Asian Handicap Meaning and How It Works

Ian Bruce

Senior Editor

Updated: 2 February 2024

This guide is for anyone who has questions about the Asian Handicap meaning in the world of football betting. Essentially, it’s a type of betting market that imposes a theoretical handicap on the team that’s favoured to win. This doesn’t affect the game itself, but it can help to level things up for wagering purposes. 

Asian Handicap Explained

It’s common in football for one team in a match to be considerably better than the other. In a regular betting market, bookmakers give odds according to the chances of each team winning. Unfortunately, that often means the superior team must be offered at especially low odds. And that can make them rather unattractive for anyone who wants to bet on them.

The good news is that bookmakers in Asia responded to this situation by creating a different betting market that would make any match worth considering for wagering purposes. In an Asian Handicap market, the superior team is given a theoretical goal disadvantage, which is referred to as a handicap. The favoured team must therefore overcome the handicap before it can win, at least as far as the betting market is concerned. For example, if a team is given a handicap of -1 goal, it will need to win its match by 2 or more goals for a bet on it to succeed. 

Another difference between an Asian handicap football market and a regular one is that it either eliminates the possibility of a draw or refunds stakes should a draw occur. We’ll explain this a little later. For now, the key point is that an Asian Handicap allows the bookmaker to offer higher odds for the favoured team than he would otherwise. At the same time, it also gives fans of the opposing team a greater chance of winning.

Asian Handicap Betting in Action

To illustrate this concept and demonstrate Asian Handicap football betting in practice, in this section, we’ll take you through the most common markets and explain how they work.

Asian Handicap -1.50 Explained

Let’s imagine that you want to bet on a match between Newcastle United and Luton Town. The home team have far superior form, and the regular betting market looks like this:

You don’t fancy risking more than twice as much money than you stand to win by betting on Newcastle. So you look at the Asian Handicap market that imposes a -1.5 goal handicap on Newcastle and you see that the odds here are much better.

How does Asian Handicap work? Well, when you bet on Newcastle in this market, 1.5 goals will be deducted from the number that they actually score in the game. Your bet will then be settled accordingly. Similarly, if you wanted to bet on Luton in this market, their actual score would be increased by 1.5 goals before your bet is settled. In this scenario:

You’ll have noticed that here there is no possibility of a draw. That’s because the handicap figure isn’t a whole number. No matter what the actual score of the game is, when the handicap number has been applied, the match will either be won by Newcastle or Luton.

Asian Handicap -1.0 Explained

If you don’t want Newcastle to have to overcome a handicap of 1.5 goals, you can bet in an Asian Handicap 1 market with a lower handicap. Here the handicap is just 1 goal, and the odds available will look something like this:

Because this market imposes a handicap of 1 goal, it’s possible that the post-handicap result could be a draw. Fortunately, in Asian Handicap betting that doesn’t mean you’ll lose. Instead, if a draw occurs after the handicap has been applied, your stake on the match will be refunded. 

Asian Handicap -0.75 Explained

In this market, the favoured team to win is given a handicap of 0.75 goals. This makes it even easier for a bet on Newcastle to win, but of course, the odds available will reflect that. Here are the odds you might be offered in this scenario:

Because this market imposes a handicap of three-quarters of a goal, slightly different rules apply where you might have half your stake refunded or only lose half your stake, depending on the final scoreline of the match. A similar thing occurs in the Asian 0.25 market, as you’ll see later. For now, here’s how a 0.75 bet would be settled:

Asian Handicap -0.50 Explained

Here the favoured team is given a half-goal handicap. Sticking with the same Newcastle United v Luton Town match, the Asian betting odds would be something like this:

Asian Handicap -0.25 Explained

This market imposes a handicap of just one-quarter of a goal on the favourites. Our discussion of Asian Handicap explained earlier how this market doesn’t allow a draw. For both of those reasons, the odds available here will usually be less than in the regular market.

Asian Handicap -0.0 Explained

This is a strange-looking market because there is no handicap imposed at all. So what is Asian handicap 0.0 used for? The short answer is to eliminate the possibility of a draw. 

Essentially, this makes the 0.0 handicap betting market the same as a Draw No Bet market. And the odds will usually be exactly the same in both.

Asian Handicap Chart of Outcomes

While we’ve now discussed the Asian handicap meaning in a variety of markets, you might still be a little confused about what bets win and what bets lose. That’s perfectly normal. It takes time to get used to the rules, particularly when there’s a possibility of winning or losing with just half your stake. 

To help make your life easier in the early days, here is an Asian handicap table of outcomes. Simply look at the handicap figure for the team that you bet on and the chart will show you how that bet will fare for all possible team results.

Why Use Asian Handicap Betting?

We’ve answered the question of what is an Asian handicap so we can now look at a few of the reasons why you might want to participate in this kind of betting. There are plenty, but the main ones that apply to most bettors are as follows:

Pros and Cons of Asian Handicap Betting

You’re now familiar with the Asian handicap meaning and how the market works. You also have a few ideas about how to use this type of betting effectively. With all of that taken care of, let’s now summarise the pros and cons of Asian handicap betting.

Where to Find Asian Handicap Betting Markets

The growing popularity of Asian handicap betting means that markets are being offered by an increasing number of sportsbooks. Two of the best around as far as the number of markets is concerned are 10Bet and Unibet, but most of the best online betting sites will offer at least a handful of Asian handicap options.

Conclusion

Sports betting in Asia is big business and the number of online sports bettors there is expected to reach 37.8 million by 2028. Asian handicaps have played a big role in making the hobby more popular there, and they're proving to be a big hit here in the UK, too.

While Asian handicaps will never replace the regular match betting market for most bettors, they can be very useful for anyone who wants to get better odds about the favourite, support the underdog team or eliminate the chance of losing money because of the draw. Consider the Asian handicap the next time you think that your chosen team is too short to bet on. It just might make them a viable bet after all.

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Ian Bruce

Senior Editor

Ian Bruce joined Safest Betting Sites in 2024 as Senior Sports Editor to oversee the quality and usefulness of its gambling content. He originally developed an interest in betting after landing a winning Yankee on his first attempt. He then spent years figuring out how to replicate that success. Along the way, he became one of the UK’s leading writers on the topic of betting and gaming. Ian’s career has now spanned more than three decades, and his enthusiasm for systematic and responsible betting hasn’t waned one bit. However, his preferred approach to winning these days is Dutching, for the simple reason that “It’s a lot easier than landing Yankees.”

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