Lessico
Sports betting glossary: 40 terms explained briefly
From antepost to yield, by way of margin, line, refund and closing line value: the essential entries in one-line definitions, each pointing to where we explain it in full.
Pubblicato il 14 settembre 2026
Forty entries, alphabetically, one line each. Where a term has a page of its own on this site, the glossary says so: what's here is the minimum definition needed to avoid stopping halfway through another article.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Accumulator | Several selections on one slip: odds multiply, and one wrong outcome loses everything. |
| ADM | Italy's Customs and Monopolies Agency: issues remote gambling licences. |
| Antepost | A bet on a distant outcome, such as the winner of a league. |
| Asian handicap | A goal advantage or disadvantage. On whole lines there is a refund if the result lands on the line, on half lines never, on quarter lines half. |
| Bankroll | The capital set aside for betting, kept separate from everything else. |
| Betting programme | The set of events and markets an operator prices. |
| Book | The operator that accepts the bet and sets the price. |
| Both Teams to Score | Whether both sides score at least one goal or not. |
| Cash out | Closing a bet before the end, at an amount set by the operator. |
| Closing line | An outcome's price at the moment the event starts. |
| CLV | Closing line value: the difference between the price you took and the closing price. |
| Decimal odds | The format used in Italy: 2.00 means a stake of 1 returns 2 in total. |
| Double chance | Covers two of the three outcomes: 1X, X2 or 12. |
| Draw No Bet | Like the 1X2 but without the draw: if it ends level, the stake comes back. |
| European handicap | Like the Asian one but with three outcomes and no refund. |
| Fractional odds | The British format: 1/1 is the same as 2.00 decimal. |
| Head-to-head | Matches already played between two sides. ⚠ Covers every competition, cups included. |
| Home advantage | The benefit of playing at home, meaning the gap between home and away wins: 10.9 points in Serie A, 17.5 in LaLiga. |
| Implied probability | 1 divided by the odd. It says what the price contains, not what will happen. |
| In-play | Betting while the event is under way. Comparing books live isn't reliable: feeds are captured at different instants. |
| Licence | The ADM authorisation that permits taking bets in Italy. |
| Line | A market's threshold: the 2.5 goals of Under/Over, the −1 of a handicap. |
| Margin | What the operator holds back: the sum of implied probabilities minus 1. |
| Market | The set of outcomes on one aspect of a match: result, total goals, scorers. |
| Odd/Even | Whether total goals are an odd or even number. |
| Refund (void) | The bet didn't happen and the stake returns. It isn't a draw and shouldn't count as zero. |
| ROI | Return on investment. In betting it effectively coincides with yield. |
| Rollover | The turnover requirement to be met before a bonus can be withdrawn. |
| Selection | A single outcome inside a slip. |
| Self-exclusion | A request that blocks access to gambling across every licensed operator at once. |
| Single | One selection only: the outcome and the price are what they are, with no multiplication. |
| Slip | The set of selections played together, single or accumulator. |
| Stake | The amount you put on a selection. |
| Suspension | The moment a market stops accepting bets, for instance during a goal review. |
| Under/Over | Whether total goals fall below or above a line, usually 2.5. |
| Variance | How much a result swings around its average. It is why measuring an edge takes thousands of bets. |
| Vig (vigorish) | A synonym for margin, chiefly American usage. |
| Void | See refund. |
| Yield | Return per unit staked: profit divided by total staked. |
| 1X2 | The full-time result: home win, draw, away win. |
Five entries worth reading in full
- Margin — the only number that compares two operators without depending on the match, and it varies hugely between competitions: from 4.03% to 10.59% in our data.
- Implied probability — the division that turns a price into a percentage, and the first step to understanding what you're looking at.
- Refund — counting it as zero instead of excluding it distorts your yield, and it is the most common error in a log.
- Variance — after a hundred bets at 2.00 the margin of error on return is ±19.6 points. Almost everything you see is noise.
- Head-to-head — «the last six meetings» include cups and lower divisions: between two sides they may all belong to another competition.
The comparison between operators on each market is on the odds page; standings, scorers and form are in the statistics section.