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.
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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.
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. NFL spread betting is probably the most common and popular way to bet on football as it adds some excitement and better odds from just picking an outright winner. If you are new to betting the NFL altogether, be sure to check out our great How to Bet on the NFL guide. Here is an example of a point spread for an NFL game and how it would look.
Understanding Odds 1. Know that odds tell you the likelihood of an outcome. Odds represent which team, horse, or athlete has the highest. Read sporting odds as the likelihood that one team, athlete, or horse, will win. The most common use of odds is found. Remember that lower odds return a. Odds Shark's Moneyline Betting Guide will explain the wide variety of moneyline bets that can be made, why and how sportsbooks display the odds and how the moneyline differs from other betting options like point spreads or totals.
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.
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.
Ready To Start Betting?MyBookie and BetNow are my two favorite sportsbooks and make betting very easy. You will also get a Free Money Bonus at each sportsbook if you follow either link above.
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.
The evolution of exchange betting has revolutionised market-making to such a degree that even the biggest bookmaker names no longer employ professional odds setters.
How did odds making start?
As touched on in our Brief History of Betting blog, the concept of calculating the likely chance of a winner in a horse race, and converting that into bookmaker odds, was devised by one Harry Ogden.
Operating on Newmarket Heath towards the end of the 18th century, Ogden was the first bookmaker to take betting beyond its strikingly crude roots. Most early bets were simply a way of settling an argument over whether a named event would come to pass or not.
Not only did Ogden begin the process of making a book, he also understood that he had to save a percentage of his takings for his own purse. In order to achieve this, he slightly adjusted prices in his favour. It worked: if somebody won a bet and got paid out at odds of 4/1 they were unlikely to complain, especially at this early stage, that they had not been paid at the true probability of 5/1.
So already, within Ogden's lifetime we witnessed the evolution of a book featuring a range of prices as well as the concept of what is now known as an 'overround'.
What is an overround book?
A perfect book, without factoring in a margin for the bookie, would mean the implied probability of all outcomes would add up to 100%. However, bookies use the concept of overround to stretch this probability greater than 100% – which then becomes their profit.
Here's an overround example from a tennis match:
Now, have you ever considered why bookmakers like to encourage accumulators in sports like football where punters enjoy backing multiple selections in a single bet?
Well it's simple: if a bookmaker has an overround of 105% on each of five football matches, a punter placing a bet in all five of those matches is betting against an overround 125% because the extra 5% is factored in each time.
The growth of betting and odds compiling
By the 1950s the big firms that covered the length and breadth of the country betting on horses and greyhounds were already employing odds-makers to help them compile what was known as the 'tissue' for each race.
This was effectively the first show of prices. Bookmakers would certainly collude to some degree to check their assessments of the market were not wildly out of place but by and large they were happy to trust their instincts.
The prices were not static: they moved to respond to market forces after the first show was published on the boards.
What did a bookie do if he felt liabilities were in danger of getting too big on a particular horse? All he had to do was rub off the displayed price on his chalkboard and put up a less attractive price. He might then balance his book by pushing out the prices of less fancied runners.
The advent of legal betting shops
The golden age of betting was triggered by the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act – a watershed development that allowed betting on racing and greyhounds to take place in licensed shops around the country.
For the first time, punters did not need to be physically at a racecourse or dog track to legally place a bet. There was still an incentive for big-time punters to go racing because if they were betting in shops they had to pay tax.
But bookmakers small and large had to be on the lookout to protect themselves against betting coups in what was now 'open season' for big-stakes punters. If, for example, a group of individuals could target multiple betting shops at the same time soon before the start of a race it was hard in the pre-internet age to ensure the price was cut in time.
The Yellow Sam plot of 1975 was a perfect illustration of how a meticulously organised plot could evade the best attempts of the bookies to minimise their exposure.
The 1990s: Multiple sports, multiple platforms
When restrictions were lifted on football betting to unlock a wide range of markets on individual matches, horse racing's dominance as a sports betting medium was challenged for the first time.
At the same time, firms were opening more and more shops, allowing telephone and online accounts while accessing more and more global television feeds.
