Welcome to Bet School.

In this series, we have been guiding you through the journey that all sports betting enthusiasts must follow from start to finish to get the most out of their betting experience from the best betting sites in Africa.

We have already tackled how to set up your Betpawa betting account, how to transfer funds to the account you created, how to navigate your account, how to compile a bet on betPawa, how to check if your bet has won, and now, let’s take a look at the types of bets on betPawa South Africa, Betpawa Tanzania, Betpawa Nigeria, Betpawa Kenya and Betpawa Ghana .

Types of bets: 1X2

This is the most popular and simple type of bet, where you simply choose a win for the home side (1), a draw (X), or a win for the away side (2) after 90 minutes of action (when it comes to football).

In the example below, the home side is highly favored to win at odds of 1.59.

Example: Real Madrid vs Barcelona

If the final result is 1-2, the winning outcome would be selection 2, because Barcelona won the match.

Over/Under

This is simply the selection of how many goals there will be within a 90-minute football match.

If you select “Under 2.5” then your bet wins if that match produces zero, one, or two total goals.

For “Over 2.5” the match needs to produce a minimum of three goals for your bet to win.

Over-Under is also a popular bet type because, with teams that are attacking, you can be sure that a match will produce goals.

Researching the teams involved and the context of the match is crucial if you’re to be profitable in the O/U market. 

As you can see, this allows you to cheer for both teams to score a ton of goals or for both teams to do terribly.

For example: Real Madrid vs Barcelona

If the final result is 1-2, then the winning selection for the 2.5 line would be ‘Over’ because three goals were scored and 3 is more than 2.5.

Handicaps

If one team is clearly favored over the other, most bookmakers will often allow the weaker competitor a “head start”, which is taken into account when calculating the final result.

For example, Bayern Munich vs Duisburg.

A handicap of 0-2 gives Duisburg a 2-goal head start.

Even if Bayern really wins 1-0; you still win if you placed a handicap bet on Duisburg because the handicap makes the score 1-2 for the purposes of the bet.

Here is another example, you place a 0-3 handicap bet on the game Germany vs North Ireland.

The final score is 2-0. When the handicap is factored in, the following score results:

0-3 + 2-0 = 2-3

Your “score” (the score that counts for the purposes of your bet) is therefore 2-3. So, if you bet on North Ireland in that game, you win.

Single & multiple bets

A single bet is a bet slip that contains only one match or one outcome, while a multi-bet is a bet slip that has at least two selections in it.

betPawa allows you to select up to 30 different selections on a bet slip in multi bets. 

Multiple bets are popular with punters because they offer the opportunity of winning much bigger amounts with much smaller stakes because they take into account each separate probability of each outcome included on the multiple bet.

The downside is that if one selection is incorrect, the bet slip loses, and your stake is lost.

The key advantage of multiples over singles is the large returns that can be made from a relatively small stake.

Single game vs outright

Single game bets are bets that have been placed for a single match.

These bets are usually settled within a few hours, depending on the duration of the match you have placed a stake on.

Outright markets are long term bets.

You can bet who will win the Champions League, or even who will be the top scorer for Premier League this season.

These are the bets that will be decided after the competition has ended and are therefore a much longer-term play for punters who are patient enough to wait for that outcome.

Pre-match vs live betting

Prematch bets are bets which are made before the event has started, and they are the most frequently made bets on betPawa.

Live bets can be placed after the commencement of a match, but only certain markets are available for live betting, and indeed only certain fixtures allow live betting.

We have now come to the end of our Bet School series and to cap it all, we will look at a betting cheat sheet.

After that, we will go deeper into the world of sports betting and look into intermediate and advanced betting.