Prop bets are the most fun type of wagering. Coincidentally,
they’re the most dangerous as well.
A prop bet is a wager in which your betting player vs. player rather than team vs. team. The variety of prop bets are neverending. Some online sportsbooks will even create a odds for you if you suggest a certain type of prop bet that you’d like to bet on. Crazy eh?
As noted above, prop bets are very fun and very dangerous. Often times the book will come out with some really off the wall bets that appear to be a cakewalk to win but just the opposite is true. Those type of bets are more than usual sucker bets and your being baited in to bet them.
Las Vegas Oddsmakers have oodles of scenarios recorded in their books and they know the stats and trends right down to which hitters are good and bad vs. certain pitchers and which players do horrible or good vs. other teams and/or when a certain player guards them.
One embarrassing memory we personally have is a bet from many years ago when Phoenix was playing Utah in the NBA playoffs. The bet was:
Player to have the most points:
Charles Barkley -140
Howard Eisley +120
Back then, Eisley was the backup point guard to John Stockton and if memory serves me correct he was averaging something like eight points a game. Barkley was a team leader, an all-star and averaging a healthy number somewhere about twenty points per game. We jumped in feet first and took a HUGE bath as Eisley outscored Barkely easily in the game.
To this day, I still can’t figure out how that happened but if I had the means to go back and check out the scenario, do some solid handicapping and knowing what I know now, I’d bet my tail that Sir Charles was in a matchup that was bad news for him against Karl Malone who maybe he had historically struggled against, maybe Charles was feeling ill but was going to play, or maybe Utah’s game plan was to get Eisley a ton of shots in the game because Stockton and the rest of the Utah backcourt was being double teamed. After all, Howard wasn’t that bad of an outside shooter.
Nonetheless, we got our butts kicked on that play which was a “sure lock.” Yeah, right!
There’s an old saying in sports betting that goes something like this: “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!” So with that being said, walk away from suspicious looking bets or better yet, bet the other way!
Almost all online sportsbooks offer prop bets. Some more than others though. The best place to bet proposition wagers is 5Dimes.
