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.
By Loot, NCAA Football Handicapper, Lootmeister.com. College football is a wildly popular form of sports betting that is relatively easy to understand. No human, regardless of how little they know about math, sports wagering, or college football is more than a few minutes from knowing how to read the odds in college football. Soccer betting odds help: Odds Portal offers soccer odds comparison and results from over 100 soccer leagues, cups and tournaments. You can compare 1x2 odds, asian handicap, Over / Under odds, draw no bet, double chance odds, to qualify, correct score odds, half time / full time, odd or even odds and soccer outrights betting odds. Typically, when looking at football odds, the date and time of the game will be on the left. Then, directly to the right, you will see two numbers. These numbers will be next to the name of each competing team. Those numbers are called the rotation numbers. As we have mentioned in Soccer Over/Under Bets, a lot of online sportsbooks will use decimal odds instead of American Odds, as soccer is so primarily popular in Europe, where these Decimal odds are mainly used by books and bettors. Calculation of Decimal Odds Money Lines.
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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. Barcelona 05 06 kit 09.
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.
How To Read Football Odds Sportsbook
Examples:
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Below is an example of NFL betting odds taken from an online betting site.
How To Read And Understand Soccer Odds
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.
How do you play craps video. 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 Sports Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 03/07/2008
If you want to be a sports bettor, you need to know how to read sports odds. That only makes sense. It's a really easy thing to do, but if you don't know how then it can be confusing and can cause you to make costly mistakes. If you need a refresher, here are the basics of how to read sports odds:
Money line - We'll start here because it's the more confusing. Money line betting is the most common form of betting in baseball, and is regularly used in other sports like football and basketball as well. In this kind of bet you are betting just on which team will win the game. The odds will either be presented as a negative number less than 100 (like -145, for example), or a positive number equal to or greater than 100 (like +145, for example). In almost every case, one team in a game will be assigned a negative number, and the other will be given a positive number. The one with the negative number is the favorite, and the one with the positive number is the underdog.
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Figuring out the potential payouts is straightforward. We'll start with the underdog. The positive number is the amount of profit you would earn from a bet of $100. For example, if the odds were +145, a $100 bet would earn a profit of $145, so the total payout would be $245 (profit plus the return of the original bet). The favorites just need to be looked at in the opposite way as the underdogs. The negative number is the amount you would have to bet to win $100. For example, if the odds were -145 a $145 bet would produce a profit of $100. The payout would still be $245, but the initial bet would be higher.
Point Spread - This is the most common way to bet on football and basketball. In this case you are not betting on which team will win the game, but rather how much a team will win by. Oddsmakers set a point spread for each game. That spread is, at least theoretically, the number of points by which the favorite is likely to win the game. As a bettor, your goal is to decide whether the favorite will win the game by more points than the spread or fewer, or if they will win the game at all.
This is easier to understand with an example. Let's say that Boston is playing Washington in basketball, and Boston is favored by six points. If you were to bet on Boston then they would have to win by more than six points in order for you to win the bet. If they were to win by five or fewer points then a bet on Washington would be a winner. You would also obviously lose your bet if you bet on Boston and Washington won. If the spread was six points and Boston won by exactly six points then the game would be called a push and all bets on both teams would be refunded.
Another way that this can be looked at is by adjusting the score before the game starts. If Boston was favored by six then the score at the start of the game is essentially 6-0 for Washington. That means that Boston would have to win the real game by at least seven points to cover the spread.
The cost of making a point spread bet can vary, and is set by using a money line. This is referred to as 'juice' or vigorish and is the commission charged on sports bets by the bookie. The standard price for a point spread is -110, or a bet of $110 would produce a profit of $100. That vig will vary from sports book to sports book and from game to game, so it is important to look at the spreads and prices being offered at several books to make sure that you find the best price for the bet you want to make.
