How to Bet on Ice Hockey
The Ice Hockey Betting markets share many similarities with another sport that is very popular in Finland: Association Football. There are markets for match result betting as well as the number of goals of a match and other special markets such as exact score
If you don’t know how to bet at all, you need to understand what odds are. You will then be ready to transform your knowledge of Ice Hockey into gambling profits.
Ice Hockey Odds
The system used for Ice Hockey Betting is decimal odds. It is the same that is used by most European bookmakers as standard. Please note that odds systems are mathematically equivalent, i.e. just by pressing a button, you can convert the odds if you are more used to another system or end up finding for example fractional odds a better system.
Decimal Odds
The decimal odds system is straightforward; to discover what odd would represent an estimation set as a percentage. All that you need to do is divide 100% by that estimation.
Let’s suppose you believe that a specific sports betting outcome, not necessarily related to an Ice Hockey game, has 40% of chances of happening. In that case, 100%/40% equals 2.50, which means that would be the ‘fair odd’ or the odd that represents the real chances of that event happening – according to your estimations of course.
The Concept of Value
If you bet on odds that are higher than the ‘fair odds’ in the long run you should become a profitable Ice Hockey punter.
Let’s have a look at the Ice Hockey Betting Markets
Ice Hockey Match Results Betting
The most popular markets are the ‘Winner’ and the ‘Puck Line’. The ‘Winner’ is similar to the 1×2 system of football; you need to guess the team that will win the game in the regular time. There are individual bets that allow you to bet on the winner, including the extra time; if the match goes to extra time. (it’s called ‘2-way winner).
The other popular market is the Puck Line which is nothing but a handicap system just like the Basketball’s ‘Spread’ or the Asian Handicap in the world of football bets.
Handicaps are systems that try to balance the difference of quality of the terms in terms of proportional odds. They are a rather advanced form of betting, but in essence, a handicap is the number of goals that must be reached or surpassed to ‘win’ the bet for you. The ‘positive handicap’ is the exact opposite, i.e. the underdog cannot suffer more goals than stated. The net result is a ‘virtual’ bet because a winning team can be a loser in the betting markets, and the losing team could earn you a profit.
Special Markets
There are other markets like the number of goals, exact score and outrights – the last one is a kind of bet that tries to guess the winner of a specific tournament, domestic season or cup.
