Hockey Betting in India | Tim Harrison x FaserMedia
India. A country of many wonders. You don’t see so many demographics with different cultures, food, and languages in any other country around the world. But the whole nation often unites on one front. Sports.
Photo by Piyush Bansal, Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India
When it comes to sports, we automatically think about sports betting because they go hand in hand. We have a betting guru among us today, Mr Tim Harrison. He’s agreed to share insights about betting sites in India as well as teach us the art of betting on Field hockey.
Tim Harrison to FaserMedia: Is Sports Betting Legal in India?
On a broader note, the answer is no. According to the 1867 Public Gambling Act, all forms of gambling are illegal across India except for
- Sikkim,
- Daman,
- and Goa.
But there is a problem with this law. Can you guess what it is?
Yes, it’s the timeline! The country’s law that still regulates gambling is over 150 years old! So, there’s no way it can cover and regulate online gambling, which is the current trend in the industry.
The result of this old law is India is an unregulated jurisdiction. If there’s no law regarding an activity, it’s hard to determine whether it’s legal. These instances are known as “de facto illegal”. However, we’re going to go out on a limb and claim that you can participate in online gambling in India without facing any trouble.
That is until the government decides to regulate online gambling. With an increasing number of offshore operators accepting players from India, the industry has grown to 76 billion Indian rupees! That’s an amount too big to ignore for the government.
As for now, let’s see what Tim Harrison from BetZillion has to say about Hockey betting in the country.
Why Hockey Betting?
You might be wondering why Tim chose Hockey betting when there are many other options. He also decided on field hockey. A sport predominantly played in the south-eastern region of Asia.
The answer is simple. Field hockey is often considered one of the national sports in India, although it’s not officially credited as one. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has yet to declare any national sports.
India. If you’re an Indian, you must’ve watched the film Chak De! It goes to show how popular field hockey is all over the country. India’s biggest film star, Mr Shah Rukh Khan, played the role of the coach of the women’s hockey team. This 2007 film was a major hit at that time.
That changes with this post on FaserMedia. We’re going over all of this data to justify the discussion on hockey betting. You might be missing out on it if you haven’t thought of it before.
Tim Harrison’s Guide to Field Hockey Betting
Most people worldwide are familiar with ice hockey as it’s considered the game’s original form. Field hockey is very similar to ice hockey, but it’s played on grass turf, known as AstroTurf. It means the players can wear regular sports shoes instead of ice skates (hockey skates).
Instead of the traditional long and flat hockey sticks and a puck, field hockey uses a bar with an umbrella-like bend at the end and an ivory ball. Each match is 70 minutes long, broken into two 35-minute halves.
The scoring system is also a bit different, but we don’t need to get into that. Both forms follow the same goal of scoring more goals than the opponent.
Markets in Field Hockey Betting
If you’re unaware, a “market” in betting is the outcome you place money on. Betting sites in India offer plenty of markets for field hockey betting. Tim has been generous enough to list and share the most popular ones with us.
- Winner Full-Time: Like all other sports, the full-time winner is the most popular market. It refers to whichever team you believe is the most likely to win the match at the end. If your predictions are correct, you get paid according to the odds.
- Winner Half-Time: Online bookmakers will offer this market to make your field hockey betting experience more unique. Instead of the actual winner of the match after full-time, they offer odds for the half-time winner. It simply means what team you think will lead after the 35-minute mark.
- Double Chance: Although this market is more famous for football (soccer), there’s no reason not to use it for field hockey. You get to cover different outcomes with a single bet. The most common combinations are 1x, 1, 2, and 2x. Here, 1 is the home team, x is the draw, and 2 is the away team. 1x means you win the bet if the home team wins or the match draws. Apply the same theory to the rest of them.
- Over/Under: An infamous market that goes for pretty much all sports possible. As an Indian punter, your job is to bet against the bookmaker in the form of over or under. Over means you believe the score will go over and the opposite for under. For this bet, the bookmaker first predicts a score.
- Goalscorer: You bet on a particular player who you think is very likely to score. Different bookmakers may offer other players and odds.
Field Hockey Live Betting
All the markets we discussed so far belong to the pre-match category. Pre-match betting means you’re placing bets before a match starts and the odds remain fixed for the duration. The other popular type is live betting, also known as in-play betting.
However, live betting allows you to wager when a hockey match is live! The markets keep changing based on the status of the field. Even the odds reflect the changes in the match.
Hockey Betting Odds
Throughout this guide, Tim Harrison has been speculating about the odds. What are they? If you don’t know how to read odds, you can’t make sense of anything in the betting industry.
In simple words, odds refer to how likely the event is and how much you can win from a bet. There are a few different formats worldwide, but decimal is almost exclusively used in India.
Whatever the odds are, you multiply it by your stake to calculate how much you’ll receive as a payout. It’s a good thing because the decimal odds are nothing but multipliers. As for the likelihood projection, odds shorter than 2.00 means it’s the favorite (>50% probability), and odds longer than 2.00 means it’s the underdog (<50% probability).
For example, 1.70 decimal odds mean you’ll get a ₹170 payout for a ₹100 bet. In this case, ₹70 is your profit. At the same time, the odds mean that whatever outcome you’re betting on, there is a 58.8% chance it’ll happen. If we change the odds to 2.70, the probability drops to 37%. In the meantime, your total payout shoots to ₹270!
It is, of course, scalable based on the caliber of the match and the tournament. If you come across an online betting site in India with an American or Fractional format, you should be able to change it from the settings menu.