Understanding the "spread" and how you can lose even when your team wins

This happened to me over the weekend but in the opposite way that I present it in the title. As you man know if you follow me, I am a big Carolina Panthers fan and have followed them in the NFL ever since they were added to the league in 1995. They have gone through a lot of ups and downs, making it to multiple Super Bowls and regularly being good. Well, not in the past 5 years or so as they are and have been one of the whipping boys of the NFL with terrible seasons like clockwork lately. My original statement about them being the worst team in the NFL turns out to not be true. That award almost certainly belongs to the New York Giants, who are just straight-up awful.

But this isn't about Carolina, this is about gambling and how it is very possible for you to bet on a team, have that team win, and still lose the bet.

For many this will seem like really basic information and it kid of is, but I was sitting with a guy at the bar over the weekend when Carolina lost. He knew I had bet against Carolina, and when they did in fact lose, he didn't understand why I was disappointed. In his eyes I had won my bet but that was not the case. I DID in fact bet on Carolina to lose, like I always do, but there is something called the "spread" or "point spread" that exists in a lot of bets.

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I figured that this bet was a lock but then again I don't pretend to understand how Vegas makes their odds and it is just common sense that the billions that flow through gambling in Vegas each week kind of dictates that they are going to have people that are creating these betting lines that know more than perhaps anyone in the world about what is going to take place in any given game.

So you will see that when we look at the "point spread" - which is the kind of bets I always make - that Carolina has a +6.5 next to them. What this means is that Carolina is being given 6 and a half points on a tie, which of course is very unlikely to happen in American football. Before I muddy the waters here a team that has a minus before their numbers, is favored to win the game. However, if you bet on that team, they have to win by AT LEAST that many points before your bet will pay out.

If you are thinking that it isn't possible to get a half point you are on the right track because of course it isn't possible to get a half point. This is one of the many ways that the bookies rig the bet in their favor. They rarely will put a spread at +/- 7 or +/- 3 because is is very likely that a score is going to end in exactly that way. I mean just look at the game I am talking about here: Tampa Bay won this game by 3 points.

Now I bet on the Bucs getting at least a TD ahead of the Panthers in this game and winning by that same amount at least. I expected them to do exactly that. So you can imagine my dismay when both teams went into the locker room at halftime with Carolina actually leading the game by 3 points. In the mind of the teams Carolina was ahead by 3, but in my mind they were ahead by 10 points since in order for me to win this bet, Tampa had to win the game by at least 7 points.

As things went on I was happy that Carolina was playing at above a high-school level and looked at one point like they could run away with the game when they went ahead 16-10. When the score got to that point my bet was now 13 points away from where I needed it to be and based on the rather slow-paced nature of the game, it seemed unlikely I was going to get paid out.

I had bet on a Tampa Bay victory and in overtime Tampa scored a field goal to secure the win and my friend got real excited about that and wondered why I wasn't happy about it. Well, this is because a win on the part of Tampa by 3 points is completely meaningless for anyone that bet on the spread. This result is actually the worst-case scenario for me. The team that I support still loses the game but I also lose money because Carolina didn't lose by ENOUGH points.

Just be mindful anytime that you are betting on spreads because there is a very real reason why they are chosen that way. It can be fun to bet on spreads because when the score gets run up, you are excited even though the team you support may actually be the team that is getting trounced.

If you want to do straight bets on what they call the "Money Line" that is probably a more exciting bet for people who just care if a team wins or loses and doesn't want to deal with giving up points like I do on the spread.

So I'm still up on the season as far as simply betting against Carolina on the spread each game goes, but we are getting close to the breaking even point with my being correct 7 times, and being wrong 5 times. I will continue to bet this way for the rest of the season because although Carolina finally looks like a professional football team, I still think they are more than capable of flubbing it up for the rest of the season.