Our ‘Sports Betting How To’ Series — Calculator for Betting Odds

Video Transcript Below

How to Read Betting Odds

Our ‘Sports Betting How To’ Series, explains the common questions around how does sports betting work? This section covers: How Betting Odds Work and Calculator for Betting Odds.

Specifically, how to read betting odds, american odd, and decimal odds to american — when it comes to strategy for sports betting.

Click here for our Recommended Odds Converter Calculator

Andrew Pace

Andrew is a Multi-Millionaire, Professional Sports Value Analyst & the Creator of inplayLIVE — an online program & community that teaches how to invest on live sports through the art of value wagering. He’s taught thousands of students to successfully beat the book and go on to reach 5, 6 and 7-figure profits.

---

Video Transcript

What's up everyone, Andrew Pace here, founder and CEO of inplayLIVE where I teach people how to profit on sports wagering over the longterm and become sports value analysts. Welcome to the next segment of our sports betting how-to series, where we're teaching people how to sports bet and in today's sports betting 101.

We're teaching you how betting odds work. So let's dive in. So how does sports betting work right off the top? We want to have a great online sports book when it comes to betting online on sports in Canada, or betting online in sports, anywhere in the world.

You want to have a really reputable book. We're on Pinnacle again today, which is one of my absolute favorites because it's where winners play, which means that if you win over time, right. They continue to allow you to play. And what's great about Pinnacle is they have these amazing betting resources.

Odds Converter Calculator (Bettings Odds Calculator)

So today we're actually going to be looking at their odds converter calculator. So this is great. This is a great calculator for betting odds. And I'm going to explain each individual type of sports betting odds decimal right off the bat is an, is a decimal that you multiply by how much you're wagering to get the total return of what that particular bet will pay. So if we have decimal odds of 2.2 on a $10 stake, we're going to return $22, which is demonstrated right here. If the decimal is less than 2.0, that means that your wager returns less than what you wagered. So we'll put in 1.91, which is the standard spread amount for most sports books.

Which includes the vig, which of course is the amount that the house takes. 1.91 returns us $19 and 10 cents on a $10 wager, which means it had $9 and 10 cents of profit and a total return of $19 and 10 cents, which of course the total, the profit of $9 and 10 cents is less than the $10 that we wagered.

So whenever the odds are less than 2.0, it's going to return less. And whenever it's more than 2.0, it's going to return more than what we wagered. So if we type in 3.5 very simply put, we're just going to multiply 3.5 by 10 to get our total return of $35 and a profit of $25. So decimal odds are very, very simple to understand, but the sports betting world in particular is oftentimes very used to American odds and American odds.

These aren’t very simple to explain, but when we're going decimal odds to American, you can use one of these sports betting calculators to make the conversion for you if you'd like. I've got some easy tips and tricks that I like to use. So first of all, if you have American odds of +250, all you need to do is add a hundred.

So that would be 350 and move the decimal place over twice to get 3.5. So in the case of going from decimal to American - all you have to do is take 3.5, move the decimal over twice to get 350 and -100. Or I just like to think of it, very simple, what's 3.5 minus one. Well, it's 2.5. American odds are then +250.

That is very easy to convert in your head and very simple when the American odds are on the plus side. Which means the decimal is above 2.0, whenever you have American odds on the plus side, your initial stake is going to return more than what you wagered when we get to the minus side, which is less than 2.0 and decimal odds.

That's when things get a little bit trickier to understand. So I like to remember some really simple benchmarks, like I know -111 is 1.9, -110 is 1.91. And -120 is 1.8, three -125 is 1.8 and so on and so forth, but it's good to get comfortable with those. So if I type in 1.8, you see -125.

Now American odds are a little bit trickier. Whenever you see negative odds - that is the amount that you need to wager to win $100. So in the case of -125, we would need to risk $125 to return $225 and profit us $100. If we switch us over to -200, which is going to be 1.5 in decimal odds.

That means we would need to risk $200 to return $100 of profit. So that can be a little bit confusing, but where American odds are superior or where they are very, very relevant is when it comes to arbitrage betting. And let me give you an example. If on one sportsbook we had -200 odds, and on one side of the game, and on the other side of the game we had, +250 odds, you can use the plus subtract the minus. So 250 minus 200 to know that we have an edge on both those books of 50 basis points. In that particular case, we're going to be covering sure betting and arbitrage betting in another YouTube video. But that is a great example of where American odds are superior to decimal odds.

And when it comes to fractional, that is simply converting either of these two into a fraction. So whenever the numerator is greater than the denominator, which is the top number,and the bottom number of the fraction, whenever the numerator is higher, that means we have plus odds or odds greater than 2.0. From a conversion standpoint to American, to decimal. And whenever the numerator is less than the denominator, like this particular case where we have one half, we know we have negative odds or odds less than 2.0 in decimal. I personally liked decimal from a simplicity standpoint, but I love American odds from the standpoint of arbitrage.

And I never use fractional odds, but it's all about your individual comfort. So let's look at this in actual practice. We're going to go over to the bet calculator. And this is where we can actually change from decimal odds to American and fraction odds. We're going to enter in a stake of $100 at odds of 2.2.

You're going to see that that's going to pay out $220. And if I switched that over to American, we're going to see that it's going to be +120 really, really simply put where decimal odds can be very convenient if we're going to add another layer in here. For say a parlay. So let's say we wanted to parlay odds of 2.2 with a pick of 1.9.f

In that particular case, we would multiply the hundred by the 2.2 by 1.9. And you can see here, that's going to come out to a total payout of 4.18 in decimal odds or +318 in American odds giving us a total. Uh, $418 return on our a hundred dollar wager and $318 of profit. So I hope that, and these tools and resources over at Pinnacle sportsbook are really helpful for you in how to read betting odds and odds for sports betting, decimal odds to American odds in particular is something that's really, really important to understand if you're, you know, A sports betting professional.

And if you go over to the actual sports book where you can see all the wages for tonight, now, all these odds start to make a lot more sense. We know 4.15 on the Atlanta Hawks money line. If we weighed your a hundred dollars is going to return us $415 total and $315 of profit in that particular case.

And we understand how these all look and on any given site. Converting from decimal to American odds, whichever you're comfortable with they'll have that in their settings. So in Pinnacle.com, it's right here on the top, right? And I go from decimal over to American and bam there. It all is for us, really, really simple to use.

I've provided a link to the betting resources tab for Pinnacle in the description below so that you can click and look at these calculator for betting odds yourself. Uh, and also play around with some of the other ones, if you'd like to, I think Pinnacle is a great site for everyone to have from this standpoint is they welcome, you know, you to really learn and become better at sports betting over time.

So at inplayLIVE, what we do is we work with these types of things with our members, so that you can actually learn. To put the stuff in your back pocket and profit on live sports over the longterm. 

We have some free training going on today. You can click the link below in the description to join where I give away five of my top secrets on how to profit from live sports betting over the long-term and we hope to see you soon. Cheers