The Goal Line bet, perhaps more commonly known as the Over/Under market in football betting, is betting on the number of goals to be scored in a match. Another name that is alternatively used for this, is Totals.

What is a Goal-line bet?

The phrase “ice hockey betting puck line” is a betting market that is unique to ice hockey, but is basically a variation on traditional spread betting. As in spread betting, a point spread is applied to the favourite and underdog. Besides baseball and hockey, moneylines are used for betting on other sports where a point spread becomes irrelevant, such as auto racing, boxing, soccer, and tennis. While there are margins of victory in some of these, they are so small that it would be impossible to create a point spread for every game. Standard, two-way moneyline betting is a popular NHL wager. However, because games are often tied after three periods, most hockey betting sites also offer three-way moneylines on most games. Two-way moneylines betting on the NHL ask you to pick a side to win outright, even if the game goes to overtime or ends in a shooutout. NHL Betting Explained This is the Betting Brain Guide to Gambling on the National Hockey League and was written to give bettors a complete understanding to betting on hockey games. The NHL is the biggest hockey league in the world and is one of the four premier sports leagues in the US – alongside the NFL, major league baseball and the NBA.

A Goal Line bet means that you make a prediction about the number of goals that are going to be scored in a match. These will be presented normally with half goal options, such as Over 1.5 Goals or Over 2.5 Goals. You will find along with an outright Goal Line market, a 1st Half Goal Line market as well, which is the same thing except only the tally of goals at the half time break counts.

How does a Goal-line bet work?

Probably the first questions that will come up is “Why are the options presented as 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 and so on?” and similarly “What’s the purpose of those half goals, as no-one scores half of a goal in a game?.”

That is the whole point. The half goal in the options is simply to avoid the bet going to a ‘push’. A push is where a bet is neither won or lost. For example, if the option in the Goal Line market was just Over 3 and there were three goals exactly scored in the match, the bet neither wins or loses. With the half goal included, the bet will either win or lose.

Under or Over 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 Goals explained

So if you are looking at a bet which is Over 2.5 Goals, what is needed is for a minimum of three goals to be scored in the fixture. It doesn’t matter if there are more, but if there’s less then the bet will lose.

Similarly, if you had backed Under 2.5 Goals, you would need the match to produce no more than two goals. When it comes to goal line betting it doesn’t matter which team scores the goal, and it doesn’t matter what the outcome of the match is in terms of who wins or not, it’s simply focusing on the goals scored in the game only.

Asian Goal Line explained

Asian Goal Lines introduce something extra. They bring in quarter goals along with half goals and whole goals. Note that this is different from Asian Handicap betting as the match result comes into play there. For Asian Goal Lines, it is looking only at the number of goals produced in a match.

Sports Betting Explained

Any Asian goal line bet with a quarter goal means that essentially you are playing two bets. Let’s look at an Asian Goal Line Under 1.75 goals which means that you have two selections in the bet of Under 1.5 Goals and Under 2 Goals. So the quarter goal used here at 1.75 is the midway point between those two options.

Let’s compare the Under 1.5 and Under 2 Goals individually:

Why a refund if two goals are scored on an Under 2 Goals bet? Any matched number in an Asian Goal Line, gives a refund. For example if you have taken Over 1 goals and there has been exactly one goal scored, the bet is a push and you get your stake back. If you took Under 3 Goals and exactly three goals are scored, that’s a push and a stake refund.

Now half way between Under 1.5 and Under 2.5 you have 1.75 which combines the two bets. Note for quarter goal bets, half of your stake goes to each portion of the bet (known as a Split Bet).

Hockey Betting Explained Odds

Why a Half Loss for two goals scored? That is because you are playing Under 1.5 goals AND Under 2 goals in one bet. So if two goals are scored in the game, it causes the Under 1.5 Goals bet to lose, but the Under 2 Goals gives a refund for two goals scored. So in this scenario, you would get half of your stake back from the Split Bet.

Alternative Goal Line meaning

Alternative Goal Line is just another name for Asian Goal Lines.

Winning example of a Goal-line bet in Football

Going back to the regular Over/Under market for an example. There is a match between Southampton and West Ham. You don’t expect many goals to crop up in the game, so you back under 2.5 goals.

The game ends in a 1-1 stalemate, but that does not matter. The total goals in the game was less than 2.5, so your bet wins.

Losing example of a Goal-line bet in Football

In our example match of Southampton v West Ham, let’s suppose that the option backed was Over 3.5 Goals because both teams are scoring well at the moment. The game, turns out to be a good contest with West Ham taking a 2-1 win. That result isn’t important for your Goal Line bet, the fact that there was only three goals in the game, is. It means that the forecast that the game would go above 3.5 goals was incorrect. The bet loses.

Goal Line markets

Ice Hockey Betting Explained

Why goal line markets are popular, especially the normal Over/Under market for football matches is that it is a simple 50/50 chance of getting the prediction right. It’s a simple pick and it’s not a market that often needs a big deep dive into stats to figure out.

The thing with these 50/50 type markets is that you aren’t going to get super wonderful odds unless you back something unpredictable to happen like under 0.5 goals or over 4.5 goals. But these are nice bets to pull together into multiples and accas.

Goal Line strategy

Stats help tremendously with Goal-line strategy. That is because it is so easy to see what team is scoring (or not scoring) within their current form. You can just look at a league, say pick out Aston Villa in a home game and see how many of their matches for the season on home soil have either gone over or under 2.5 goals for example. Those are basic stats.

Sports Betting Numbers Explained

You will easily spot the teams who have consistently racked up more higher-scoring games than other teams in the same division. You can base your simple Goal Line bet strategy off of that. It is common for league to have approximately three-quarters of matches for the season go over 1.5 goals, approximately half of all matches for the season go over 2.5 goals, and maybe a around a quarter going up into over 3.5 goals.

Different leagues will vary but it’s a general rule of thumb. What that will tell you is that the frequency of high scoring games (at least four goals) doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as games producing at least two, or at least three goals.

How to place a Goal-line bet on Bet365?

Because the standard average for a regular Goal Line bet on a football match is Under/Over 2.5 Goals, that is what odds you will be presented for when you look at a match at Bet365. That’s sort of the default setting for the bet if you like. If you want to take a different option, say over 3.5 goals, then you have to look at the Alternative Total Goals Market (which, slightly confusingly is not the same as the Alternative Goal Line market).

Just below the Goal Line market, you will see the Alternative Goal Line market which can be expanded. This is where the aforementioned Asian Goal Line (aka Alternative Goal Line) options are. Another way to get to them is at the top menu for a given match, you will see Asian Lines which presents the markets like Goal Line, 1st Half Goal Line and the Alternative Goal Line.