Ask yourself if you’ve ever seen a man entering a bank without knowing how to pick up the money or someone eating peas without cooking them first. We’re willing to bet you the answer is no. The same goes for odds in sports betting: truly understanding betting odds is all but mandatory if you want to get anywhere. You can still bet at random, but without understanding the odds, you will need a whole lot of luck at your favorite sportsbook or online casino venue.

Whether you’re new to sport bets or a regular bettor, there is always something fascinating to discover about this betting method. We’ll have American odds explained to you in no time so you can focus on the important things: enjoying the sports match and making money.

A Moneyline Bet Crash Course

We’ll admit upfront: if the concept of sports odds seems unnecessarily convoluted to you, that’s because it is. Sports odds represent what the bookmaker thinks are the chances of a specific outcome happening in a sports event. Sounds simple enough, until you get into the sports odds template used in many established and new US casinos: a Moneyline.

The core idea is focused on wagering or winning $100 on a bet, although the actual bet size can scale for lower or higher numbers, too. Moneyline odds have either a minus or plus sign next to the odds number. A minus sign is used for the oddsmaker’s favorite in a match and the cash you have to risk in a bet to get $100. A plus sign represents who will be the underdog in a game, according to the oddsmaker, and the amount of money you can win from a $100 bet.

Suppose the bookmaker places negative odds next to the New England Patriots. The bet tells you that the bookmaker favors this team as the most likely winner in the match. And since bookmakers consider the Patriots as the most likely winners in the American odds, you are betting more to receive less. If you bet on Patriots at -150, you’ll have to gamble away $150 to win $100. Add these two numbers together, and that will be your payout if the Patriots win: $250.

On the other hand, the oddsmaker reckons that the Atlanta Falcons are the underdogs in the upcoming match, giving favorable odds for betting on this team. Bettors who place bets on this team will get substantial rewards if the Falcons win the game, which is a considerable risk considering their underdog status. So, during the ​​Moneyline betting process, you place a bet on Falcons at +150. You put $100 to win $150, and in the end, your payout is also $250.

The difference is that you’ve won $50 bucks more in that $250 payout compared to betting on the Patriots, where $150 from that $250 would be your returned initial bet. It’s not the simplest betting concept, but it’s definitely easier than, say, mastering Bingo odds.

You don’t need to place $100 bets. Place the bets however you want, and the rewards will scale down or up, depending on your bet amount. Hence, if you bet $1.50 on Patriots, you might win back $1, with a total payout of $2.50. Similarly, bet $1 on Falcons to win $1.50 and get back $2.50 in total: same payout, but more cash in your pocket. Of course, odds usually aren’t usually symmetrical,  so you may get $800 on $100 bucks wagered on a clear underdog, or you’ll have to bet $500 just to win $100 if a team is a strong favorite.

From Paper Into Practice

Let’s put more numbers in and see the Moneyline or American betting odds in action. An oddsmaker publishes odds for the upcoming match between New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons like this:

New England Patriots -300

Atlanta Falcons +240

The first thing you’ll notice is that the bookmaker considers the New England Patriots as the better team by a significant margin. If you wager $300 on Patriots, you’ll get $100 if they win, with a total payout of $400.

On the other hand, should you decide to bet $100 on Falcons, you’ll win $240 if they make an upset, and your total payout will be $340. Congratulations, pat yourself on the back as you know enough to have American odds explained to others. That’s why we’ll complicate things a bit by introducing a point spread into the equation.

A Victory Margin

With point spread bets, the payout depends on your wager’s accuracy. Point spread includes a scope of outcomes. You bet if a specific result will be below or above the spread or the outcomes’ scope. We are mentioning point spreads since they are an extension of classic Moneyline bets.

To put it another way, you wager on how much you want to risk with a Moneyline. With a point spread, you’re betting on sports factors that need to happen in a sports event to win. Both wagers affect your overall winning odds. Global gambling statistics show that many casinos and sports betting sites use this method.

Spread betting can be negative or positive. Let’s use the previous example and place both a point spread and a Moneyline with the upcoming New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons match.

New England Patriots -6.5 (spread) -110 (odds)

Atlanta Falcons +6.5 (spread) – 110 (odds)

In this case, you’re not only risking your $110 to win $100, but you’re doing so if the Patriots win the match by seven points or more, since the spread is -6.5. Bet $100 to win $110 if the Falcons win the game or lose it by no more than six points. Knowing spread bets is essential to understanding bet odds, which holds true for American odds, too.

Spreads are there to ensure no situations where neither side would win the bet. Since it’s impossible to score 6.5 goals in football or 6.5 points in basketball, either side can only win or lose the bet, depending on the game’s outcome and point tally for both sides.

A -110 betting spread is a 10% gap in the odds or a tax on your bet. We call it a vigorish, vig, or commonly known as the juice. Juice is what oddsmakers do to secure profit from your bet by charging it. Juice guarantees the bookmaker’s profit over time.

Calculating Bets With the American Betting Odds

Now you know how to deal with odds that only use Moneyline or Moneyline paired with spreads. Let’s raise the ante by introducing you to bet calculations using the American style of betting odds.

While you can use the odds Moneyline calculator or the sportsbook calculator to determine your bet in a second, the mathematics behind it is relatively straightforward. There are two formulas each for betting on the favorites and the underdogs. The first one will tell you how much you’ll have to bet if you want to win a certain amount of money, while the second will tell you how much money you can win with a given bet.

Favorites

So, before we can call American betting odds fully explained, let’s take a look at some odds for favorites. If you want to win $45 by betting on the New England Patriots at -110, you’ll use the following formula to calculate how much money you’ll need to bet:

Win Amount * ((-1* Moneyline) / 100)

In our case, it’ll be 45*(110/100), which will result in you risking $49.50 ($45 x 1.1) to win $45, with the total payout being $94.50.

Now let’s see the formula to determine how much you’ll have to wager to get a specific win on a favorite. We already used Patriots several times in our betting odds explanation examples, but here’s another one: you want to bet $30 on Patriots at -110, so how do you stand to win? The second formula goes like this:

Wager Amount * ((100 / (Moneyline * -1))

When we put our bet in, it will be 30*(100/(-110*-1)), amounting to $27.27 in winnings on a $30 wager, with a total payout being $57.27.

Underdogs

The following formulas have the same goal as what we’ve just been describing, but they are used to calculate the numbers for underdog betting. In the first case, we’ll calculate the winnings on a  $50 bet on Falcons at +220. Let’s get these gambling odds explained, shall we?

Wager amount * (Moneyline / 100)

By adding our $50 bet, we’ll get 50*(220/100) or 50*2.2, netting you a cool $110 (and a total payout of $160) if the Falcons make the upset. The second formula calculates how much we’ll have to wager if we want to win $100 from the Falcons’ triumph.

Win Amount / (Moneyline / 100)

So, if we want to win $100 on Falcons at +220, we’ll get this equation 100/(220/100), so 100/2.2, which ends up being $45.45. Sports betting sites love underdog bets, but with a bit of luck, you can turn them into big wins, too.

Differences Between Odds Types

American or Moneyline type of odds are only used in the United States. With American odds explained, you’ll have a much better chance at winning NBA or NFL bets. Travel to England, though, and you’ll see that they use fractional odds. The rest of Europe relies on decimal odds. Nevertheless, the underlying logic between these different betting types is similar (underdogs get more favorable bets and vice versa), and modifiers such as spreads work largely the same way. There are also online converters to help you easily switch between odds types.