An Asian handicap removes the draw by giving one team a head start. That is the whole mechanism. The complication is entirely in the quarter balls.
On a -1 line, the favourite must win by two or more to pay. Win by exactly one and the stake is refunded (a push). On a -0.5 line there is no push: the favourite must win, full stop.
A -0.75 line is not a line at all — it is two bets of half your stake, on -0.5 and on -1.0. Win by one goal and half the stake wins, half is refunded. That refund is why quarter lines look like they pay "half" a result.
-0.75 = half on -0.5 + half on -1.0You will usually see the line and a water level beside it. Water is a payout multiplier, not a price: water 0.90 means stake 1, win 0.90.
decimal odds = 1 + water → water 0.90 = odds 1.90Two books can post the same line at different water, and the pair of waters on the two sides tells you which way the money is leaning.
The line is the market's summary of the gap between the teams. A -1 line means the market thinks the match is roughly a one-goal game. If you think it is a two-goal game, the bet is the line — not the price. Those are two different arguments, and conflating them is the most common mistake in handicap analysis.