From the point of view of the sports book, sports in which individuals compete against each other in a race or tournament can be treated very similarly. The common element is the existence of one athlete in competition with a "field." In this regard, these contests are a lot like horse races.

Individual performance sporting events cannot be put up as "lines" in the book like the pairing of two teams in a football or baseball game. There are no teams. Also, a single competition may have many different outcomes in the sense that a competitor might beat some of the others and lose to the rest.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that sometimes there are different "rounds" in the event, like the four days of a major golf championship. A board may display the different rounds as separate propositions, together with the final and overall outcome, in much the same way as boards may have half-time propositions in a football game as well as a line on the final outcome. These propositions on quarter-finals and semi-finals are very popular for golf and tennis tournaments.

Usually the sports book will display odds for well-known or popular or favored competitors in a tournament, race or match. They might be posted as "8:5" or "12:1." The list can be fairly long, as is always the case with the Masters, for example. A line of "12:1" on a given player means that a $10 bet will pay $130 if it wins. ($120 in winnings, plus the amount of the bet). A bet of $10 at 8:5 will return $26 in payoff ($16 in winnings at 8:5, plus the $10 bet). Remember, 12:1 is the same thing as a money line of +1200, a long shot. (To convert these odds to the conventional sports book terms, divide the second number into the first and multiply by 100. If the result is under 1, take the reciprocal and multiply by -100.)

In addition to props on outright winners, there might specific match-ups between two noted competitors. In tennis these are always money lines. In golf there might also be a line with a handicap (taking into account the margin of victory), but it would be unusual. More often these matters are expressed in exotic wagers, such as "Tiger Woods comes in at 6 under par." (In golf exotics, make sure you know which side of the action you're on, and who wins if there is a tie.) The lower the score, the better the performance, so that a score that is better than -6 would win. A bet against Tiger would be that the final score would be higher, i.e., a lesser performance than -6.)

Often one of the competitors in a list of entrants in a race, tournament or match will be named "field." This is code for "everybody else." It is possible to bet on the field. If the specific performers listed might be outperformed by someone new to the circuit, for example, a bet on "field" might make sense. It is usually the bet to be made if the handicapping shows that the listed players do not cover all the likely winning combinations. (Recall the old joke that "back in my home town the girls are so ugly they held a beauty contest and nobody won." Well, that is unlikely to happen in Las Vegas, but if none of the frontrunners inspire confidence, a bet on "field" might make sense.)

With the exception of boxing matches, Las Vegas sports books do not offer lines on sports that involve subjective scoring, such as figure skating or synchronized swimming. Almost anything else is possible.

In the case of these individual performance contests, it makes sense to shop around for the best lines amongst candidate sports books. Just a couple of points added to the edge by better propositions can make a notable difference in the bankroll. This point is doubly valid for contests that are less than "mainstream" sports bar television sports. A person who specializes, say, in regattas, may be able to find good edges in one sports book where the handicapping may not be as sharp as the bettor's. Shopping around can cause a significant impact on the bottom line. To understand this in a different context, years ago, in many liquor stores on the East Coast one could often find very fine California wines at incredibly low prices. Why? Because the liquor store did not understand much about California wines. They were pricing their product based on a presumption or rule of thumb of some sort, or on the advice of a "wine expert" who also did not know the wines. Such bargains are harder to come by nowadays. In Las Vegas, this same phenomenon can happen in the setting of betting terms on the less popular sports.