The most common and basic sports betting market that we all get drawn to when we start betting is the win/draw/win betting market. I am sure everyone out there has used it both successfully and not over the years. It is the longest standing market that we have in sport, dating back to the start of betting. The market is a great, and more importantly, simple way for new people to get involved with betting and that is why the market remains so popular. It was probably the first market most people tried. It seemed simple enough and it was the one that hooked us on sports betting. As people pick up more knowledge, both about betting in general and about the sport they are betting on, they move onto newer and more complex markets, but the win/draw/win market will still be going strong and everyone goes back to it throughout their sports betting season.
The win/draw/win market is ideal for newcomers due to its simplicity. The market has three potential winners, the home team, the away team or the draw. It really is that simple, and it is that simplicity that has turned it into the market we all know and love.
Backing the Home Win
I would happily wager that pretty much every sports gambler in their lifetime has sat down with a football coupon, either in a shop or online and placed a bet on X amount of home teams to win their game on that day. This is by far and away the most popular way to use the win/draw/win market and is the starting point for pretty much everyone. The belief is that teams playing at home have an advantage on their own pitch, and they have more chance of winning the game. A lot of favourites are home teams, and being the favourite makes them attractive to back from a punting point of view.
When picking home teams, the majority of people will place an accumulator bet on them. People across the UK will do this week in week out, combining various home teams together in an accumulator to enhance the odds they will get paid out at if they win. It is probably the simplest form of sports betting, but it is one that we all love.
Backing the Away Win
Those who are looking for value on a sports betting list often look to back the away teams. This is where you will often find better-priced favourites or teams who are not favourites at all because despite being the slightly better team they have trouble playing away from home. This is the place to find value and a lot of people exploit that when they are backing teams who are away from home. If you believe that the difference between playing a game at home or away is minimal, then you will think many away teams are value given how they are priced up away from home.
Another reason a lot of people back away teams is because they have access to every stat available, giving them all they need to know before placing a football bet. You can find stats that not only show how good a team are but also how good they are away from home. This is often something you can exploit, especially if you find an average team who are very good away from home. Those teams will often represent value as they are priced up as an average team, not as a good away team which they are. With so much available to read and research, choosing away teams have never been as easy, it is still tough, but made much easier thanks to the information available on the internet.
If you decide to place a bet on away teams, the better odds available on them mean that you do not need to pick as many to get good returns. When backing on the win market you may find that you need to pick eight teams to receive a good pay out from your bet, with away teams this number can usually be halved. You also have the ability to back singles if you like, as the odds are able to let you do that.
However, for those looking at betting on away teams, just remember that predicting away wins is much harder than predicting home wins. Do not try and over reach for that huge pay out, accept the bigger risk and stake smaller, or choose fewer teams, giving you a realistic opportunity to win. Picking out a winning away treble over a weekend will give you a much better feeling than picking out an eight team home accumulator, I can guarantee you.
Backing the Draw
Very few punters back on the draw, and the ones that do only usually place small stakes on the outcome. Due to this, the draw has always been known as the bookmaker’s best friend. When an important game finishes as a draw, either one that is televised, or one involving a big team who are favourites to win the game, a bookmaker will always win a lot of money on that event.
Predicting what games will finish a draw is both the hardest thing to do on the market and the toughest thing to do as a sports fan. It is hard because it is the least likely outcome of many games, but also tough because as a sports fan we all want someone to cheer for, betting on the draw means you have no one to cheer on during the game.
However, one thing the draw does offer is very good odds for those that can pick out a few winners. In pretty much every game out there, it is possible to back the draw at 2/1 or bigger. Sometimes it is much bigger than this, but the key thing is that it is very rarely lower than 2/1. When you back a favourite to win a match, whether they are home or away, you will never get 2/1 about them, and in most cases, especially at home, they will be odds on.
Betting on the draw is one area where the odds you are given are the same as, or greater the probability of your outcome more often than now. As a three way market, the probability of you winning a bet is 33{5782443060cad75bcdbe069ee06e2d13f622f9e7a77ba35581ed75609da42958}. Priced at 2/1 the odds on offer for the drawn match that probability, it is also 33{5782443060cad75bcdbe069ee06e2d13f622f9e7a77ba35581ed75609da42958}. The same can never be said for a home team favourite, where the odds on offer are much lower than the true probability of winning the game.
How to Pick a Draw
Choosing a game to end in a draw is much harder than choosing a team to win, and involved a lot of thought. When I am looking for draws to back I will always look for low scoring games where the teams involved are of a similar ability. If both teams like to score, then there is a good chance the game will be attacking with many chances, meaning anything could happen. I much prefer my selections to be involved in low scoring, tight games with few chances so there are fewer variables that can go wrong.
I also like to look for away teams that would be happy to take a draw from this game. As the game approaches the final 15 minutes, if an away team has a draw and they would be happy with that, they will often drop deeper, go more defensive and make defensive substitutions in an attempt to
hold onto what they have. This all works in the favour of whoever has backed the draw, which in this case is me.
Backing draws enables you to pick out single bets as you know the odds on offer will always be good. However, I tend to keep away from those if I am backing draws and I try to perm a few together. One of my favourite bet types for draws is to choose five games and perm the games together as trebles. With five games this costs 10 times your stake, so if you backed 50p trebles it would cost you £5. To win something back, you need to correctly guess three draws out of five, which is very difficult. However, a good pay out awaits if you manage to guess correctly, with a bigger pay out for guessing four out of five and a huge pay out awaits if you can guess all five correctly.
Conclusion
The win/draw/win market is the simple betting market that we all fell in love with when we first started betting on sports. It is the market that we all go back to at some point, either backing home accumulators, away trebles or permed draws. Whatever your bet type, we will all revert back to what we know and love from time to time. There are many new betting markets available but there is something simple and something that we all love about the win/draw/win market that keeps drawing us back to it.