Sports Bet: Understanding Odds

If you place sports bets in order to win- and I bet you do- then you are probably anxious to booster your odds of winning to a maximum. After all, if there exists only one aspect that dethrones all the others on the list of importance when it comes to sports betting, it has to be the odds.

What are fair odds?
Take your time before placing any kind of sports bet, it is very important that you have a good understanding of how sporting odds are established and how they work.

A defining moment in sporting odds:
The definition of odds in regards to sports betting, casino games (roulette, blackjack, slot machines, craps, video poker...) or other pastimes that occasion gambling with money, is the probability that something in particular will happen, whether that is the result of a football match, or the number of goals scored or any other kind of result. Odds are always presented in numerical form like, ten to one, and written 10:1. For example, the probability that a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 will be rolled on a dice is six to one or 6:1 each time it is rolled.

Can you trust the bookies?
Bookmakers get their commission by taking a small portion of the money a punter wagers. Thus, they are less likely to be affected by the results of a sporting match; therefore they are more trustworthy than they would otherwise be if their commission was structured on a percentage of the overall winnings once the odds had been calculated.

The odds given to a team or an athlete are determined in terms of favourite, this means that the team who is expected to win is considered a greater risk for the bookmakers than is the team who is expected to lose, and the odds will reflect the potential risk. Bookmakers generally propose two types of bet for the winning team.

1. Moneyline or Straight up.
2. Bet point spread.

The price of the Moneylines are used to fix the odds in sports betting on sports such as American football, football, baseball and hockey, as well as matches between people such as boxing. European and Asian bookmakers mostly use the straight-up odds technique for those sports whose odds are determined according to the chance of winning on a single bet, for example, a 2:1 favourite will be classed at a price of £2 whereas the underdog will have double the sum bet and will be classed at £4. In sports such as basketball or American football, the point spread is used in place of the more fluid type of odds calculation, which can be considerable in the case of unequal matches between teams, i.e. the best team in the world and the worst team.

A typical point spread bet demands of the gambler that they must place $110 in order to win $100 (the extra $10 represents the commission given to the bookmaker if the gambler loses).

However, the odds a gambler is given on the favourite will only be collected if the team wins by a certain number of points or more, also known as "covering the spread". The points spreads are determined at the time when the bet is being placed.

The gamblers who bet on the underdog can win even if there team loses their match. In this case, they must lose by a higher amount of points than the bookmaker accounted for in the odds.

American football and sports bet odds:
Taking the example of an American football match between Chicago and Denver, if Chicago is the odds on favourite at 26 points (classified as Chicago -26, or Denver +26), and Chicago wins by more than 26 points of separation, it will cover the spread and those people who bet on Chicago will get $100 for every $110 bet they placed. Those people who bet on Denver will lose their $110. If Denver wins against Chicago, the people who bet on Denver will win $100 for every $110 they wagered, and the Chicago betters will lose their money. If Denver loses by more than 26 points of separation, they will win against the spread and the gamblers on both sides will be treated as if Denver won the match. A victory by Chicago by exactly 26 points signifies that the bet is considered as a "push", none of the gamblers will win and the money will be returned to them in total.

With the advent of internet gambling, gambling websites have proposed sporting bets online, comparable with the amount the bookmakers charge in comparison to the each other. These internet sites have rapidly and fundamentally changed the world of sports bet and they offer vital statistics that are essential to amateur and professional sports gamblers wishing to place bets with the best possible odds. It is now easy for gamblers to research and shop around in an attempt to play one bookmaker off against the other and to end up with really decent odds.