This was the decade in which odds-compilers really earned their corn for bookies like Coral, Ladbrokes and William Hill – traditional names with presence on the high-street, at the courses and, bit by bit, on rudimentary web browsers too. Td sportsbook games.
Sports traders and palps
If, for example, you were a graduate with a good degree in maths or economics and you also followed rugby union religiously you could be hired specifically to draw up rugby union markets for one of the big operators.
With so much sport to bet on, and so many new avenues from which to glean useful information, this was also the time that 'palps' (bookie slang for palpable errors) were at their most prevalent.
Shrewd punters could sometimes find out if an obscure tennis match or an overseas domestic football game had been rescheduled to an earlier time slot. If the bookies were unaware they could find themselves accepting a bet on an event that had already happened.
How exchanges changed the landscape
The arrival of Betfair into an increasingly cluttered market in 2000 proved a positive intervention in a number of ways, even if some small on-course bookmakers to this day rue the dawn of exchange betting.
Betfair had a huge USP: it was allowing markets to be set by individuals trading on its platforms hours and sometimes days in advance. The prices were not set by individual odds-makers using personal assessment.
Over the intervening 20 years, the exchanges have had their ups and downs but for bookmakers they provide two major positives which serve as some sort of compensation for draining them of the business they once did.
Firstly, by using the wisdom of the crowd, exchanges establish robust markets relatively quickly meaning betting companies no longer need to invest so heavily in their own odds-makers. Poker card hands.
Secondly, the exchanges provide an easy mechanism for bookmakers to lay off worrying liabilities and can even provide early warning of a potential betting coup attempt.
What is BetConnect's role in the market?
BetConnect is a hybrid solution that combines many of the strengths of the Betfair model – it is, after all, a peer-to-peer exchange – alongside the reassurance of big bets being matched without restrictions.
Available prices quoted are based on real-time markets provided by a wide range of online bookmakers. The platform gives bettors reassurance that they are getting the best bookie prices while layers know where to head for matched betting opportunities.
BetConnect's single biggest advantage is its ability to fuse three disparate groups of individuals:
Explain Betting Odds Football
- Professional punters who have grown frustrated by restrictions imposed on them by the bookies
- Recreational players who enjoy backing and laying selections
- The growing community of matched betting enthusiasts
If you think you're ready to bet on horse racing or any other sport then sign up for a BetConnect account now. BetConnect is the only exchange that lets you back selections at bookie odds with no restrictions, and lay the selections of other account-holders commission-free. Not sure how it works? Read this simple guide.
Explain Betting Odds Football
related
A brief history of betting: From the first bookmaker to the online revolution
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.
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.
Ready To Start Betting?MyBookie and BetNow are my two favorite sportsbooks and make betting very easy. You will also get a Free Money Bonus at each sportsbook if you follow either link above.
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.
The evolution of exchange betting has revolutionised market-making to such a degree that even the biggest bookmaker names no longer employ professional odds setters.
How did odds making start?
As touched on in our Brief History of Betting blog, the concept of calculating the likely chance of a winner in a horse race, and converting that into bookmaker odds, was devised by one Harry Ogden.
Operating on Newmarket Heath towards the end of the 18th century, Ogden was the first bookmaker to take betting beyond its strikingly crude roots. Most early bets were simply a way of settling an argument over whether a named event would come to pass or not.
Not only did Ogden begin the process of making a book, he also understood that he had to save a percentage of his takings for his own purse. In order to achieve this, he slightly adjusted prices in his favour. It worked: if somebody won a bet and got paid out at odds of 4/1 they were unlikely to complain, especially at this early stage, that they had not been paid at the true probability of 5/1.
So already, within Ogden's lifetime we witnessed the evolution of a book featuring a range of prices as well as the concept of what is now known as an 'overround'.
What is an overround book?
A perfect book, without factoring in a margin for the bookie, would mean the implied probability of all outcomes would add up to 100%. However, bookies use the concept of overround to stretch this probability greater than 100% – which then becomes their profit.
Here's an overround example from a tennis match:
Now, have you ever considered why bookmakers like to encourage accumulators in sports like football where punters enjoy backing multiple selections in a single bet?
Well it's simple: if a bookmaker has an overround of 105% on each of five football matches, a punter placing a bet in all five of those matches is betting against an overround 125% because the extra 5% is factored in each time.
