Background For centuries man has been speculating on the outcome of future events. It has even spawned new branches of mathematics. The speculation occurs because of the differing schemas we have for how the world works. Betting is the vehicle for settling the argument. It creates a victor and a loser. At its simplest, it's a way of keeping score. The ultimate answer to the challenge "put your money where your mouth is". The compulsion to bet covers more than 50/50 events, it covers all events and the likelihood of it occurring. For this we developed odds. Something will happen once in x attempts or as it is more conventionally put (x-1)-to-1. The debate now covers what value should x be. This is all well and good for events with few outcomes {win, lose, draw}. For events with very many outcomes it is cumbersome. Although you can assign an "odds" to each possible outcome, from the punters point of view this meant placing multiple bets on one event just to back his view against the odd setters. Even then you can't back them all and the actually outcome could be next to your selection. You would be right in principle, but not win the bet. What is needed is something that rewards you for being right in principle but not require a specific forecast. The financial markets have been trading instruments whose value depended on many different parameters. These are reduced to a single figure, the price. The investor now only has to make an up bet or a down bet, not whether a company's profit is going to be a certain value or whether interest rates will fall. Spread betting draws its inspiration from this i.e. it reduces all possible football scorelines into a number representing the supremacy of one team over the other. This allows you to pick the team you believe is underestimated. The amount you win is related to how right you are. So you will not be penalized for your team winning 5 - 0 as opposed to 4 - 0. The reason this type of betting has really taken off is the thrill of not knowing how much you're risking or how much you can win. This is because it is the exact result that determines the make-up of the bet, so you always have an interest in the game. Giving you a bigger bang for your buck. This is what makes spread betting a far more addictive form of gambling. And due to its inherent fairness it also attracts the more sophisticated and intellectual risk taker. About Me It was a wet night in 1991 and Pakistan were playing England in the Cricket World Cup. There were five unshaven students crowded around a radio, sipping Colin's average home-brewed beer. "How about a spreadbet" I said. "Spreadbet, what's that?" From that day on I've suffered the glory,the pain,the excitement and the misery of spread betting. Of the five students, one's an accountant, one works in WHSmith, one joined the enemy by working for both City and Sporting Index, Colin's a teacher after making the Burnley team as a substitute, and me, I work in the city of London as a bond analyst. If you have any problems, question, queries or fears, please feel free to email me at Paul@online-spread-betting.com