Bookmakers and Casino Odds
Before explaining the definition of an odd in practice with examples, it is important to understand the difference between bookmaker odds and casino odds. The odds of a casino don’t change at all, ever! That is because of the nature of the games of a casino: the probability of the Roulette dropping the ball at a particular pocket is always the same, which means the casino offers odds based on that. The same applies to Blackjack, for example.
Sports events, however, can be much harder to predict, in fact, even the best punters of the world only estimate the chances of sports events happening because it is mathematically impossible to be 100% sure of how humans will behave.
The retail bookmakers are known as fixed odds operators. However, these odds aren’t that fixed, and the odds don’t change because people are betting too much on a specific event. For example, important team news hit the market like a team is travelling to a road game only with the sub-team, that will impact the markets heavily.
In summary, sportsbooks have odds that can fluctuate while casino odds are fixed ones.
What Are Odds Anyway
The odds, in the context of sports betting, are multipliers that will affect the original bet and determinate the size of the potential prize money if the punter guesses a specific outcome of a sporting event.
In other words, the odds are proportional to the perceived risk related to that specific event. It is just a market view which is affected by how bettors and gambling houses see an upcoming event.
It is crucial to understand they are not necessarily right, and that may allow the punters to profit a lot out of sports betting!
At casinos, the odds are based on the real chances of the games. If for example, you bet on coin flips, you know there is a chance of 50% of that happening. Roulette works the same way, but the calculation of odds is a little more complicated.
Calculating Odds
Depending on the sports event in question, the odds can be calculated in different ways, and some are very simple. In contrast, others like Asian Handicap Football Betting can be far more complicated.
Let’s consider a simple example: the chances of Germany to win the next UEFA Euro: if you believe that Germany has 20% of chances to win, you should divide 100% by your estimation, i.e. 100% / 20% = 5.0 (decimal odds). Other systems of odds like fractions are a little harder to understand.
Back to the Euro example, if you see 5.0 as the ‘real odds’ if you come across odds that are higher than that like 6 or 7 you should bet on them! This is what the seasoned bettors call ‘value’ in the world of betting.
Profiting with Sports Betting
Most casino games are based on luck like Roulette or slot games, but when it comes to sports odds the odds might actually wrong, and you can really profit out of a skill, i.e. reading the scenario in a keener way than the markets.
