How do payouts work in sports betting

The important thing to note about payouts is that they often include the amount of money you put in. Odds can refer to moneyline, spread and total bets, and they can be displayed as American , British fractional or European decimal. While odds look different, they mean the same thing. Most sportsbooks in the United States use American Odds. If you bet the Cowboys -7 and they win by more than seven points, you win your bet.

It's a similar case for the betting odds, though favorites don't always have a " - ," especially in sports like baseball, hockey or soccer where final results are often decided by one run or one goal. It's especially the case in soccer since matches can end in draws, whereas a winner is declared in almost every other sport because of overtime rules. In this case, the payout would be decent for every situation mainly because the teams are even and there are three possible results compared to just two for something like football unless they go scoreless in overtime.

The lower number also means a lower payout, which is always the case for betting the favorite on the moneyline. Moneyline bets are as straightforward as it gets in sports betting. You're betting on which side will win an event and if that side wins, you win. A spread bet is on the forecasted point differential between two teams.

In each bet, a push is also possible if the Lakers win by exactly seven points. That would mean each side gets their money back. As for the odds, the most common number for spread bets is , but that number varies depending on the location, sportsbook and how popular each side is. However, there are states where odds are worse in order to get the state more money such as or This is also called the vig , which is the amount the sportsbook charges per bet.

If two teams are equal, PK will be given alongside a team name which means the matchup is considered a "pick 'em. Similar to a spread bet, if the Cowboys and Giants combine for exactly 49 points, it's a push and each side get their money back. Also similar to spread bets is that the odds can vary. These odds may be the easiest of the three to understand just by looking at the numbers.

The team with the higher of the two numbers 3. The return can be calculated by multiplying the bet with the the decimal odds. Fractional odds are most popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and are often the choice for horse racing. Also, a lot of sportsbooks in the United States will use fractional odds for futures odds. Similar to decimal odds, the return can be determined by multiplying the odds and the bet.

Moneyline odds indicate which side the oddsmakers favor, how strongly they do so, and what the payout will be if you win. These are actual odds as posted at the sportsbooks listed. You can bet on either side of this market, but not both. What will determine your wager is which team wins this game outright.

The only thing that matters is the final score. If you pick Alabama and the Crimson Tide win the game, you win as well. You may be wondering what the minus and plus signs in front of the numbers mean. The minus sign indicates which side of the market the sportsbook expects to win the contest. That side is called the favorite. The side with the plus sign is the underdog , which is the side the sportsbook expects to come up short in the contest. In our example, Alabama is the favorite, while USC is the underdog.

The lines with the plus signs in front of them are called positive odds. The converse is also similar to your algebra lessons, as the lines with the minus signs are called negative odds. The third component of these markets, those numbers indicate two different things. They tell you how confident the sportsbook is about who will win and how much money you will win if you place the correct wager.

That is the likelihood of one side of a market winning the event in question. The simple rule of thumb is that the larger the number, the more confident a sportsbook is in its prediction. There is a way to use these odds to figure out an exact percentage, however. For the underdog, in our example, USC, take the number, which is First, add to that number. Ottawa, therefore, has a If you think their chance of winning is higher than that, this bet is worth serious consideration.

Their purpose is to flip the sign on the negative US odds. When we use actual numbers, it appears far simpler. Pittsburgh has a This time, you do the leg-work.

Plug the numbers below into the formulae laid out above to answer the following questions, then check your results against the answers further down the page no peeking! Answers all percentages are rounded to one decimal place :. Decimal odds are displayed like this: Calculating Winnings with Decimal Odds Determining your payout with decimal odds is straightforward: simply multiply your wager by the odds associated with the team you are betting on.

To calculate winnings, subtract the original wager from the payout. To figure out the implied probability, follow this formula:. The number on the left 9 dictates how many times the book expects the relevant outcome to fail; whereas the number on the right 5 tells us how many times the outcome is expected to succeed. To calculate the implied probability of Golovkin winning the fight, take the number of times he is expected to win 13 and divide it by the total number of trials This results in a Therefore, the probability of Alvarez winning the fight is calculated by dividing 8 the number of times he would win by 19 the total number of trials.

Alvarez has a Below is how to solve that using the formula. Betting on underdogs in any sport typically allows you to risk less in order to win more.