Asian Handicap Guide

This guide will define and explain Asian Handicap betting, a form of  fixed odds soccer betting that is incredibly popular in the Far East,  and which is rapidly winning over punters in the UK and the rest of  Europe as well as an alternative way to bet on football.

Asian Handicaps are the most prevalent football betting markets in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, and Singapore. When people wager on a  soccer match in these countries chances are they will use an Asian Handicap betting market. They were once considered a novelty in English betting circles, but that has changed in recent times.

The standard betting market for forecasting the result of a football match was derived from the popular 'football pools' of yesteryear (The Pools were first offered in England in the 1920s well before bookmakers were allowed to offer odds on football matches), whereby you filled in whether the match would be a "Home win (1)" an "Away win (2)" or a "Draw (x)". When UK bookmakers offered odds on soccer games there were thus three possible outcomes.

In Asia, however, the notion of betting on the draw in football never caught on. In this regard the adverse cultural reaction to ties and draws is identical to the USA where a drawn sporting contest is considered incomplete and a waste of time. All US betting markets take this into account, and Ice Hockey betting has used an Asian Handicap system for years, although people who bet on the NHL probably have no idea that its an Asian Handicap.

The Asian market loved to bet on UK football but they didn't want the draw to factor in to the bet. A secondary reason may have been that because betting in Asia tends to be done verbally and peer-to-peer it was also extremely complicated to work out three-way odds on the fly.

So Asian Handicap betting was born whereby each team gets a goal handicap or a spread prior to the game, typically in a fractional form (0.5 goals, 1.5 goals), thereby negating the draw as a betting result. Here is a hypothetical example:

Manchester United -1.5 goals odds of 9/10 vs. Wigan +1.5 goals odds of 9/10

Manchester United would be big favourites to win a game of this nature using traditional football odds, but with the Asian Handicap the draw is removed from the equation, and Wigan's chances of winning "against the spread", known as ATS, increases substantially as well.

There are more complicated Asian Handicap bets on offer now that enable you to split your stake between two handicap results. If you see a team on offer at 0, 0.5 that means you can bet half your wager on the straight-up result (the 0 part) and the other half on the handicap result (the same team +0.5 goal). This type of Asian handicap is also sometimes reflected as +0.25, but don't be confused or alarmed - it's simply means you're splitting the bet between two possible results.

There are many online sports betting companies that offer Asian Handicap style betting on football matches, and two of the best that we have found are Bet365 and Ladbrokes. Both are highly respected and reputable firms and they provide an excellent way to get your feet wet betting on soccer matches via these potentially lucrative betting markets

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