The growth of betting and odds compiling
By the 1950s the big firms that covered the length and breadth of the country betting on horses and greyhounds were already employing odds-makers to help them compile what was known as the 'tissue' for each race.
This was effectively the first show of prices. Bookmakers would certainly collude to some degree to check their assessments of the market were not wildly out of place but by and large they were happy to trust their instincts.
The prices were not static: they moved to respond to market forces after the first show was published on the boards.
What did a bookie do if he felt liabilities were in danger of getting too big on a particular horse? All he had to do was rub off the displayed price on his chalkboard and put up a less attractive price. He might then balance his book by pushing out the prices of less fancied runners.
The advent of legal betting shops
The golden age of betting was triggered by the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act – a watershed development that allowed betting on racing and greyhounds to take place in licensed shops around the country.
For the first time, punters did not need to be physically at a racecourse or dog track to legally place a bet. There was still an incentive for big-time punters to go racing because if they were betting in shops they had to pay tax.
But bookmakers small and large had to be on the lookout to protect themselves against betting coups in what was now 'open season' for big-stakes punters. If, for example, a group of individuals could target multiple betting shops at the same time soon before the start of a race it was hard in the pre-internet age to ensure the price was cut in time.
The Yellow Sam plot of 1975 was a perfect illustration of how a meticulously organised plot could evade the best attempts of the bookies to minimise their exposure.
The 1990s: Multiple sports, multiple platforms
When restrictions were lifted on football betting to unlock a wide range of markets on individual matches, horse racing's dominance as a sports betting medium was challenged for the first time.
At the same time, firms were opening more and more shops, allowing telephone and online accounts while accessing more and more global television feeds.
This was the decade in which odds-compilers really earned their corn for bookies like Coral, Ladbrokes and William Hill – traditional names with presence on the high-street, at the courses and, bit by bit, on rudimentary web browsers too. Td sportsbook games.
Sports traders and palps
If, for example, you were a graduate with a good degree in maths or economics and you also followed rugby union religiously you could be hired specifically to draw up rugby union markets for one of the big operators.
With so much sport to bet on, and so many new avenues from which to glean useful information, this was also the time that 'palps' (bookie slang for palpable errors) were at their most prevalent.
Shrewd punters could sometimes find out if an obscure tennis match or an overseas domestic football game had been rescheduled to an earlier time slot. If the bookies were unaware they could find themselves accepting a bet on an event that had already happened.
How exchanges changed the landscape
The arrival of Betfair into an increasingly cluttered market in 2000 proved a positive intervention in a number of ways, even if some small on-course bookmakers to this day rue the dawn of exchange betting.
Betfair had a huge USP: it was allowing markets to be set by individuals trading on its platforms hours and sometimes days in advance. The prices were not set by individual odds-makers using personal assessment.
Over the intervening 20 years, the exchanges have had their ups and downs but for bookmakers they provide two major positives which serve as some sort of compensation for draining them of the business they once did.
Firstly, by using the wisdom of the crowd, exchanges establish robust markets relatively quickly meaning betting companies no longer need to invest so heavily in their own odds-makers. Poker card hands.
Secondly, the exchanges provide an easy mechanism for bookmakers to lay off worrying liabilities and can even provide early warning of a potential betting coup attempt.
What is BetConnect's role in the market?
BetConnect is a hybrid solution that combines many of the strengths of the Betfair model – it is, after all, a peer-to-peer exchange – alongside the reassurance of big bets being matched without restrictions.
Available prices quoted are based on real-time markets provided by a wide range of online bookmakers. The platform gives bettors reassurance that they are getting the best bookie prices while layers know where to head for matched betting opportunities.
BetConnect's single biggest advantage is its ability to fuse three disparate groups of individuals:
Explain Betting Odds Football
- Professional punters who have grown frustrated by restrictions imposed on them by the bookies
- Recreational players who enjoy backing and laying selections
- The growing community of matched betting enthusiasts
If you think you're ready to bet on horse racing or any other sport then sign up for a BetConnect account now. BetConnect is the only exchange that lets you back selections at bookie odds with no restrictions, and lay the selections of other account-holders commission-free. Not sure how it works? Read this simple guide.