One reason that I am always quite wary of Under bets is that there is always an irrevocable chance of losing the bet right up until the end of the game. I mean, LSU and Auburn can be sitting at 14-10 and 200 yards combined offense with 3 minutes left in the game, and with one fluky fumble return your Under 30 bet can be gone for good. I hate betting Under. 

Conversely, I love betting the Over because once your bet comes in that’s it – you’re a winner no matter what happens the rest of the game, right? Right? 

Rules are rules … sucky, freakin’ rules.

Sometimes a sportsbook’s rules help us. But more often it seems they don’t.

Everytime one goes against us, it acts as a reminder that the odds are stacked heavily against us.

Take Friday’s Brewers-Tigers tilt in Detroit.

With a pair of starters with hefty ERAs and a hot Prince Fielder, over 10 seemed like the play.

It was.

Fielder hit a three-run bomb in the first. The Tigers answered with Marcus Thames’ two-run shot in the bottom half of the inning.

By the bottom of the fourth, the teams had combined for 15 hits and 11 runs.

Turn off the TV, boys. This one’s over, right? Wrong.

With the Tigers leading 7-4 in the bottom of the fourth, Mother Nature took a break from Bethpage and showed up in Detroit. Out came the tarps for a rain delay.

With the game not yet official, things looked bleak as the delay reached two hours.

Thankfully, the game would restart around 10:35 p.m. EST. Sweet!

But Mother Nature, like some other women we all know, is a tease. Shortly after Thames put the Tiger comfortably ahead 10-4 in the seventh, she reappeared with more rain.

This time, after a 39-minute delay, the umps had had enough. Game over. Final score: Detroit 10, Milwaukee 4.

While anyone who had Detroit cashed, total players were let to think what could have been. Almost all sportsbooks have a rule requiring games to go nine innings, 8.5 if the home team is leading, for a total bet to be legitimized.

So even though the game was official and the total was eclipsed, no action was constituted on all total bets.

It was a tough pill to swallow.

Certainly the reason why the sportsbooks have this rule is because of what I described in the top paragraph: there is always time left for a bunch of runs or points to be scored and the Unders to lose, so of course they’re only going to pay once the game has gone the entire distance and there’s no time left. But once the Overs come in, the bet is effectively decided. Certainly the casinos have the right to set their own rules, but had I been holding an Over ticket, I would be pissed, too.

Luckily, this is just baseball. 

And yes, you can always win or lose spread bets right up until the end of the game (I was on USC that night, btw), but there’s always a chance of coming back. Not so with total bets.