Asian Handicap Guide - all you need to know about Asian Handicap Betting in one place!

Introduction to handicap betting - European Handicap (EH) and Asian Handicap (AH)

When we talk about betting on final outcome, we usually consider it as betting on Home win, Draw or Away win. Final result of the match then easily shows outcome of your bet.

Such a market is not always attractive for all bettors, especially in cases when probability of one side to win is high. For example, if you can bet only on home win, draw or away win in match Germany vs. Andorra, chances are that very few bettors will take draw, almost no-one will bet on Andorra to win, while all those who believe Germany is a banker will skip the bet, since the odds are extremely low, usually lower than 1.10, so one has to stake significant amount of money if he aims for decent profit, and not only pocket money for breakfast with coffee.

In order to make those matches more attractive, bookmakers introduced handicaps. That means, outsider (underdog) is given one or more goals as headstart; favourite has to cover the handicap in order your bet to win.

In above example, Andorra is likely to be given handicap of 5 goals, and then you place the bet whether the handicap will be covered or not. If you bet on Germany, they have to win by 6 or more goals for your bet to win; If you bet on Draw, Germany needs to win be exactly 5 goals for your bet to win; if you bet on Andorra, Germany must not win by more than 4 goals for your bet to win; of course, with actual draw or win of Andorra, that bet is also won.

For long period of time, such a handicaps were the only ones offered by European bookmakers, so it was named "European handicap", or EH. If you bet on Germany in above example, you would write "Germany -5 EH"; if you bet on Andorra, you would write "Andorra +5 EH". Obviously, handicap lines on home and away teams are the same value but with opposite signs - adding 2 goals to away team has the same impact as subtracting 2 goals from home team, but usually you display handicap with team you bet on (i.e, you will write "Andorra win +5 EH" rather than "Andorra win with Germany -5 AH", although they both have the same meaning).

Settling the European Handicap

European Handicap is easy to settle. First, you just need to add or subtract goals scored by home team and goals scored by away team; for the sake of this tutorial, we will name that number "Goal Supremacy". If handicap applies to home team, Goal Supremacy is calculated as Home team goals minus Away team goals; if handicap applies to away team, Goal Supremacy is calculated as Away team goals minus Home team goals. Second, just add your handicap to the Goal Supremacy, and if result is positive, bet has won; if result is negative, bet has lost; and if result is zero, then bets on draw won, while bets on home and away teams lost.

Please note that I carved term "Goal Supremacy" only for the purpose of easier understanding of this tutorial, so you should not confuse it with the same term that might be used in other sites.

Introduction to Asian Handicap

Far to the east of Asia, another type of handicap was popular, and it slowly but steadily invaded rest of the world, and has became very popular nowadays as, naturally, Asian handicap. Its beauty lies in its ability to offer much wider variety of results, thus allowing punters to distribute their stakes in a more personalized way. Namely, European Handicap offers only two outcomes for your bet: it is either won or lost; Asian Handicap, however, offers three more outcomes for your bets: it "removes" option of a draw, by returning the stake if match ends in draw after handicap has been added (outcome known as "void" or "push" in "full ball handicap"); or it returns half of your stake, while other half is either won or lost (outcomes known as "half won" and "half lost" in "quarter ball handicap"). In Asian Handicap you have no possibility to bet on draw - you can bet only on Home Team or Away Team with various handicaps.

Moreover, Asian Handicap can be used not only on Home/Draw/Away markets, but also on Total Goals market, offering you the same new possibilities for your Under/Over betting.

Settling the Asian Handicap

Due to various options of "full goal", "half goal" and "quarter goal" (or "full ball", "half ball" and "quarter ball") lines, settling an Asian Handicap may look confusing. However, it's again as simple as adding two numbers together, and one just needs a bit of practice; the aim of this site is to provide you that practice.

As explained in previous article, you can easily settle European handicap by adding or subtracting handicap line to the actual outcome of a match; the same principle applies here, with some specific details: in European Handicap, sum of handicap line and actual result is always integer number; in Asian Handicap, however, depending on handicap line, result may be integer number, half of number or quarter of the number.

Let's explore them one by one; first on Home/Draw/Away markets, and then on Under/Over markets. If you are not interested in details behind each type of handicap, but just want to know the outcome of your bet, I'd recommend heading for our Asian Handicap Calculator spreadsheet, which will allow you to easily settle your Asian Handicap bets, both at Home/Draw/Away and Under/Over markets.

Proceed to Full Ball Asian Handicap...