What Are The Online Betting Odds?

Everyone from the consummate and versatile professional bettor down to the titillating rookie have both praised and loathed odds. The little harbingers of chance that transform betting into equal portions of skill and luck. Knowing your odds is crucial to turning a profit if you are serious about sports wagering. Odds are in a constant state of flux and they vary across bookies. Being able to pin down not only the potential yields but the probability of a winning bet comes as a prerequisite for anyone who coughs up money for betting and expects a return. If you are the recreational sort of punter, then rest assured that the knowledge may still prove interesting. Instead of navigating the strangely scribbled markets, you will look at the odd numbers with understanding and renewed appreciation. Your online betting odds could be quite the elusive little beasts, but we are here to help you tame them.

Sports Betting Odds In Layman’s Terms

What are odds and how do they differ? Sports betting being a rather singular affair, you will notice that wagering on the outcome of such events is perceived in its own way across countries. Apart from the cultural end of things, there is also regulations to account for. The convergence of all these factors have contributed to three basic types of sports betting odds today, namely moneyline/American odds, decimal odds, and fractional odds.

Later on, as you accumulate experience under your belt, you will notice that some bookies show you what your implied probability of winning is. What you will first notice about odds is that they will reveal the potential pot of winnings you can bag from a successful punt. However, most experienced bettors will also be keen on finding out about their real chances of winning. As to the odds, they all boil down to what a bookie thinks the team or player you root for has of coming out victorious. Note that these forecasts change across sportsbooks, but usually, sports betting odds across matches and tournaments do not differ as much across the top operators.

Betting Odds Explained – A Closer Look

The nitty-gritty of all online betting odds is mostly dividing and a fair lick of multiplying. Fear not, the maths is quite easy to catch, although developing a sustainable betting strategy of scale is a grueling undertaking that crushes the soul of your average enthusiast. Ladies and gentlemen, at your calculators. Time for some, as we said, soul-crushing number crunching.

American odds are just as anything American – they are quite different from what European would call normal and yet they make perfect sense. You are given two values, either negative or positive. The negative value indicates how much money needs to be wagered in order to rake in $100 in profit. Conversely, a positive value shows how much punters stand to make if they lay down $100. American odds always use 100 as their baseline.

Basically, if you see a running bet at +110 and you put down $100, you will rake up $110 in winnings, plus the originally wagered amount, leaving you with $220 as good as in the bank.

On the other hand, responding to a -110 punt simply will require you to wager $110 in order to gain $100. The total payout would be $220, which is not too shabby. Naturally, you still have to be scrupulous about your actual profit.

Fractional odds are the United Kingdom’s way to say that they are not quite American, in betting terms at least. Still, it is not unusual to see decimal odds offered by UK bookies, and what is more, as bookies expand their clout, they offer punters to change the format to that of their preferred sports betting odds. Time for some mental arithmetic right now. Fractional odds can be equated to positive and negative moneylines. Let us look at several examples:

7/1 ‘seven to one’, 5/1 ‘five to one’, and 3/1 ‘three to one’. The current representation of odds basically tells punters that for every one unit they wager, they stand to gain seven units. I.e. if you plunk down $1 (or currency equivalency) you stand to make seven units profit, leaving you on top of $8.

But toy around with fractional odds for a while, and you will quickly notice an abundance of slightly different offers. For instance, you could have 7/4, 5/3, and 3/2. Even those are not too daunting for the consummate professional you have become by now. ‘seven to four’ simply means that for every four units staked, you stand to win seven units. Not too shabby.

The last and most confusing bit with those stakes is when you come across situations where the first number is smaller than the second one, it usually indicates that the event you are wagering on has a more pronounced winner and bookies are backing up. Thus, you could get 4/7, 3/5, and 2/3, which will, as logic dictates four units profit for every seven units staked.

The Probability Of Winning

Now that we know what our winnings would be, it is time to figure out our chance of lending a profit. It is fairly easy to divine what your chances of rolling a certain number on a dice are – divide 100% by 6 and you end up with 16.66% chance of rolling whatever number you have settled for, and the same logic can be applied to odds. The latest betting odds, regardless of their type, will also readily submit to similar equation.

Fractional oddsTake a look

Fractional odds

of 7/2 will go as such. First, we need to add up 7 and 2 (9). Follow through by dividing the stake on the right, in this case 2 ÷ 9 = 0.2222, or in other words, punters stand a 22.22% chance of winning.

Decimal oddsTake a look

Decimal odds

are the easiest of sports betting odds to pin down. For instance, decimal odds of 2.2 means that for every one unit wagered you will earn 1.2 units on top of this. Simply divide 1 ÷ 2.2 yielding 45.45% chance of winning.

American oddsTake a look

With American odds,

you need to add 100 to the odds, in this case 120, and you end up with 220. Then divide the original number by the new one and you receive 31.25% chance of winning. On the off chance you were wondering why you end up with 0.3125 and not 31.25, we multiply the initial result by 100 to obtain the percentage.

Different Bookies, Different Sports Betting Odds

By scouring the crème-de-la-crème of the betting dens out there, punters successfully ferret out the most lucrative sports betting odds. After all, what an operator can list as odds is based on what they hold the likelihood of an event transpiring is. Naturally, there will be some fluctuations across sportsbooks, but the kernel of it all will remain the same. However, those seemingly negligible discrepancies will add up, and a professional bettor soon appreciates that cherry picking is not the same as nitpicking.

A good bookie would never left a punter stymied with some outlandish formatting of their odds, and for the most part punters will be mostly familiar with one type. Decimal comes to mind and justly so.

Forewarned Is Forearmed

As we draw closer to concluding our write-up, we kindly raise a minor point here. The knowledge outlined in this article is not necessarily suggesting that you ought to be cramming your own odds. Should you run into intransigent bookie that is a stickler for the one and same kind of sports betting odds, it would be nifty to know what your implied probability is. The rest of the time, you may use any of the great number of odds calculator available online. On occasion, a bookie that does not allow punters to switch the formatting of their odds will offset this by introducing an odds calculator on its website.

The Best Online Betting Odds – Do Not Slack

Identifying the best betting odds is no doddle. The good news is it stems naturally from one’s familiarity with the subject matter, meaning the more hours you spend slogging through the vast expanse of chance, the better your choices will be. Every time you set out to bet while making a conscious effort, you will develop a savvy how to dismiss certain punts and prefer some over others intuitively. It is both hard work and deeper understanding of a game that has been unjustly boiled down to a matter of luck. Have you ever wondered where the expression ‘What the odds are?’ came from? Listen hard and you will hear a bettor scribbling frantically on a piece of paper, looking for the implied probability.