In college, my roommate began betting on sports during our sophomore year. Back then, I was unfamiliar with all of the various betting terms and many of his wagers he made sounded like a foreign language to me. After he won a few bets and made a little money, I became interested. After all, I was the one who knew the most about sports, statistically-speaking, out of the two of us. I felt that if he could make a few bucks, I could make a killing.

While my plan didn't work out as well as I had hoped, I did end up finally learning how to read a betting line and what the various betting terms meant. For those interested in wagering money on sports, responsibly of course, here is a quick tutorial on how to read a betting line.

Before we get started with the specifics, here is a sample betting line. Note that this line does not refer to any real match-up, and is entirely made-up for the purposes of this and future lessons.

For the purposes of this part of the tutorial, we will only focus on the "Teams" and "Pointspread" columns. Let's start with the obvious. The teams in the "Teams" column are the two matched up against each other. Important to note about this column is that the team placed in the bottom is always the home team in the match-up. As home teams often have a crowd and energy advantage in games, this is important to note.

Now onto the next, and more critical, column, "Pointspread." In all sports, there are often games played between very good teams and terrible ones. In these match-ups, bookies would lose their life savings if they allowed gamblers to wager on the better team to win straight-up and receive an even payout (meaning a dollar for each dollar wagered).

Spreads are a solution to that problem. Instead of simply allowing betters to pick a winner straight up, point spreads forces them to think about how much they expect the winner to win by. In the example above, the spread is highlighted in red. The Detroit Pistons are -7, which means they are seven-point favorites to win. Thus if one were to select the -7 bet, they would expect the Pistons to win by more than seven points. On the other hand, if one picked the Pacers as +7 underdogs, they would win their bet if the Pacers won by any margin or if they lost by less than seven points. If the Pistons were to win by exactly seven points, the bet would be null and void.

Of course, winning a bet is only half of the equation to making bets. The other half is how much one wins with each bet. The numbers contained within the blue section, called moneylines, contains the valuable information on how much a bet will pay out. To figure out how much a bet will payout, use the following formulas. The variable "M" will represent the moneyline value and the variable "B" will represent the amount wagered.

If the moneyline is negative, the formula for calculating payout is -(100/M)*B. Thus if you were to win a bet of $100 with a moneyline of -125, you would win $80.

If the moneyline is positive, the formula for calculating payout is (M/100)*B. Thus if you were to win a bet of $100 with a moneyline of +125, you would win $125.

The standard moneyline for all bets made on the spread is -110, as shown above. This is because the spread is meant to balance out all bets. In other words, using the example of the article, bookies would expect half of the population to bet on the Pistons to win by seven and the other half to bet on the Pacers to lose by less than seven. By paying out slightly less than even money, they hope to profit every time no matter the outcome of the actual game.

That is the end of the first part of this series. Stay tuned for future parts which will explain buying points, betting on totals, using parlays and teasers, and more.