How Do Odds Work In Football
Welcome to the Sports Betting Odds section of The Sports Geek. If you are new to sports betting and don’t understand how to read betting odds (+150, -110, +2200, etc) we will lay it all out for you and help you learn how the betting odds work.
If football betting is your thing, take your place in Grosvenor Casinos’ squad to make sure you’re kitted out with all the latest football odds for all the biggest and best games in the 2020/21 football season. We’ve got the Premier League, Championship, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga covered, and that’s not even the half of it. Welcome to the Sports Betting Odds section of The Sports Geek. If you are new to sports betting and don’t understand how to read betting odds (+150, -110, +2200, etc) we will lay it all out for you and help you learn how the betting odds work. NFL season is underway and there's no better time to prepare yourself for NFL betting with this helpful guide to explain NFL odds, point spreads, and more. Betzodiac is the worlds leading Sport/Football prediction website. We analyse our games with all the current stats, algorithms and events happening everyday in the world of sports, and with our connections around the world from colleagues in these leagues and clubs, we are privy to first hand insider informations that has made us stand out from the crowd.
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Sports Betting Odds Explained
Many people don’t know how to read or calculate sports betting odds, so below we have done our best on explaining how betting odds work. The most common type of sports betting odds used in North America are the American style odds which we explain below.
American Style Sports Betting Odds
Most online sportsbooks will list their odds in what is called “American Odds”. There are a couple different versions of sports betting odds, but these American Odds are the most common odds used. Reading and understanding sports betting odds can bet a little confusing to beginners, so we have provided an example below using two NFL football teams:
American Odds
- Matchup Odds
- New England Patriots +120
- Pittsburgh Steelers -140
The number shown in the bracket represents the odds. The American Odds have two components to them, the first being the positive or negative sign, and the second being the number that follows the sign.
The sign in front of the number indicates whether placing a wager on that outcome will pay out more money then you have wagered or less money then you have wagered. If the odd is negative (-) it means that outcome is more likely to happen and placing a bet on that outcome would payout less than the amount you wagered, while a positive (+) odd shows that the outcome is less likely to happen and it would pay out more than the amount you wagered.
The next step is figuring out exactly how much the bet pays out, which is where the numbers in the odds come into play.
A listed odd with a – sign in front of it, such as the -140 in our example above, shows us how much money you would need to wager in order to win $100. So using the -140, this would show us that you would need to bet $140 in order to win $100 in profits. You can easily substitute the $100 bet for a $10 bet by moving the decimal place over one spot, showing us that you would need to wager $14 in order to win $10 in profits.
Examples:
A listed odd with a + sign in front of it, such as the +120 in our example above, shows us how much money you would win on a $100 bet. Using the +120 odds, it shows us that a $100 bet on that outcome would pay out $120 in profits. Again this can easily be converted into smaller or larger size bets. A $10 bet on +120 odds would pay out $12 in profits.
Examples:
Below is an example of NFL betting odds taken from an online betting site.
How Do Odds Work In College Football
In this example you can see Los Angeles is listed at +130 ($100 bet pays $130 plus of course your original wager back) and New England is listed at -150 ($150 bet pays $100).
The great thing about betting online is that the online sportsbooks will do the calculations for you before you place your bet. You can click on the outcome or team you would like to bet on, and then input the amount you wish to wager and it will show you your potential pay out before you confirm your bet.
How To Read Odds For Football
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Decimal Style Sports Betting Odds
Decimal style odds are used mostly in Europe, and are pretty easy to understand. To calculate the decimal style odds all you will need to do is simply multiply the amount you wish to wager by the decimal odds shown and you will get your payout. For example it may look something like this:
If you wanted to place a $10 wager on the USA at 2.40 you would simply need to multiply your $10 wager by the 2.40 odds (10 x 2.40) to find out that the payout is $24. It is important to realize that with decimal style odds it includes the amount you wagered, so to find out profits you would need to subtract your wager ($24 – $10) to find out your potential payout is $14 in profits.
If you wanted to place a $10 wager on Brazil you would again just multiply $10 x 1.55 to find out that you would win $15.50 total or $5.50 in profits.
Decimal style betting odds are very simple to understand, but you won’t see them displayed in many North American sportsbooks. With that said, most online betting sites will allow you to chose the style of betting odds you want displayed, with American odds set as the default.
The most common football pool is the standard 100 square football pool. At almost every Super Bowl party you have ever been to you might have seen this 10 x 10 betting sheet and wondered what it is. There’s nothing like a friendly little game to liven up the party during the Super Bowl. This pool is built around a simple chart calls for no skill or previous knowledge of how to bet the spread or of the game of football in general. In this article I will explain how easy this to partake in and how much fun this form of gambling on football can add to the game.
How a 100 square football pool works is very simple. Whoever the party host or pool host may be creates at 10 squares by 10 squares chart; this is numbered on each axis from 0-9. Each axis is also labeled home/away or by each team playing, if chosen.
The pool host will then try to sell each square on the chart, usually ranging from $5-$100, depending on the type of clientele buying the squares. After all the squares have been sold, each box is then assigned at random so that everyone has a fair chance to get a coveted square. Another method some pool hosts use is to have all the entrants write their names down inside a single square of their liking on the blank 100 square pool sheet and then use 10 cards (Ace through Nine) to randomly draw the numbers at the top and side of the pool sheet.
How do you know which squares are the best? This is simple, so the way this works is that every square on the board will assign two numbers. For instance, if you had a square in the middle of the board, this would correspond to 5 for the home team and 5 for the away team. So what do those 5’s mean?
The numbers 0-9 correspond to either the last number in the home or away team score depending on where the square is located. So 20 points would be a 0 whereas 35 would be 5 points.
So how do you win? At the end of the first quarter, halftime, third quarter, and final score whatever the score is will be awarded to the person who owns that square. If the score is 17-10 at the half with the home team winning, the person with the squares of 7 and 0 would win that portion of the game. Having the squares 0 and 7 would not help because it would be assigned to the wrong teams. Usually the total money is divided by 5, and is paid out as follows. 1st quarter, Halftime, and 3rd quarter all get a 1/5 of the total bank and the Final Score doubles this to 2/5. So if you were involved on a $5 dollar pool and all 100 squares were filled that would be $500 to be paid out. With that number you would get paid $200 for final score and $100 for all other scores.
Which numbers are the best to have when entering the office pool? The top 5 most common scores for NFL games since 1970 are 20-17, 17-14, 27-24, 13-10, and 24-17. So as you can see if one of your numbers is 0, 3, 4, or 7, then you already have a leg-up on the competition.