As the years go on and the Manchester Citys, Real Madrids and Barcelonas of this world dominate their leagues we get fewer and fewer genuine value bets in top level football games.

To counter this, more and more people are turning to the Asian handicap in order to wheedle out some value and it seems this is an increasingly good idea.

What is an Asian Handicap?

For those who aren’t totally au fait with Asian handicap betting; it basically means that football teams are handicapped according to their perceived form and ability going into a match. The expected stronger team must win by more goals for a bettor to be successful with them, while the weaker team can be backed with essentially a goal or more head start and doesn’t always need to win the game for real in order for you to back them successfully. The Asian handicap basically helps to eliminate the draw as a betting possibility, so where in a normal game there are three outcomes; home, away or draw, in this handicap we are left statistically with each team having as close to a 50% chance as possible. Take a Premier League match where the 1X2 odds are 2/7, 9/2, 17/2. On the Asian handicap this may be more like; home -1.5 -2.0 at 2.050 and away +1.5 +2.0 at 1.850. The odds on each team then are very similar, though with an expected two-goal margin in favour of the home side.

If you disagree that the home side can win this by two goals, you back the away team. If however you think the home side will run riot then they in fact on this occasion are the better value bet.

Don’t Rush For the Big Profit

Most teams, regardless of their status, don’t overcome more than a -1 handicap. The most popular score in football is 2-1 and even for the big teams in the league, anywhere between 33% and 50% of their games are won and lost by just one goal. This happens for numerous reasons. Partly it’s because as a game of goals rather than points, even good teams in football very often rely on small margins of victory. Even in a perceived easy game, your team may go 1-0 up some time in the second half (more likely than first half) and then essentially shut up shop. At 1-0 up, teams can rarely afford to be cavalier and of course even if they are it draws out the opposition. A game heading for a 1-0 can still easily end up 2-1 by full-time maintaining the one-goal margin. With this in mind, looking for teams to win by two or more goals and getting a better price is often not the way to go. Stick with the principles that the majority of games will be won and lost by one goal and make your decision from there.

Let the Odds Compilers Do the Work for You

We simply cannot know the outcome of a game in terms of its exact scoreline. With that in mind, always check the normal 1X2, win-draw-win odds before making your handicap decision as usually to make sure their books are balanced the bookmakers will have shown you what the likely expected outcome is. From there, ignore your huge outsiders and your heavy home favourites and concentrate on those in the middle bracket. Backing teams with odds of 4/5 to 6/5 in a +1 market or those priced 1/2 to 8/11 in the -1 market is often profitable over time.