BETTING ODDS EXPLAINED
FRACTIONAL ODDS
Those of you from UK or from Ireland will be most familiar with fractional betting odds.
Fractional odds display the amount of profit that you will stand to win relative to your stake
N.B. – If a selection has odds of 6/1 this means that we are saying it has a 1 in 7 chance of winning, not a 1 in 6.
The fractional odds assigned to a selection are determined by the expected chance it has of winning so if we believe something to have a 25% chance of winning it will be 3/1… meaning that it has a 1 in 4 chance of winning.
Example 1: If you be £2 at fractional odds of 5/2 then you stand to make a profit of £5 (you will also get the original stake of £2 back meaning a total return of £7).
Example 2: with fractional odds of 1/3 you will need to stake £3 in order to make a profit of £1.
Fractional Odds * Stake = Winnings
DECIMAL ODDS
Decimal odds are more commonly used outside of the UK and Ireland.
Unlike fractional odds, decimal odds are displayed in such a way that the stake multiplied by the odds is equal to the total returns.
Decimal odds are always displayed to 2 decimal places.
To decide upon the decimal odds of a selection we also have to firstly consider it’s prospective chances of winning. If again we say that it has a 25% chance of winning then we use the formula;
100/(% chance of winning) = decimal odds
in this case
100/25 = 4.00
Decimal Odds * Stake = Returns
US ODDS
Most of us Europeans aren’t too familiar with US Odds display but you may come across it from time to time so you might as well know what it all means.
There are 2 types of US Odds and you will need to understand both:
1) Positive US Odds: When the price is Evens or higher (the selection has 50% or less chance of winning).
2) Negative US Odds: When the price is lower than Evens (the selection has a greater than 50% chance of winning).
Positive US odds can be distinguished by the ‘+’ sign displayed before the number. They show the amount that you would stand to win (profit) for a 100 stake… so, as with the above example of a 25% chance of winning, the US odds in this case are +300
Negative US odds are distinguishable by the ‘-‘ sign before the odds. The number shows the amount that the punter needs to bet in order win 100… so, for example, if Liverpool have a 75% chance of winning their match then the fractional odds would be 1/3 and the decimal odds would be 1.33. The US odds would be -300.
GENIE SAYS: If you are still a little confused about betting odds then why not contact us with any of your questions.
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