Sports Betting Odds Explained
There is no point spread, but a favorite and underdog is still determined by the sports books and indicated by two separate odds. Example: Dallas -150. San Antonio +135. In the above example, Dallas is favored to win over San Antonio. The numbers provided are odds that the sports books determine before the game. Sports betting odds explained - this video explains how betting odds work and how to read sports betting odds. These fundamentals lay the foundations for eve. A $10 bet on +120 odds would pay out $12 in profits. Examples: Below is an example of NFL betting odds taken from an online betting site. In this example you can see Los Angeles is listed at +130 ($100 bet pays $130 plus of course your original wager back) and New England is listed at -150 ($150 bet pays $100).
Sports Betting Odds Explained
How Betting Odds Work
If you don’t understand how to read odds, you’ll struggle trying to place bets on sports. Because a few different ways of expressing odds exist, it’s important for novice sports bettors to have some understanding of how betting odds work, what they mean, and how they are used when placing wagers on sporting events.
Once you’ve selected an online sportsbook to do your sports gambling, you’ll want to make sure that you can read their odds; the big-name books will offer odds in multiple versions, but you shouldn’t count on that. Instead, learn the three most common forms of sports betting odds, and you’ll be able to place a smart bet no matter what format a game’s odds are represented by. Because sports bettors often wager on sports around the world, it makes sense to understand the various ways books represent odds – betting odds on American football games will probably look very different from UK odds on soccer matches. To avoid placing an incorrect bet or running into a set of odds that you can’t read, learn the most common representations of wagering odds and make sure you know what they mean.
What Are Sports Bettting Odds?
Odds on a sports betting site are nothing more than a way for a sportsbook to represent the chance of winning a sports bettor has when placing a certain wager. The three most common sports betting odds are as follows:
American Odds (represented by a plus/minus symbol and a number, such as +110)
Fractional Odds (most common in the UK, represented by a fraction such as 12/5)
Decimal Odds (most commonly found in Europe outside of the UK, represented by a number with a few decimal places, such as 3.40)
Each of these sports betting odds formats give a different interpretation of the likelihood of a wager’s success. It’s important to understand all three of the above odds formats, even though most of the world’s bigger online books have calculators and other features that help you convert any sports betting odds, whether it’s American, Fractional, or Decimal, to a format that you’re more familiar with. You never know when you may not have a conversion tool handy, and an educated sports bettor is usually a more successful one.
American Odds
Judging by the name alone, it’s easy to guess that American Odds are most popular with sportsbooks whose client base is made up mostly of Americans. This type of sports betting odds can be a bit confusing to novice bettors, since the numbers work differently for the favorite and the underdog. American Odds are sometimes called the money line or money line odds.
If you want to wager on a favorite, American odds tell you exactly how much cash you have to wager in order to win $100. These $100 units make it easy to scale your wagers up or down, whether you want to lay down $10 or $10,000. Let’s say an American Odds site lists the favorite at “-110,” that means in order to win $100 a sports bettor has to wager $110. Let’s say you’re gambling on the NFL and you want to wager on the favorite. If the book lists them at -110 to win, you’d have to lay down $110 in order to win an extra $100. If the team wins, you get your original $110 wager back, meaning your total take is $210.
If you’re planning to bet on an underdog, American odds tell you how much you will win if you wager $100. Let’s say the underdog in the same NFL game mentioned above is listed as +240, wagering $100 on that ‘dog will earn you an extra $240. Should the underdog pull off the upset, you’d get your $100 wager back plus an additional $240, for a total of $340.
Fractional Odds
Most popular in the UK, Fractional Odds are also common in horse racing around the world. Other names for Fractional Odds include British Odds, UK Odds, and Traditional Odds.
A set of Fractional Odds tells the gambler the net total they will earn, relative to their stake. For example, Fractional Odds of 5/1 tell you that you can earn $100 on a bet of $20 – multiply your stake of $20 by the 5 in the top portion of the fraction and you get the $100 payout. If you’re betting on a heavy favorite, the odds may be upside-down, such as 1/5. In that case, a gambler who places a $20 bet would earn just $4, or 1/5th of their original wager. Gamblers that play by Fractional Odds also earn back their original stakes, so that a winning wager of $20 at 5/1 will actually earn the gambler $120, or $100 for the win plus the return of their original $20 wager.
Decimal Odds
The most difficult odds to read for gamblers used to American or Fractional Odds are Decimal Odds, mostly common in parts of Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and Asia. But if bettors would spend just a little time with this type of odds, they’d find them among the easiest to read in the world of sports gambling. In fact, Decimal Odds are so simple to understand that the majority of the world’s big-name sportsbooks offer gamblers the option of reading any sporting event’s odds in decimal format.
