Investing Strictly on the Winner: How to read a MLB line.

NCAA brackets are easy to understand, pick a winner and hope your team comes in. Understanding Vegas and the NFL is also easy, pick a team to stay within or win by 'x' amount of points and you are golden. But baseball (and hockey, NASCAR, tennis and more) is a bit more complicated. To profit off these sports, you primarily wager on what is called a Money Line. So, what Is the Money Line? Like the point spread you see in the NFL, the money line is used to equal out the attractiveness of the favorite and the underdog for the typical bettor. Money line results are decided by an event's straight-up winner, without regard to any point spread, since there is no point spread. Odds makers set the money line so that more money must be risked on the favorite (the expected winner) and less money on the underdog in an effort to balance the willingness of bettors to back the respective sides of a contest. Many things go into a money line, which makes for another great article. However, in terms of the average bettor's concern, the money line allows you to profit more when you feel strong about an underdog's chances of winning. In more private circles, money lines are the equivalent to a team winning 'straight up', meaning without run/point help. So why use this money line system instead of a point spread? If a point spread were used with baseball, the smallest amount a line could be moved would be a