HISTORY OF CONTRACT BRIDGE (SPORT BETTING)

Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basketball, baseball, hockey, track cycling, auto racing, mixed martial arts, and boxing at both the amateur and professional levels. Sports betting can also extend to non-athletic events, such as reality show contests and political elections, and non-human contests such as horse racing, greyhound racing, and illegal, underground cockfighting. It is not uncommon for sports betting websites to offer wagers for entertainment events such as the Grammy Awards, the Oscars, and the Emmy Awards.

Sports bettors place their wagers either legally, through a bookmaker sports book, or illegally through privately run enterprises. Many legal sports books are found online, operated over the Internet from jurisdictions separate from the clients they serve, usually to get around various gambling laws in select markets, such as Las Vegas, Nevada, or on gambling cruises through self-serve kiosks. They take bets up-front, meaning the bettor must pay the sports book before placing the bet. Illegal bookies, due to the nature of their business, can operate anywhere but only require money from losing bettors and don’t require the wagered money up front, creating the possibility of debt to the bookie from the better. This creates a number of other criminal elements, thus furthering their illegality.

Sports betting has resulted in a number of scandals in sport, affecting the integrity of sports events through various acts including point shaving, bad calls from officials at key moments, and overall match fixing. Examples include the 1919 World Series, the alleged and later admitted illegal gambling of former MLB player Pete Rose, and former NBA referee Tim Dinghy. One of the biggest scandals of all involves the 2002 NBA Championship games. Tim Dinghy was allegedly gambling on the spreads for the games that he refereed. After his trial, Tim Dinghy went on to release a statement to the public saying how one of the most controversial games in NBA history, Game six of the 2002 NBA Western Conference finals, was rigged. Money line bets do not have a spread or handicap, and require the chosen team to win the game outright. The favored team pays lower odds than does the underdog, thus, it acts mainly as an enticement to take the underdog for a better payout. Sometimes a bettor may couple this type of bet on the favored team to increase the payout of a parlay.

Spread betting are wagers that are made against the spread. The spread, or line, is a number assigned by the bookmakers which handicaps one team and favors another when two teams play each other and one is perceived as being more likely to win. The favorite takes points from the final score and the underdog gives points. This number can also be in increments of half-a-point even though very few sports have. Point scoring, in order to avoid the possibility of a tie.