Thus, common sense will tell you that Cleveland is more likely to win this particular matchup given those two financial scenarios where one has a negative number and the other a positive one. In the highlighted example, you would need to stake $250 in order to win $100 on Cleveland, whereas, a $100 stake would win you $190 at the prevailing odds on Tennessee. Typically, you will notice a three-digit negative or positive number, as below:Ī negative number tells you how much you will need to stake in order to win $100 a positive number indicates how much you will win if you stake $100. sports bettors, these will likely be the most familiar.

They can be referred to as odds formats, and the most popular formats are explained as follows: How do betting odds work?įor those of us that are U.S. We’ll return to the process of deriving probability from odds later in the guide, but just as there are many languages around the world with which you can communicate the same thing, so there are several ways of communicating probability. The bookmaker has an opinion on all those events and he has turned that opinion into some odds.

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The odds you observe on a sports betting website are the bookmaker’s answer to questions like: Of course, we cannot know with complete certainty whether something in sport will happen or not, but with probability, we can provide a meaningful numerical value to things that we don’t know for certain. 👉 Odds are a representation of the probability that an event will occur. This sports betting guide will help you understand why odds look like they do and what they mean. If you are new to sports betting, all the numbers and odds figures can be a little confusing.

Understanding sports betting odds