Are you new to the world of online basketball betting? We think you'll like it a lot. Even if you don't know LeBron James from Jerome James (aka "Big Snacks"), hoops is one of the simpler sports to make a buck on. But of course, it would be to your advantage to start off on the right foot with some sound basketball gambling fundamentals.

First and foremost, you need to know what the basketball betting odds looks like. Here's one taken from Monday's NBA schedule:

Portland Trail Blazers +4
Los Angeles Clippers -4

The Clippers are the home team, listed at the bottom as home team always is on a basketball betting line. The -4 means that the Clippers are 4-point favorites on the pointspread; they have to win by more than four points to cash in. If they win by exactly four points, it's a "push" and all monies are returned. Any other score results in the Blazers cashing in as underdogs. Portland can lose by as many as three points and still get paid.

Chances are you've seen a pointspread before, either online or in the sports section of your old-school newspaper. But far fewer people actually understand the spread's raison d'être. In general, the "action" (the money coming in on the game) will be balanced on both sides. That way, the "bookmaker" (that's us) can pay the winning bets with the action from the losing bets and not get soaked.

Let's say in the above example, the line opens and everyone is betting on Portland. The book is now in a vulnerable situation; if nobody bets on Los Angeles, and the Blazers end up winning the game, the book is going to lose a lot of money. We have to make the Clippers a more attractive product by lowering the spread to -3.5, or -3, or as low as it takes to get enough action on Los Angeles.

Now that people are betting on the Clippers, the book is protected from exposure. If Portland wins, the money that came in on L.A. will go into the pockets of Blazers supporters, and the book will keep the "juice" (aka "vigorish" or "vig"). That's the commission bettors pay to the book to have their wagers processed. In a standard pointspread bet, you're paying $110 to win $100.

The very important takeaway here is that the pointspread is dictated by market forces. Your task as a handicapper is to be in the winning half of the marketplace, which we like to talk about in terms of "sharps" and "squares." There are a lot of squares out there. They make relatively uneducated bets for any number of reasons, and it's their money you're trying to take. You're already sharper than many of them just from reading this article.

A sharp hoops handicapper will take the time to learn about the gambling side of the equation as well as the basketball side. We have a library of articles on our website that will take you through some of the finer aspects of basketball betting strategy. You'll want to learn about the different types of bets available to you, as well: moneylines, totals, and NBA props (short for "proposition bets) on both players and teams. The props market has really taken off over the past decade thanks to the Internet; you can bet on something as simple as how many points Clippers shooting guard Eric Gordon is going to score against Portland (OVER or UNDER 16.5 points in the above example).

Which brings us back to basketball itself. The standard numbers you see in the boxscores - points, rebounds, assists - can be deceiving because basketball is very much a team sport. How many points Eric Gordon will score against Portland has a lot to do with the other players on both the Clippers and the Blazers. So hoops eggheads like John Hollinger (NBA) and Ken Pomeroy (NCAA) have been working on advanced statistics that can give you a truer sense of how "efficiently" a player or team has been performing. Here are some of the newer stats that you can use to your advantage:

Player Efficiency Rating (PER): Hollinger's pet statistic for individual performance. A PER of 15 is the indexed league average by position; Gordon had a 16.18 PER at press time, so he's performing like an above-average shooting guard.

Offensive and Defensive Rating: Measures points scored and allowed per 100 possessions. The Clippers are No. 22 in the league in offensive efficiency (101.6) and No. 16 in defense (103.8).

Roland Rating: A plus-minus statistic developed by Roland Beech at 82games. Gordon leads the Clippers with a plus-5.3 Roland Rating.

Pace: How many possessions a team runs per game. More possessions usually yield more points; the Clippers are No. 21 in the NBA in pace at 94.4 possessions per game.

This information is provided in partnership with BoDog Sportsbook

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