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How Sports Betting
and Betting Odds Work
Sports betting is not as hard as
many people think. You simply bet money on your prediction of the
outcome of a sports event or events.
Let's take a football game
(Soccer in US) as an example. When placing a basic bet on the outcome of
the game, you have 3 options:
- Option 1: The host of the match will win the game
(This bet is marked the sign "1")
- Option 2: The game will be a draw, no one of the
teams will win (This bet is called "x")
- Option 3: The visiting team will win the game
(This bet is also known as "2")
This is the very basic bet in a
soccer game. Of course, to make it more attractive for the bettor, the
bookmakers give you the chance to bet on many other "events" that may
occur during the game, for example, who will score the first goal, how
many goals will be scored in the game, etc.
Betting Odds
Betting odds are set by the
bookmaker, for each individual game, in advance. It simply means how
much you will win for every currency unit you bet. For example, if the
odds in a football game are "1.30" for the host team to win, this means
that for every 1 pound you bet on that outcome, you will get 1.30 pounds
back, if your prediction is correct. If you bet
£10 on the visitor team, and the betting odds for the visiting team are
3.2, if that team wins, you will get £32.
Difference between British
odds (Traditional odds) and European odds (Continental odds)
In the UK you will see fractions
used for odds, fore example, 2/1 (two-to-one), instead of 3.00 - this
means that for every 1 pound you wager, you will get back £2. These type
of odds are most common in the UK. However, most of the online
sportsbooks use the decimal system (European odds) by default as it
makes it easier for the average bettor to multiply his or her bet using
the decimal system, and almost all of the online bookmakers offer the
option to switch the way you'd like to view your betting odds.
See actual
sports
betting odds at work.
Difference between betting
lines and betting odds
Betting odds in the US sports
betting are called "lines". If there is a "+" sign before the number,
the number after it represents how much you will win if you bet $100. If
there is a "-" sign, the number represents how much you have to bet to
win $100. For example,
- "+200" means that if you bet $100, your total win
would be $300 (equivalent to "2/1" or "3.00").
- "-200" means that you have to bet $200 to win
$100 (equivalent to "1/2" or "1.50").
Straight wager and
Parlay
On many online betting websites
you may see the option to place "straight wager" or "parlay". When you
place a straight wager, you bet on the outcome only on a single game.
When if you place a parlay, you bet on the outcome of 2 or more games,
and you have to guess right the outcome of every single game in the
parlay, in order to win the bet. But the odds for games multiply by each
other, and then by the bet.
For example, if you place a parlay bet
of £10 on 3 football games, and the odds you have bet on are:
1.50 for game One, 2.00 for game Two, and 1.65 for game Three, and you
have gotten all three games right, your winnings will be calculated as
(1.50*2.00*1.65)*£10 = £49.50
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