Sports Betting Bet Basics

 

The first step to understanding sports betting is how to read a typical bet. Let’s look at an example for an NFL game.

October 3, 2004 Pro Football
Time Bet# Team Point Line Total Money Line
10:00 AM 209 New York Giants
-7
44 +260
210 Green Bay Packers -320

The –6.5 is the point spread. You can see it lines up with Green Bay. The negative sign designates that Green Bay is favored and the 6.5 is how many points they are favored to win by. Another way to think of it is that Green Bay should start the game with negative 6.5 points to make it a fair game.

The 44.5 is the total number of expected points. The bettor may bet that the combined points will be over or under 44.5.

At most casinos when you bet against a point spread or the total your probability of winning is about 50% and you must bet $11 to win $10, or any proportion therein. Laying 11 to win 10 is so common the rule does not need to be stated.

To avoid messy rounding when laying $1.10 to win $1 the bet amount should be divisible by 11. However if you were to bet $100, for example, and you won your winnings would be $100*(10/11) = $90.91. The expected value for a random bettor is pr(win)*payoff – pr(loss) = 50%*(10/11) – 50% = 4.55%.

Sometimes a sports book will have a happy hour in which you must only lay $1.05 to win $1. This is equivalent to paying 1/1.05 to 1. I hate seeing decimals in the denominator so lets convert that to 100/105 = 20/21. When laying $1.05 the expected value for the random bettor is 50%*(20/21) – 50% = -0.5/21 = -2.38%.

The +210 and –320 in the table are money lines. These are the odds for who will win, without any point spread. Since Green Bay is favored to win naturally the bettor must risk more if betting on Green Bay. The –320 means the bettor must risk $320 to win $100. This is equivalent to 100/320 = 10/32 = 5/16 to 1 odds. The +210 on the Giants means a $100 bet pays $210 if it wins. This is equivalent to 210/100 = 21/10 = 2.1 to 1 odds.

Suppose you feel the probability Green Bay will win is 70%. Let’s calculate the expected value of a bet on Green Bay.

Pr(win)*odds – pr(lose) = 70%*(5/16) – 30% = -8.13%.

Next lets calculate the odds on the Giants.

Pr(win)*odds – pr(lose) = 30%*2.1 – 70% = -7.00%.