Draw No Bet: How It Works and When to Use It
A plain-English guide to the draw no bet market, how your stake gets returned on a tie, and where it actually fits in a betting strategy.
By
Eric Pauly
9 min read
Draw no bet is one of the most useful markets in soccer betting, and also one of the most misunderstood. The name says most of it: if the match ends in a draw, the bet is voided and you get your stake back. You are only backing one team to win, with the tie taken out of the equation entirely.
That single change matters more than it looks. A standard three-way moneyline in soccer forces you to pick between a home win, an away win, or a draw, and roughly a quarter to a third of matches end level. Draw no bet removes that middle outcome as a way to lose. You still need your team to win outright, but a draw costs you nothing instead of everything.
This guide covers what draw no bet actually is, how the payout math works, how it stacks up against related markets like double chance and the Asian handicap, and when it is genuinely worth taking the shorter odds. If you bet on soccer at all, this is a market worth understanding cold.
article Summary
Draw no bet (DNB) means a tie voids your bet and returns your stake. You only win if your chosen team wins.
It removes the draw as a losing outcome, which lowers your risk compared to a straight moneyline.
In exchange, the odds are shorter than backing the same team on the three-way line.
It is close to an Asian handicap at zero, and less cautious than double chance.
Best used when you like a team to win but respect a real chance the game ends level.
What draw no bet actually means
In most soccer matches there are three possible full-time results: the home team wins, the away team wins, or the game is drawn. A normal moneyline, sometimes called the 1X2 or three-way line, asks you to pick one of those three. If you back a team and the match ends 1-1, you lose.
Draw no bet collapses that to two live outcomes. You pick a team. If they win, you win. If they lose, you lose. If the match ends in a draw, the bet is a push and your stake is refunded in full. Nothing is won and nothing is lost.
Because the draw is no longer a way to lose, the sportsbook prices the market with shorter odds than the equivalent moneyline. You are paying for that safety net with a smaller potential return. The trade is straightforward: less risk, less reward. Understanding when that trade is worth it is the whole point of the market.
How the payout works
Draw no bet pays out like any other two-way market, with one wrinkle: the refund on a draw. If your team wins, you get your stake back plus the profit at the posted odds. If your team loses, you lose your stake. If the match is drawn, you get exactly your stake back, no more and no less.
The odds are the key difference from a moneyline. Removing the draw from the risk pool makes a winning bet more likely, so the book compensates by cutting the price. A team you could back at +130 on the three-way line might sit around -120 on draw no bet. Same team, same match, very different number, because you are no longer exposed to the tie.
One thing to watch: the refund is your stake only. Draw no bet does not protect against a loss, it only neutralizes the draw. If your team is favored and loses outright, the market gives you no cushion at all. It is not insurance against a bad result, just insurance against a specific result.
Draw no bet vs double chance vs Asian handicap
Draw no bet lives in a family of markets built to reduce draw risk, and it helps to see where it fits. The three you will run into most are double chance, the Asian handicap at zero, and draw no bet itself.
Double chance lets you cover two of the three outcomes on one ticket. You can back a team to win or draw, which means a tie is a winning result, not a refund. That is more protective than draw no bet, and the odds are shorter to match. Double chance wins on a draw; draw no bet only ties on a draw.
Asian handicap at zero is functionally the same product as draw no bet. A handicap of 0.0 means a draw voids the bet and the stake is returned, exactly like DNB. The difference is mostly labeling and where you find it. Sharper books tend to price it as a zero handicap, while more mainstream books list it as draw no bet. If you are already comfortable with the handicap markets covered in our betting overviews, draw no bet will feel familiar.
The short version: double chance is the most cautious, draw no bet sits in the middle, and a straight moneyline is the most aggressive. Pick the one that matches how much draw risk you actually want to carry.
When draw no bet is worth taking
The market earns its place when you genuinely like a team to win but cannot dismiss the draw. That comes up more than people admit in soccer, where low scoring means one deflection or one missed penalty can flip a result to level.
A few situations where draw no bet tends to make sense. First, a modest favorite in a tight matchup, where you expect them to edge it but a 1-1 is very much on the table. Second, a road team you like in a league where home draws are common. Third, cup or knockout legs where both sides may play cautiously and settle for level. In each case you want your team, but you do not want a draw to burn the ticket.
Where it makes less sense: heavy favorites and games you expect to be one-sided. If a team is priced at -300 to win, the draw is unlikely and the draw no bet price gives up too much value for protection you probably do not need. In blowout spots the moneyline or an Asian handicap covering a bigger margin usually reads better. Thinking through these matchups is the same discipline we cover in our betting education articles.
Common mistakes and the real trade-off
The biggest mistake is treating draw no bet as free insurance. It is not free. Every time you take it, you accept a shorter price, and over a long run of bets those shaved odds add up. If you reflexively slap draw no bet on everything, you are paying a premium on games where the draw was never a serious threat.
The second mistake is forgetting that the market does nothing to protect you from an outright loss. People sometimes reach for draw no bet thinking it softens a bad beat. It only softens one specific outcome, the tie. If your favorite gets upset and loses, the refund never comes.
A third and quieter mistake is ignoring the price gap between books. Draw no bet lines can vary meaningfully from one sportsbook to another, and the shorter the odds, the more a small difference eats into your edge. Line shopping is not optional here. Using a tool to compare prices across books, as we cover in our guide to line shopping apps for bettors, can be the difference between a bet worth making and one that is not.
If you take one thing from this, make it this: draw no bet is a trade, not a freebie. You give up odds to remove the draw. That trade is worth it when a tie is a real possibility and not worth it when it is not. Learn to tell those two situations apart, shop your price across books, and draw no bet becomes a steady, unglamorous part of a smart soccer betting approach rather than a crutch.
Draw no bet is not a magic market, and it is not a way to bet without risk. It is a clean, specific tool: it takes the draw off the table as a losing result and charges you a shorter price for the privilege. Used on the right games, matches where you like a team but respect the tie, it is one of the most sensible ways to bet soccer.
Used carelessly, it quietly drains value by paying for protection you never needed. The skill is knowing the difference, and that comes down to reading the matchup honestly and refusing to take a bad number.
Draw No Bet FAQ
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