Sports Betting - Odds Explained

Now that it has been legalized in America it seems like a good time to post a beginners guide to sports betting.

Even a small bet can make watching sports a whole lot more exciting - what's even better is making a bit of extra money too!

This is the first article in the series so I'll start at the very beginning with a look at betting odds.

For the sake of simplicity I'll be using 'fractional' odds as displayed in the picture above. Odds can also be found in (or converted to) 'decimal' or 'American' format. Don't panic - I'll explain all about those in the next article!

Betting odds tell us a couple of things:

1. How much money we can win in relation to the amount we bet

2. The probability of something happening

So odds of 9/1 tell us:

1. If I bet $1 I will win $9

2. The probability of winning is 10%

You're probably asking 'how did he work that out?'

The first part (1) is fairly simple - the number on the right tells you how much you need to bet to win the number on the left.

The second part (2) is more complicated as we need to use a little bit of math. To calculate percentage probability we need to add both numbers together and then divide the number on the right by the total. Multiply that by 100 and you've got your percentage. So in this case:

9+1 = 10, 1÷10 = 0.10, 0.10x100 = 10%

It can seem a bit tricky to begin with but it gets easier quickly with a bit of practice!

Let's try another example with odds of 1/4:

1. From looking at the numbers we can see that we need to bet $4 (the number on the right) to win $1 (the number on the left)

2. To work out the probability percentage first we add the numbers together: 1+4 = 5

   Then divide the number on the right by the total: 4÷5 = 0.80

   Multiply by 100: 0.80x100 = 80%

The amount you can win changes according to how much you bet - in the first example if you were to bet $10 you would win $90, in the second example if you bet $40 you would win $10.

In the next article I'll deal with the different types of odds and after that we'll have a look at how to use that percentage probability (that we worked so hard for!) to find good bets.

If you have any questions feel free to comment below - please upvote if you found this article useful and follow @willymorgan for more sports and sports betting content.