Over the years sports’ betting has developed its own terminology that often can put people off. Like all terminology, in an ideal world this is simply a collection of technical terms that are intended to be succinct descriptions of the meaning of potentially complex activities, words and phrases. Whilst some terminologies have been developed with the primary intention of obfuscating the topic and thus protecting it from penetration by outsiders, some aspects of sports betting terminology may well have their origins in the times when most aspects of sports betting were illegal. By creating a new vocabulary, insiders were kept on the inside and enemies, such as the police and other authorities, were kept in the dark.

However, now that sports’ betting and sports’ betting online is entirely legal in the UK (though of course this is not the case in the USA where online betting across state boundaries remains illegal) such mechanisms are no longer required. However, even though there is no real need to maintain a difficult terminology of sports betting, many sports betters prefer to do so. Essentially by doing this they are maintaining a club of insiders.
What this means is that if you want to get into sports betting there is little other choice than to get into its terminology, much of which can be very confusing indeed. Fortunately it is very much easier that it initially appears, but when some people are confronted by such terms as a Yankee, a Goliath, a Heinz57, a Lucky 15 or something much simpler such as a four way accumulator, then it is not surprising that they make a hasty retreat.
Naturally the last thing bookmakers wish to do is to perpetuate the obscure terminologies of their trade and as a result you will find on the sites of many of them detailed descriptions of what all those sometimes very strange terms really mean. In case you didn’t know, all the terms we mentioned above apart from the last one are just complex bets which are designed to provide blanket coverage when making multiple selections. Check out your favourite bookmaker to find out more.








