If you’re new to betting, it’s important to know how the odds work before you bet and this is a guide for you explaining how betting odds work!
To summarise, betting odds are a numerical representation of how likely the betting event is likely to occur. If you were to roll a dice the chance of getting the number correct is 16.67% which is 100 divided by 6 equalling to 16.6666666667 which translates to a coefficient of 6/1, or 7.0 if you remove the bookies margin and same can apply in flipping a coin in which you have 50% chance of winning.
Odds can tell you how much money you will win if the bet came through if you were to bet on a team who were offered at the odds of 5/1 in sport and you bet a £1 and your teams win, you’d receive £5, plus your stake back for a total of £6.
Although it may be confusing for starters, you still do need to learn how betting odds work if you want to make it in the betting world and there are 3 types of betting odds them being: decimal, fractional and U.S style.
Decimal Odds
Decimal odds are becoming very popular among the bookies. They are mostly used in Europe and Asia and its odds that use a decimal point rather than a fractional format.
4/1 betting odds would result to 5.00 when it comes to decimal odds and to get this number you take the percentage of winning which is 20% for these odds and see how many times it goes into a 100 in which case is 5 here.
To figure out how much you’ll win with decimal odds, you have to multiply the odds by your stake so for example if your odds are 5.00 and you make a stake of £20, you would do 20x5 and then subtract 20 making your total winnings of £80.
Fractional Odds
Fractional odds used to be the most used odds globally in the past. They still are the most common used odds in the UK.
When you see the odds of 4/1, these are how the fractional odds look meaning you have a 1 in 4 chance of winning, or 20% chance otherwise can be looked at as 80% chance of losing. The winner would get paid £4 after every pound waged.
Same goes for 19/1 odds, you’ll win £19 after every pound wagered, but you’d also have only 5% chance of winning.
American Style Odds
In the USA, the betting odds are expressed with a plus/minus sign. The plus sign would indicate the underdog, while the minus sign would indicate the favourite so for example someone offered at +300 to win they’d be the underdog, while the favourites would be something like -150.
If you wanted to win $100 then you’d have to bet $150 in order to win that amount if your pick was to be with the odds of -150. If you bet the £150 on the underdogs then your winnings would be £250 (£150 stake and £100 winnings). If you were to bet £100 on the underdog with +300 odds then your total winnings would be £400 (£100 stake + £300 winnings).
If you are still having problems understanding the difference between Decimal, Fraction and American Odds then we recommend you to use Odds Converter.
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