How to read betting odds
Betting odds tell you two things: what a bet pays, and how likely the book thinks it is. Every line on the board is one of three bets, and every price is written in one of three formats. Learn those and you can read any book in the world.
A line, read left to right
Here is one game the way most American books show it.
| Team | Spread | Moneyline | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Underdog | +6.5 (-110) | +230 | O 44.5 (-110) |
| Favorite | -6.5 (-110) | -280 | U 44.5 (-110) |
That is three separate bets on one game.
- The spread. The favorite is -6.5, which means it has to win by 7 or more. The underdog is +6.5, so it can lose by 6 or fewer, or win, and the bet cashes. More on the spreads page.
- The moneyline. A bet on who wins, with no points involved. The price makes up the difference between the teams.
- The total. A bet on the combined score of both teams, over or under 44.5.
The numbers in brackets are prices. When a book shows no price beside a spread or a total, it is usually -110, and I'd still read the price every time, because a spread at -120 costs more than the same spread at -110.
The plus and the minus
American odds are built around $100. People call them Vegas odds, and they are what you will see in any book in the United States. A minus is what you risk to win $100, so at -280 you put up $280 to win $100 and at -110 you put up $110. A plus is what you win when you risk $100: at +230 a $100 bet wins $230.
You don't have to bet $100. The price is a ratio and it works at any stake, so $28 wins $10 at -280 and $10 wins $23 at +230. When a bet wins, the stake comes back with the winnings.
On the moneyline the minus marks the favorite and the plus marks the underdog. On a spread, the minus and the plus in front of the points do that job, and the price in brackets is only the cost.
Same price, three accents
Books outside the United States use two other formats. They say the same thing in a different order.
| American | Decimal | Fractional | A $100 bet wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| -280 | 1.36 | 5/14 | $35.71 |
| -110 | 1.91 | 10/11 | $90.91 |
| +100 | 2.00 | 1/1 (evens) | $100.00 |
| +150 | 2.50 | 3/2 | $150.00 |
| +230 | 3.30 | 23/10 | $230.00 |
Decimal is the total that comes back for every $1 staked, your stake included. At 2.50 a $100 bet returns $250, of which $150 is winnings, and anything under 2.00 is a minus price in American terms. Fractional is winnings over stake: at 3/2 you win $3 for every $2 you risk. It is the traditional format in Britain and at the racetrack.
Most books let you switch the display in the settings. I'd use whichever you read fastest. The bet is the same.
The percentage inside every price
Every price is a percentage in disguise: the share of the time the bet has to win for you to break even. At -280 the favorite has to win 73.7 percent of the time. At +230 the underdog has to win 30.3 percent of the time.
Those two add up to 104, and a game only has 100 percent to hand out. The extra 4 is the book's cut, the vig. It is on every line you will ever read (the book never forgets it), and the size of it changes from bet to bet and from book to book, which is why I'd compare the same game at two books before betting it. Once you can read a line you will see they are often different, and the better number costs you nothing.
The method for turning a price into a percentage is on the implied probability page. It is the most useful sum in betting, and it takes about ten seconds.
Reading the board, not the team
New bettors read the team names and glance at the numbers. People who do this for a living read the numbers and barely care about the names, and I was always more comfortable writing bets for the first kind.
The questions are always the same: what do I risk, what do I win, and how often does this have to come in. If you can't answer all three from the line in front of you, you are not ready to bet it. Work out what you stand to win before you confirm the bet, not after.
And decide what you can afford to lose before you open the board. The odds tell you what a bet pays. They can't tell you what you can spare.