How To Read Sports Betting Odds

It’s the fourth quarter and Clemson University is losing by a touchdown and don’t look like they’re going to win. You can minimize your loss by cashing out your bet with the sportsbook. For instance, if New York is favored by 10 points, you can lower the spread down to three points and so on with other games that you chose. The drawback with teasers, though, is that the bettors will typically wager a lot more than they’ll win. If the teaser loses, it could be a sizeable monetary collapse.

Sportsbooks will typically list the odds of this parlay at +265. The implied probability of +265 odds is 27.39% (100/(265 +100). Therefore, the fair price of a two-team parlay (both teams at -110 odds) is +300 (100/(300 + 100). This is why sportsbooks will encourage you to make parlay bets.

For a money line bet, the numbers within the parenthesis tell you what you will make should that team win the game. For example, if you bet on the Patriots at (-110), that number signifies that you must bet $110 to win $100 on your wager. If you were to bet on the Seahawks at (+110), you would win $110 on a $100 wager. When a point spread is attached to a set of odds it means that for the bet to be successful the team must ‘cover the spread’.

Here, when a minus sign precedes a number it shows how much money needs to be bet on a team or competitor in order to win $100. Typically, this number is greater than 100 and indicates that the team or competitor is a favorite or expected to win. In all states with legal online sports betting, you can find Super Bowl odds in the futures section of most sportsbooks a full year in advance. You can also bet on the NFL Draft, although not all online sportsbooks offer the option. But apps like FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetRivers will always list the draft in their football odds. The moneyline bet is the simplest form of sports betting odds.

This is different from spread betting, which uses a handicap to theoretically level the odds on both sides. All the bettor’s selection must do is win and the moneyline wager pays out. In this kind of bet, the odds are set at the beginning of the season, but they can go up or down as time goes on. Once you make your bet, however, it is locked in at whatever the odds were at the time you placed the bet. This is why making a bet on a long shot early on can bring a potentially substantial payoff.

Offering odds that are much better for players than Vegas odds will certainly attract more gamblers, but it can be disastrous for gambling venues if there’s a big upset or underdog victory. Armed with the above knowledge, you should now have a pretty good idea of how to read sports lines. Sportsbook odds can appear in any of the above formats, so it’s helpful to be able to compare and convert between them. If you see the letters PK alongside the odds offered on a game, it means there is no favorite and you should “pick” the winner of the game without worrying about any point spread. For instance, a round robin made up of three teams will consist of three two-team parlay bets.