Welcome to Part Two of the Sports Betting 101 Series. In Part 1, we went over Bankroll Management to help you understand how to properly handle your betting funds and increase your chances of being a successful, long-term bettor. Today, we will discuss how to read and interpret odds. This is essential in order to make smart decisions when betting on sports. If you’ve looked at a game’s line and felt utterly confused, don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it looks. Let’s dissect the example below.
*For the sake of keeping things simple, I am only referring to American Odds. There are a couple other ways odds can be presented, but this is the most common for a majority of those reading.
Below is a screenshot of the NBA betting screen from 5Dimes. I'll be referencing this throughout the article to help explain the different bets you can make and what all those numbers mean.
Rotation Number
The five columns of data are standard formatting for online sportsbooks. The appearance may vary slightly, but everything we review should be in the same place. The first column is pretty obvious so I will skip over that. The following one starts to look a bit confusing if you are not familiar with how lines are presented. Every side of a bet (typically a team or individual) has an assigned ID/rotation number. For example, the Miami Heat are rotation number 708. Not all online sportsbook will show this, but every brick and mortar book such as those in Vegas do in order to avoid confusion. When giving your bet to a ticket writer at the counter, it's easiest to reference your side's rotation number - especially for college sports. That way, no one confuses your Michigan bet with Michigan State, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, or Central Michigan.
Point Spread
The next column is the point spread (or for baseball/hockey, the run-/puck-line). It is the most common bet to make in football and basketball, and is a way to make an even-level bet; regardless of how much better one team is than the other. It is much easier for the casual bettor to compare how much a team will win or lose by rather than figuring out the implied probability of a team winning with the money line odds (next column).
In the screenshot above, the first game has the Pacers as a 4.5 point favorite. In other words, the Pacers need to win by at least 5 points to win against the spread. On the flip side, the Bucks need to lose by no more than 4 points or win outright to win against the spread*. The -4.5 in the Pacers' line just means that you take 4.5 points off the Pacers final score. The opposite is true for the Bucks. The +4.5 represents adding 4.5 points to their final score. Whichever team has a higher score after factoring in the point spread wins the bet (or "covers" the spread).
*It is important to note that this does not necessarily mean the sportsbook predicts the Pacers will win by 5. Rather, this is the number the sportsbook predicts they will receive even action on both sides of the bet. This is an advanced topic and will be explained in a later post.
You might be asking, why all the half points? The answer is simple: this helps prevent the occurrence of a tie for a bet (commonly called a push). In the Pacers/Bucks example, had the Pacers spread been -4 and they won the game 100-96, every spread bet would have "pushed" and all bets would be cancelled and refunded. You will see whole number spreads and totals, but sportsbooks try to avoid it for this reason.
Finally, the -110 listed after each point spread are the actual odds for the bet. I'll explain the odds more in the next section, but -110 simple means you need to risk $110 to win $100 (or $11 to win $10, $55 to win $50, etc.). Still confused? Keep reading young grasshopper.
Money Line
The fourth column is called the money line (often denoted as ML in text). This type of bet is for those that wish to bet who will win the game straight-up. This is common for baseball and hockey since most games are only decided by a couple runs/goals, and thus these are known as "money line sports." Conversely, football and basketball are "point spread sports" since they can be decided by many more points.
For simplicity though, we'll stick to the NBA odds screen from above. The Bucks are listed at +175 and the Pacers are -210 on the money line. This is where things may get a little confusing for those unfamiliar with American odds. When odds are listed with a “+”, this denotes the underdog and is the amount you will win when risking $100 on a bet. When odds are listed with a “-“ though, this is the amount you need to risk in order to win $100 on the favorite.
In our example, a $100 bet on the Milwaukee Bucks money line could win $175, while we would need to bet $210 on the Indiana Pacers money line to win $100. Since your bet size probably isn't $100, you can scale it to your liking. For a $10 bettor, you would win $17.50 on the Bucks if you liked the underdog. For the Pacers, you would need to risk $21 to win $10.
Most online sportsbooks will do the math for you though, as their default setting is to assume the amount you enter for a bet is "to win" on negative odds and "to risk" for positive odds (which is what we did for Bucks/Pacers).
There are also other formats for betting odds found around the world, such as Decimal and Fractional. I won't dive into this today, but Pinnacle has a good article about the difference between American and Decimal and shows how to convert between the two here.
If you are betting on money lines, it's extremely important to understand that these odds represent both a price and a probability. I will cover this in the near future as this is vital to understand, but right now we're just concerned with how to read all these weird looking numbers.
Total Points
The last column in our example lists the total points for the Over/Under line. This is probably obvious, but the “O” stands for Over and “U” stands for Under in the above image. The number next to it is the total points scored in the game (i.e. combining both teams’ scores). In this example, the total between the Bucks and Pacers is 192.5. Some NBA games will have totals below 190, and some will be over 210. This all depends on how fast both teams play, how efficient their offenses are, how strong or weak each team's defense is, and most importantly, what the public perception is of both teams.
Lastly, like the spread, totals are listed at -110 odds. This is the standard for even* propositions like point spreads and totals where there are two possible outcomes. And like before, you'll need to risk $110 to win $100 (or any amount at that ratio). Spreads and totals odds may fluctuate slightly from -110 for various reasons, but in general this is what you will see.
*Betting $110 to win $100 obviously is not an even bet. The extra $10 is the sportsbook’s commission, also known as the vigorish or juice. When you win a bet, you receive $100 plus the $110 you originally risked. When you lose, the sportsbook keeps your $110. Essentially
Now you know the basics of reading sports betting odds. I hope this was helpful and that you are now more informed when making betting decisions. As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. And if you have not already, be sure to subscribe to the Fast Break Blog to receive updates when I post new articles like this, my free NBA picks, or other tools that could be useful to you.
-Stephen