When it comes to betting on sports, odds have a key role to play. While their main use is to let the bettor know what a bet’s payout rate is, they can also be used to make informed betting decisions. This article gives you some general advice to help you understand odds and place better bets.
Why Are Informed Betting Decisions Important?
Sports betting is a lot different from gambling at an online casino. The games at casino sites are mostly luck-based, with some of them requiring skill and strategy. As for sports betting, there’s more to it. You have to actively choose something to bet on, look at the betting options available, and place your wager, thinking about how much money you’re willing to risk. All sorts of things can affect the outcome of a sports bet: the weather, the line-up of each team, recent injuries or line-up changes, or even where a match is taking place.
A general piece of advice for sports betting is to make informed betting decisions. As explained earlier, this is where you understand what you’re betting, you’ve looked at the team/player’s recent statistics, and you’re aware of the latest news and updates. In other words, you’re aware of the factors that can affect the outcome of your bet and you’re going to take these into account when you place the bet.
Having said this, it’s still possible to win even if you just pick a bet at random. Leaving things to chance can be an exciting way to go about sports betting. This method also saves time as you’re not doing research and looking up statistics. But, you’re more likely to do well over long-term betting if you put some thought and knowledge into the decisions you make.
How Do Sports Betting Odds Work in Canada?
There are three main types of sports betting odds: fractional, decimal and moneyline. Fractional odds, e.g. ½, are commonly used throughout the UK and Ireland, whereas moneyline odds are the preferred option in the US. In Canada, as well as continental Europe, the most frequently used type of odds is decimal.
Decimal odds work in a simple way. They’re represented as a single number that includes both your stake and the winnings. Let’s say you place a $10 bet on the Toronto Argonauts to win a match against the Calgary Stampeders. The odds for this bet are displayed as 2.00. To get your final payout, you multiply your stake by the odds: $10 x 2.00 = $20. The $20 that you receive consists of your stake ($10) and winnings ($10).
At a typical Canadian online sportsbook, decimal odds are the default option. However, you can switch between the other two types whenever you want. Note that changing the type of odds doesn’t change the payout.
Using Sports Betting Odds to Place Better Bets
Understanding the concept of implied probability is key. When you have odds for a bet you’d like to place, divide 1 by those odds, then multiply the result by 100. Let’s say you’re placing a bet whose odds are 5.00. You do 1 divided by 5, which is 0.20, then multiply this by 100 to get 20. Add a percentage sign to this final figure and that’s how likely your bet is to win.
Therefore, the higher the odds, i.e. the bigger the decimal number, the less likely a bet is to win, but the bigger the payout will be. If the decimal number is quite small, e.g. 1.50, the bet should stand a decent chance of winning, though the payout won’t be that great.
When you come across a bet you’d like to place, work out what its implied probability is and use this to help you decide whether the bet is worthwhile. When making this decision, bear in mind everything else you know about the event you’re placing a wager on.
As an example, we’ll say you’ve found a bet on the Ottawa Senators winning a match against the Vancouver Canucks. This bet has an implied probability of 45%, which is pretty close to 50/50. The sportsbook therefore believes the Senators have a very good chance of winning, but the Canucks are a bit more likely to win.
When placing bets on sporting events, you want to hit the sweet spot of finding bets that give decent payouts but still have a reasonable chance of succeeding. There’s no magic formula that can help you with this, but understanding odds and implied probability can be a great help.
Make the Best Betting Decisions
While there’s no guaranteed way to make money from sports betting, making informed decisions and understanding odds can both help reduce your losses in the long run. By knowing what you’re doing and understanding how likely bets are to win, you’ll be more likely to place bets that will go on to win.
