Action Points

Sports Betting: Action Points

By Loot, Sports Handicapper, Lootmeister.com

As the name implies, action points betting is an entertaining way to bet on games that are played against-the-spread–namely basketball and football. In normal straight-betting, we either cover or we don’t cover the spread, making it a non-issue of by how many points we either covered or didn’t cover. It’s a yea-or-nay equation. In action points betting, whether we cover or not is only part of the equation. Now, we are on the line and stand to gain by how many points we either won or lost by against the spread.

Here’s how it works. You set it up with the book. It works on a point-system, with a certain amount of money designated for each point. Let’s say you set up a $200/20-point action points betting account. You start betting on games. There is $10 per point. If your team covers the spread with 4 points to spare, you would win $40. Then again, if your team failed to cover by 4 points, you would lose $44.

There are caps and limits. First, you establish a cap of points for the games you bet. If you had 20 points in your action points set-up and take the Chargers at -3 and they lose by 28, that would wipe out your account and you’d technically owe the book money. So you set a cap and can’t risk more than you have. Ten is a good limit. It might be upsetting in the event of limiting yourself in the event that your team hammers their opponent, but it also limits the damage for when you way off the mark.

With action points, there are plusses and minuses, as associated with all forms of betting. Don’t forget that you don’t risk exactly what you win. It’s -110 on every point. For example, if you are playing action points on UCLA -4 at Cal and you take UCLA and they win by 7, you would win $30, if you set it up so that each point was worth $10. But if UCLA only wins by one point, you would have to pay $33. Then again, action points is a bit of murky area of betting and not all books handle it exactly the same way and that’s if they even offer it at all.

Let’s do an example: You set up action points with the book. You give them $2000 to spread over 20 points, making each point worth $100. Then you start betting. You take the Miami Dolphins at +5 against New England. If the Patriots win by 5, you’re even. If the Patriots only win by 3, you would win $200. If the Dolphins win by 5, you would win $1000. Remember, with a cap of ten points, the Dolphins could win by 30 and the most you could win would be $1000. If the Patriots won by 10, you would have to pay the book $550.

You make the bet and depending on what the cap is and how much money you attributed to each point, the book will deduct that from your account and freeze it pending the final result of the game. They will deduct the worst-case scenario from your account. If you had a 20-point/$200 action points set-up with a 10-point cap, $110 would disappear from your account. This is to protect the book and so you don’t decide to start playing during the game and go below the number that would represent your worst case scenario.

It’s important to gauge what you want from sports-betting before deciding whether or not to play action points. There are bettors who are looking to have fun. Sure, they’re trying to win money, but the entertainment factor is a main consideration. Then maybe action points is for you. For more serious bettors, ones who are not about fun, action points is more problematic. When a serious bettor is wrong, he loses one bet. In action points, a bad defeat can have you playing catch-up for the rest of the week. It’s just that some bettors prefer the tidiness of normal straight betting, where they either win or lose and hope to win a little more than they lose over the long-haul. Whether you play action points is dependent upon how you approach sports-betting.

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