How to Bet on Baseball — The Basics

Part 3 — Making your first wager

It’s easy. Of course, as with any type of betting, it's important to understand the odds associated with each of these bets before placing your wagers. But I promise you, after a few minutes of studying your Sportsbook’s wager line for a baseball game, you‘ll have it all figured out.

Let’s again look at our previous example —the Colorado Rockies at the Pittsburgh Pirates. I might decide that the pitching for this game will be good enough to limit the game total to just a few runs. I would, therefore, look at the wager line on my Sportsbook for this game, which is:

I see that the Total (the column labeled “Total”) is set at 8.5 runs. I do not believe that these two teams will score 8.5 runs in this game, and so I want to bet the under. I’ll take the “Un 8.5” with odds set at -105.

This means if bet $105 on the UNDER, and if I win, then I will receive back my original bet $105 + my winnings $100 = $205. That’s pretty good value on a game with solid pitching.