Requiring you to predict two things within one market, the Half Time/Full Time selection with online bookmakers is an extremely popular market for football bettors.
The choice is yours how you exploit the market, meaning you could predict the home favourites to win resoundingly in the first half and see it out to the end of the game, or back the underdogs to escape with a draw in both the opening half and at full time.
Providing some extra value than just 1X2 or other bet types for football betting, this article is to clear up anything you don’t already know about Half Time/Full Time and its meaning.
What Does Half Time Full Time Mean in Betting?
Half Time/Full Time, sometimes shortened to HT/FT, means predicting the match result after both the end of the first half, and at the end of the game. This means it isn’t possible to predict only the first part or second part, both must be correct for your HT/FT bet to be successful.
Having to pick two different results in one bet is part of the reason why Half Time/Full Time betting is popular, because it usually means much better odds than a lot of markets. For example, a team who is a strong favourite to win in the 1X2 market may have much better odds if you also include them to win the first half through the HT/FT market.
All of the available options for HT/FT betting are:
- Home/Home
- Draw/Home
- Home/Draw
- Draw/Draw
- Draw/Away
- Away/Draw
- Away/Away
- Home/Away
- Away/Home
On top of that, we have shown winning and losing scenarios for a Half Time/Full Time prediction on Draw/Arsenal below:
| Half-Time Result | Full-Time Result | Bet Outcome | Explanation |
| Draw (0-0) | Arsenal Win (2-1) | Win | The match was a draw at half-time, and Arsenal won by full-time. |
| Draw (1-1) | Arsenal Win (3-2) | Win | The match was a draw at half-time, and Arsenal won the game. |
| Draw (0-0) | Liverpool Win (1-2) | Lose | The match was a draw at half-time, but Liverpool won by full-time. |
| Draw (1-1) | Draw (2-2) | Lose | The match was a draw at half-time and remained a draw by full-time. |
| Liverpool Lead (0-1) | Arsenal Win (2-1) | Lose | Liverpool led at half-time, so the bet is a loss even though Arsenal won the game. |
| Arsenal Lead (1-0) | Arsenal Win (3-1) | Lose | Arsenal led at half-time, so the bet is a loss even though they won the game. |
How Half Time Full Time Bets Work
Understanding how Half Time/Full Time bets work is crucial, because you don’t want to think that you have won and your bet is actually a loss. The key misconception is people will think teams need to win both halves or goals need to be scored, but it simply needs to meet the result you have predicted.
Below represents examples of all the bets and how they work:
- Home/Home – The home team has to be winning at half time, and then by the end of the game too. They do not need to score more goals in the second half, and 1-0 at half time and full time for example is a winning bet.
- Draw/Home – The half time result could be 0-0, 1-1 or another score draw, but the home team has to win the game at full time.
- Draw/Draw – For this option, the game needs to include a draw at half time and full time. Therefore, if the game is 0-0 at the end of the first half and stays 0-0 or even ends 1-1, the bet will be a winner.
Odds will typically increase because sometimes may perform better in the second half and regularly find themselves level at half time, whilst it can pay well to predict underdogs to be winning at both half time and full time.
Similarly, betting on a team to come from behind is a hard task, which is represented in the odds for the Half Time/Full Time bet example, away/home.
For major leagues like the Premier League and La Liga for example, the Half Time/Full Time market is available for every single game with online bookmakers and betting apps. But it is also typically available for most leagues and competitions around the world, if not all of them.
