is here to stay!

One last pointer before we finally launch into the details is that there are two possible results to refer to: the "actual" match result and the "handicapped" result. Whenever we refer to the "match result" or the match outcome or anything similar, we mean the actual match result; if we are referring to the handicapped result we will say so specifically.