Decimal Odds are different from fractional ones in one important way – bettors read decimal odds to work out how much they’ll win if their bet comes through. Decimal Odds are really just the decimal value of a bet’s fractional odds plus one. Still confused?
The reason Decimal Odds are popular the world over is that they don’t require the bettor to calculate their return or worry about wagering in multiples of $100. To work out your win based on Decimal Odds, just multiply how much you wager by the Decimal Odds given by the book and you know how much money you stand to earn if your bet pays off.
Here’s an example: if the decimal odds at your sportsbook for a given sporting event are 2.00, it’s simple to work out how much you’ll win. Just multiply your bet by 2.0 and you know how much you stand to win. If a gambler lays down $100 on this bet, they stand to earn $200 if they back the right horse, team, or athlete.
The good news for online sports bettors is that most of the world’s popular online sportsbooks allow punters to view odds in any format they want. Still, learning the basics of America, Fractional, and Decimal Odds will prepare you to wager on any sort of contest, no matter where it takes place or how your sportsbook chooses to represent it.
Sports Betting Odds and Lines Explained
by Doc's Sports - 2/28/2012
Are you new to the online gaming world? There’s a big event that might draw your betting interest nearly every month of the year. Perhaps you are looking to put down some action on the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup Finals. Perhaps one of the Grand Slam events for golf or tennis. Or any of numerous horse races. Or the Olympics! Maybe you just want to be well-versed in sports betting 101 to understand what your significant other, friends or family are talking about while watching sports. Here is everything you need to know with sports betting odds and lines explained.
The simplest and most common type of gambling is on the point spread – that’s the amount one team is favored to beat the other club. Now, one thing to be aware of is that oddsmakers aren’t necessarily predicting the outcome of an event but are putting up a line that will draw the most action from bettors, preferably on both sides.
A point spread is used in the NFL and college football, the NBA and college basketball among the major American sports. If you see a line at a site that has the Chicago Bears -7.5 vs. Pittsburgh Steelers that means the Bears are favored to win by 7.5 points over the underdog Steelers.
Of course, there is no such thing as a half point in football or basketball. However, the sportsbooks use half points at times to ensure there is no ‘push’ – which means a tie and neither the sportsbook nor the bettor wins (all money is returned). So if you were to bet on that Bears-Steelers example, Pittsburgh essentially starts the game with a 7.5-point lead. If you wanted to win money on the Bears, Chicago would have to win by no less than eight points. If you wanted to win money on Pittsburgh, the Steelers would simply have to not lose by more than 7.5 points. So a 21-14 final score in favor of Chicago would be a win for Steelers bettors but not for Bears bettors. Any Pittsburgh victory obviously would be a win for anyone who bet the Steelers. There is also a point spread called a ‘pick’em’ – which means there is no favorite or underdog. All you have to do is pick the winner regardless of score.
Vegas Odds Explained
There is also what is called a total. This is posted for every major American team sport. In football and basketball, the total is the combined amount of points the teams score in a game. You would either bet ‘under’ or ‘over’ that total. If the combined final score lands right on the number, then it’s a tie and all money is returned. In baseball, the total is usually between 6-10 runs scored combined by both teams in a game. In hockey, the total is usually between 5-6 total goals scored combined between two teams.
Often the over and under are both the same in terms of one or the other being a favorite. But there are times when either the over or under is favored over the other. This is when a moneyline comes into play. A moneyline is based on units of $100. It can also be used as a different way to bet on a winner or loser. In that Bears-Steelers example, Chicago could be listed at -150 on the moneyline and Pittsburgh at +200. That means you would have to bet $150 to win $100 on Chicago. But for that same $100, you would win $200 on the Steelers (in both cases minus what the book’s fee, or vigorish, is for accepting the bet).
Football and basketball often have both pointspreads and moneylines. You have the choice of betting either one or both. Betting on the moneylines to determine a winner are used prominently in hockey and baseball because usually these are low-scoring games where the winning team only wins by a run or goal – thus you won’t see pointspreads in those sports. But there are options in hockey and baseball to use either the puck line or run line. The Detroit Red Wings might be -1.5 goals against the Montreal Canadiens on the puck line – so Montreal starts the game from a betting perspective with a 1.5-goal lead. In baseball’s run line, the option is usually 1.5 runs to separate the teams.
Finally, fractional odds also are used in some American sports. Golf and horse racing are two prime examples. These odds are the net total that will be paid out to the bettor, should they win, relative to what they bet. It’s again best to think in terms of $100 units. So if a horse is the 3/1 favorite to win the Kentucky Derby, for example, or a golfer 3/1 to win the Masters, from a moneyline conversion perspective that would be +300. Thus, you would win $300 for every $100 wagered on the horse/golfer. If the horse/golfer is the 1/2 favorite, that means it’s -200 on the moneyline. Thus, you would have to bet $200 to win $100.
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