Single Bets

What are single bets?

As the name suggests you bet on a single sport event with single bets. Therefore, the betting slip consists of only one betting tip. The opposite is a combination bet, where a couple of bets are combined. The single bet is understandably one of the easiest and most popular sports bets. So, it's no surprise that betting friends and bookmakers alike are fans of this betting form. Apart from the easy handling the easy calculation of the risk and the broad betting portfolio play an important role. Therefore, the single bet is the betting form that is played most. Very often single bets are placed on supposed winners of a certain competition or a sport event. Just like with any other betting form you also have a couple of betting possibilities. It doesn't make a difference with a single bet, whether you place a tip on an over/under bet, a double chance bet or a live bet. The decisive thing is: It's always a single tip that isn't bound to a second one.

How do single bets work?

While single bets may not look very spectacular at first glance, they are still the most important foundation regarding sports bets for beginners as well as professionals. The basic principle of a single bet is easily explained: You bet on exactly one event. Just like with other betting forms single bets can be 2-way-bets or 3-way bets according to sport and betting options. If you want to use a popular betting possibility and tip on a supposed winner of a football match, it's a so-called 3-way-bet. This means that this sport bet has three different possible endings: A win of the home team (tip 1), a draw (tip X) or a win by the visiting team (tip 2). The following example is supposed to explain the principle of a single bet: You want to place a single bet on the match Real Madrid versus Tottenham Hotspur. You decide on choosing the most popular betting option and want to place a bet on the winner of this match. Real Madrid is the favorite in this match and therefore has the lower betting odds. It's 1.40. Now you place for example 10 $ on the winner Real Madrid. In the case of a successful bet the profit would be 14 $. The betting stakes are simply multiplied by the betting odds. Net profit would therefore be 4 $. If Tottenham won that match, you would get 68 $ with the same stakes, due to the higher odds of 6.8. Of course you can also bet on a certain end result or a certain goal scorer in such a match. So you can place as many single bets as you want on a single sport event like a football match, as long as they are independent of each other and are not being combined. Apart from football you can naturally also place single bets on all other sports like tennis, ice hockey or handball.

How are single bets and combination bets different from each other?

In order to make the difference between both betting forms clear once again, we want to present a vivid example: You decide on tipping on a home win by Real Madrid and a goal by Christiano Ronaldo. Now you can place two single bets. Your sports betting budget would be used like this:

Tip A (win Real Madrid) at betting odds of 1.40 and stakes of 5 $ mean a possible profit of 7 $ or a net profit of 2 $. Tip B (scored goal by Christiano Ronaldo) at betting odds of 1.60 and stakes of 5 $ make a possible profit of 8 $ or a net profit of 3 $. Therefore, best case scenario is a net profit of 5 $ with total stakes of 5 $. If you choose a combination bet on the other hand, your betting slip may look as follows: Tip A (win Real Madrid) at odds of 1.40 and Tip B (goal by Christiano Ronaldo) at odds of 1.60 at stakes of 10 $ are being combined and placed on one betting slip. If you multiply the odds of both betting tips with each other you get total odds of 2.24.

The bet is only won, when both incidents occur. If this is the case, the profit in our example is 22.40 $. The net profit would be 12.40 $. So while the two single bets have higher betting chances, the riskier combination bet is much more lucrative. In order to make the decision "single bet or combination bet" easier for you, we summarized the most important SB strategies and CB strategies for you.