Overs and Unders

Today I want to talk about overs and under. This is because you will often see phrases like “Over 1.5 goals” or “Under 2 goals”

The general principle of overs and unders

Let’s ignore the ‘.5’ bit of these phrases for now. These bets that are stating that over (or under) a certain amount of goals will be scored.

If I were to bet that on a certain match “Over 2 goals” would be scored I would win if all the goals in that game added together were more than 2; so if the final score was 2–1, I would win because the total amount of goals is 3, which is more than 2.

Why .5?

Normally bets like these will include ‘.5’ – whilst this seems confusing (how do you score half a goal?) it actually makes the bet much easier because it removes the possibility of a draw.

If I bet that Under 1.5 goals will be scored the following score lines would mean I win;

0–0, 1–0, 0–1

This is because if you add up both teams goals, no result scored more than 1 goal.

If a game ended 1–1 I would lose, because 2 goals is larger than 1.5. There is no way for me to draw.

Overs and under are not just goals

Overs and Unders don’t just apply to goals, you could have “Over 2.5 yellow cards”, “Under 20.5 throw ins”. Pretty much any event that can be easily counted could have an Overs or Unders bet associated with it.