Sports Betting Explained
It’s great to have a helping hand when you want to work out your bets. It shows you how much you could win from a wide variety of bets – and will save you time when planning your wagers. Indeed, with our betting odds calculator, you can remove some of the complicated math. Making a profit in gambling involves predicting the relationship of the true probabilities to the payout odds. Sports information services are often used by professional and semi-professional sports bettors to help achieve this goal.
A forecast wager is a bet on two or more selections to finish in a particular order. For example, a Forecast wager on the US Open Golf tournament would be if you select Rory McIlroy to win, Tiger Woods to come second and Dustin Johnson to finish third. The Cash Out feature gives you the opportunity to cash out a bet before the outcome is decided, allowing you to secure part of your winnings or to cut your losses. Again, the -160 shows the Yankees are the favorite and the requirement of risking $160 for every $100 of profit.
Thankfully we have websites such as OddsHunter and OddAlerts available to us. The former offering football odds comparison with the later an in-play football alerts service. So now we understand the two most common ways of expressing odds let’s look at how odds are calculated and what they mean. Going back to the previous example, a $10 bet at 3/1 odds would represent $30 in profit. Return does not take into account your original bet amount.
Know that positive odds indicate how much profit you win per $100 spent. So when you bet $100 on the Seahawks, who are valued at +135, then you make $235 if they win.If you bet $200, you will make twice as much profit. To calculate how much profit you make per dollar spent, divide the amount you are going to spend by 100.
It’s also worth mentioning that the home team usually gets an imaginary spread of three points. If a home team is favored by (-2.5), the oddsmakers are telling you that the road team is the superior team. You should keep a close eye on home teams that are favored by few points, as it’s often the sharper play to go with the road team in those situations.
Home-field advantage is a huge factor in the point spread. For example, if the Kansas Chiefs play the Denver Broncos at home, the Chiefs would likely be favored by 10.5 points. However, if the game were in Denver, the Chiefs would be favored by about 4.5 points. The impact of home-field advantage depends on the team playing with it — some teams do not have as favorable a crowd or atmosphere as others. Denver, for example, is a particularly tough place to play, given the altitude. If you bet on the underdog, this means that they can lose by one run or win outright for you to win the bet.