How Do Sports Odds Work
If you want to start betting on sports or perhaps try out online sports betting, you should learn how to read and interpret the odds on sports events and use them to your advantage. With that in mind, here is a guide to everything you need to know about sports betting odds and how you can have them work to help you win big on your wagers. ‘Money Line’ and Fighter Odds Many would say that betting the money line is one of the easiest and simplest ways to bet in sports. Here’s how simple it is — you place a bet, and if you pick the winner, the sportsbook will pay you the amount owed. In boxing, money lines are simply another way to express fighter odds.
Welcome to the Sports Betting Odds section of The Sports Geek. If you are new to sports betting and don’t understand how to read betting odds (+150, -110, +2200, etc) we will lay it all out for you and help you learn how the betting odds work.
Your sportsbook may manipulate the odds to incentivize bets on a certain side, and the sum of the probabilities for a single event will always surpass 100 percent because the sportsbook takes a cut that is baked directly into the odds. Odds also reveal how much the book is charging to take your bet. Odds are engineered to attract equal action on both sides of a betting line. In a perfect world, a sportsbook receives equal betting volume on both sides of a wager then, win or lose, they’ll make 5-10% on the juice (or ‘vig’).
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Sports Betting Odds Explained
Many people don’t know how to read or calculate sports betting odds, so below we have done our best on explaining how betting odds work. The most common type of sports betting odds used in North America are the American style odds which we explain below.
American Style Sports Betting Odds
Most online sportsbooks will list their odds in what is called “American Odds”. There are a couple different versions of sports betting odds, but these American Odds are the most common odds used. Reading and understanding sports betting odds can bet a little confusing to beginners, so we have provided an example below using two NFL football teams:
American Odds
- Matchup Odds
- New England Patriots +120
- Pittsburgh Steelers -140
The number shown in the bracket represents the odds. The American Odds have two components to them, the first being the positive or negative sign, and the second being the number that follows the sign.
The sign in front of the number indicates whether placing a wager on that outcome will pay out more money then you have wagered or less money then you have wagered. If the odd is negative (-) it means that outcome is more likely to happen and placing a bet on that outcome would payout less than the amount you wagered, while a positive (+) odd shows that the outcome is less likely to happen and it would pay out more than the amount you wagered.
The next step is figuring out exactly how much the bet pays out, which is where the numbers in the odds come into play.
A listed odd with a – sign in front of it, such as the -140 in our example above, shows us how much money you would need to wager in order to win $100. So using the -140, this would show us that you would need to bet $140 in order to win $100 in profits. You can easily substitute the $100 bet for a $10 bet by moving the decimal place over one spot, showing us that you would need to wager $14 in order to win $10 in profits.
How Do Sportsbook Odds Work
Examples:
A listed odd with a + sign in front of it, such as the +120 in our example above, shows us how much money you would win on a $100 bet. Using the +120 odds, it shows us that a $100 bet on that outcome would pay out $120 in profits. Again this can easily be converted into smaller or larger size bets. 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).
The great thing about betting online is that the online sportsbooks will do the calculations for you before you place your bet. You can click on the outcome or team you would like to bet on, and then input the amount you wish to wager and it will show you your potential pay out before you confirm your bet.
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Decimal Style Sports Betting Odds
Decimal style odds are used mostly in Europe, and are pretty easy to understand. To calculate the decimal style odds all you will need to do is simply multiply the amount you wish to wager by the decimal odds shown and you will get your payout. For example it may look something like this:
If you wanted to place a $10 wager on the USA at 2.40 you would simply need to multiply your $10 wager by the 2.40 odds (10 x 2.40) to find out that the payout is $24. It is important to realize that with decimal style odds it includes the amount you wagered, so to find out profits you would need to subtract your wager ($24 – $10) to find out your potential payout is $14 in profits.
If you wanted to place a $10 wager on Brazil you would again just multiply $10 x 1.55 to find out that you would win $15.50 total or $5.50 in profits.
Decimal style betting odds are very simple to understand, but you won’t see them displayed in many North American sportsbooks. With that said, most online betting sites will allow you to chose the style of betting odds you want displayed, with American odds set as the default.
How To Read Vegas Lines
Sports emerged way back in the Ancient era. The physical excretion gained in the modern world of sports today is caused by the warfare, ritual, and entertainment that happened in the past. Most of the origins of sports came from the primitive and pastimes of the ancient days. However, some contemporary sports nowadays were only produced back in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Based on the studies, the first-ever athletics played are wrestling, boxing, human transportation, and running. As years passed, the evolution of the century’s culture and social changes changed, so does sports that developed together with humanity’s welfare and habits. Soon, hitting, kicking, throwing a ball, military activities like archery, canoeing, and hunting are added to the sports industry.
In this day, the progression in the athletic field simultaneously with the succession in science and technology. The desire and excitement that sports lovers feel when watching their favorite team player(s) perform in the court or field stay the same from ancient times up until the present. The euphoria that the crowd gives in the middle of the game as they cheer for their bet to win remains up until today.
The audience persists to be excited as they used to way back then. People’s love for athletics has brought many entrepreneurs to build their respective betting companies to gain consumers and revenues. In exchange, more and more gamblers began putting their money or possessions at stake to win for something much better than what they own.
One of the examples of successful gambling dens is the Sports Betting Kenya, Live Betting Kenya, plus the betting warrens in Singapore and China. These are the pieces of evidence that wagering is a prominent sector within the business industry.
Over many years, more people are beginning to be addicted to sports gambling. This fact alone has brought an increase within the profits gained in these establishments yearly up to $43.61 billion.
Entrepreneurs are not the only people who are getting richer in this enterprise, but as well as the expert gambler. The prosperity they attained in sports betting enticed more and more people to try it out.
Nevertheless, winning in these crapshoots is not an easy task as counting one to three. It is a challenging game of luck that one must overcome.
Being able to win will be effortless once an individual knows how to play the game.
First and foremost, the meaning and the key behind how sports betting odds work. Gain more knowledge regarding sports betting on the infographic below brought to you by Chezacash: