Sports Betting Odds Explained: Parimatch Guide
Sports betting is a great way to take an active part in the match and get a boost of positive emotions. When your money is on the line, you empathize much more with your favorite teams, as this can lead to either losing money or winning big.
If you want to experience the whole palette of these emotions, then now is just the right time to register at the Parimatch sports betting site and start making in-play or pre-match bets on a huge selection of sports events.
But unfortunately, if you do not know how to read the odds of sports betting correctly, then it will be a difficult task for you. Parimatch platform will help you understand what are the odds in sports betting and you will be able to place winning bets on any sporting event and easily read the odds for all matches.
What Are Odds in Sports Betting?
Betting odds are a number that shows you how risky it is to make a particular bet and how likely it is that you will receive a payout. Plus, thanks to the odds, you can easily find out how much money you will receive if you place a winning bet. Thus, the higher the betting odds, the higher your risks, but at the same time the profit increases.
There are different formats for betting odds and different bookmakers present their bets with different types of odds. Parimatch sports betting platform is primarily concerned with making it very easy for customers to place bets. That is why decimal odds are used on the Parimatch betting platform. Since decimal odds are the easiest to read and understand how big your risk and what your income will be.
However, other formats of odds may not be as user-friendly. Therefore, this guide will explain how all of these formats work and how to convert them to probabilistic and reflexive numbers.
On the Parimatch website, you can always find examples of bets on the best sporting events with the best odds around the world!
CHECK PARIMATCH SPORTS BETTING ODDS
Understanding Odds: What is Implied Probability?
Thanks to the odds of the bets, you can understand how likely you are to win. The term “implied probability” refers to the possibility that your prediction will turn out to be correct.
So how do betting odds work? Bookmakers determine the odds and then publish them on their platforms. In this case, the goal of the bookmaker is to try to understand the real chances of the team or players to win the game based on the history of the teams and match statistics. And in the future, based on these statistics, bookmakers can draw a conclusion about how high the likelihood is that a team or player will win in a given match.
Betting odds are a mathematical representation of what a team or player's odds of winning a match are.
For example, a bookmaker can determine the odds based on the following factors:
- How good is the overall team performance?
- How good is the team's performance this season?
- How many players are injured and who are they?
- Which player received red cards and cannot play?
- How well has a specific team played against their opponents in a historical specific season?
- Who is the referee?
- What will the weather be like on match day?
- Where does the team play at home or away?
- And many other factors that can affect the outcome of a match.
The odds tell you what the likelihood is that the team will win the match. Thus, using sports betting odds you can mathematically calculate the probability (as a percentage) that your bet will be paid. This guide will help you understand how to convert odds to probability.
Next, you will learn how to calculate the implied probability from decimal, fractional, and moneyline odds.
How to Calculate Decimal Odds?
Decimal odds are the easiest to understand. When you need to understand any of the betting formats, you will definitely need to perform some mathematical equations to understand how big the risk is and what payouts you can get from your bet.
In the case of decimal odds, these equations are very easy. For comparison, fractional and US odds are much more difficult to calculate.
So how to calculate decimal odds? Decimal odds mean that the odds of your bets will be presented as an integer with two decimal places for example 1.25 or 3.55.
Let's take an example of a football match between Germany and Spain:
In this case, the odds for the victory of Germany are 2.28, the odds of a draw outcome of the match are 3.30 and the chance that Spain will win is indicated by the odds of 3.00. Thus, these decimal numbers show the amount that you can win if your prediction is correct and the likelihood that your prediction is correct.
How to Read Betting Odds Ratio and Work Out Potential Profit?
Surely you wondered “how to read betting odds ratio?”. After all, when you want to place a bet, you think about how you can get a win from it. So the odds will help you understand how much you can win if your prediction turns out to be correct.
Parimatch sports betting platform uses decimal odds which are the easiest ones to calculate your profit and your probability of winning.
In order to understand what kind of winnings you can get from your bets you need to go through two stages:
- Multiply your stake by the decimal odds. This way you can calculate the total winnings that will be paid to you if your bet is correct.
- Next, subtract the amount of your bet from the number that you got. This will help you calculate the total profit you can get from a winning bet.
Let's look at this with an illustrative example. Below is a football match between the Netherlands and Poland.
As we can see the odds for the Netherlands to win is 1.69, the odds for a draw in this match is 3.85, and the odds for Poland to win is 4.40.
Let's say you have placed a 10,000 NGN bet on the Netherlands to win. Thus, you need to multiply the coefficient by 10,000. Based on this equation, it will look like this: 1.69 x 10,000 NGN, so your winnings are 19,900 NGN. Further, in order to understand how much profit you can get from such a rate, you need to subtract your initial rate of 10,000 NGN and as a result, you get 6,900 NGN.
Now let's assume that you have placed a 10,000 NGN bet on Poland to win. The equation will look like this: 4.40 x 10,000 NGN, which ultimately gives you a win of 44,000 NGN. And if you subtract your initial bet, then you get a profit of 34,000 NGN.
And if you decide to bet on a draw with odds of 3.85, your bet of 10,000 NGN can potentially bring you a win for 38,500 NGN and, accordingly, a profit of 28,500 NGN.
It's not as difficult as you thought, is it?
How to Calculate Implied Probability from Decimal Odds?
As we mentioned above, the term "implied probability" means the bookmaker's prediction of what the chances are that your bet will win.
When a bookmaker sets the odds for a match, it professionally evaluates the possibility of a certain outcome of the game. Thus, decimal odds indicate a numerical representation of what the prediction will be correct.
So at the Parimatch sports betting site, with understanding betting odds, you can calculate the estimated probability that your bet will be paid using decimal odds. By calculating implied probability using decimal odds, you can make more informed bets that are more likely to win.
Calculating the implied probability is fairly easy. To do this, you will need to convert your bet odds to an implied probability percentage.
The only thing you need to do to convert your interest rate odds correctly is dividing 100 by the decimal odds of your bet.
We invite you to consider everything with a more illustrative example so that you can better understand it. Let's take a football match between Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
As we can see, the odds that Slovakia will win is 2.65, the odds for the Czech Republic are 2.60, and the probability of a tie is 3.15.
Let's say you want to calculate the estimated probability of Slovakia winning. To do this, you need to convert the odds to percentages. So divide 100 by 2.65 and you end up with an assumed probability of 37.7%.
We can carry out the same actions on the example of the Czech Republic. To do this, we need to divide 100 by the decimal coefficient which is 2.60 and as a result, we get an assumed probability of 38.5%.
Now let's calculate the implied probability of a tie. To do this, we need 100 divided by 3.15 and we get an implied probability equal to 31.7%.
As we can see in this match, the Czech Republic is more likely to win, but at the same time, the chance that Slovakia will win is about the same, but the probability of a draw is much less.
What Is the Bookmaker's Overround?
You may have noticed that when you calculate the implied probability for the outcome of a certain match, the percentage sum exceeds 100%. When you place your bets it is possible.
This phenomenon is called the bookmaker's overround. Thus, the overround is the profit that the bookmaker receives from the bets you place. This can be understood as payment for the services of a bookmaker, safe storage of your funds, and fast and reliable payments.
In the example we ran above, the percentages (37.7%, 38.5%, and 31.7%) together equal 107.9%. It is this 7.9% that is the overround and is the profit that the bookmaker receives.
In general, this process depends both on the rate and on the platform on which you place them. However, you may find that sports betting platform Parimatch provides the best odds in Nigeria, resulting in the smallest bookmaker's overground.
How to Determine the Favorite from Betting Odds?
If you want to place winning sports bets on the Parimatch platform, then you must be aware of who is more likely to win the match or game.
Of course, some players place bets on the loser and thus increase their potential winnings, but this is a rather risky strategy. You will most likely be anxious to bet on the winner especially if you are new to the world of gambling.
As you may have noticed, any bet implies a certain probability. So decimal odds allow you to calculate the implied probability of the outcome of a match or bet. But how do you determine the favorite with one glance at the decimals, you ask?
The first thing you need to remember is the main rule of all sports betting:
The higher the decimal odds, the higher your potential income. But at the same time, the higher your potential income, the higher the risk that you can lose. Thus, the higher the probability of winning the team on which you have placed your bet, the higher the risk of your defeat.
High odds = high risk = high profit || Low odds = Low risk = Low return
So, if you see the odds of bets on a match where a team or a player has high odds, then this is the riskiest bet. Based on this, the team with high odds is considered the loser, and the team with lower odds is considered the winner.
Let's take an example of a soccer match between Turkey and Hungary.
Understanding odds will help us here. As we can see the odds for Turkey to win are 1.64, the odds for a draw between both teams are 3.50, but the odds for Hungary to win are 5.40.
So you just have to look at these numbers and you will see that Turkey in this situation is the most likely winner of the match and Hungary by the losing side.
But if we pay attention to the odds of a draw in this match, we can see that it is more likely than the victory of Hungary, since the odds are lower than that which was predicted for their victory.
In other words, Turkey is more likely to win this match as they have the lowest odds.
The next likely outcome is a draw since in this case, the odds are slightly higher than for Turkey's victory but lower than for Hungary's.
And, of course, Hungary's victory is marked by the highest odds, and therefore we can assume that in this match Hungary becomes an outsider.
Based on this, if you made a bet on this match, then the most likely winner would be Turkey. If you bet on Turkey you are betting on the favorite to win.
How to Determine the Clear Favorite from Betting Odds?
So now you have learned how you can determine the winner of the match and the loser by the odds. But how do you identify a clear favorite?
The clear favorites are those teams that are more likely to get an easy victory in the match. It happens that in some matches, both teams play on an equal footing. However, the difference between the winner and the loser can be very small. Thus, the match can take any outcome.
Therefore, when you place a bet on a winner, you must be sure that the team or athlete is more likely to win. In this case, you need to choose a clearly better team than their rivals. But how do you determine this by the odds?
Let's take a look at the odds of two roughly equal rivals on the example of a football match between Belarus and Albania.
As we can see in this case, Albania is the favorite as they have the lowest odds. And Belarus has higher odds, so they are outsiders. But when we look at the odds, we see that both teams are playing at the same skill level. The odds for the victory of Albania is 2.65 for a draw 2.95 and for the victory of Belarus 2.70.
When you want to understand which team is stronger, you will look for two things. The first is the odds at which there is a discrepancy between the favorite and the loser. And the second is high odds for a draw, as this is a sign that a draw is unlikely.
In our case, the odds for all three outcomes of the match are very close to each other. Therefore, with just one glance at the decimal odds, you can understand that a match can lead to any of the three possible outcomes of a given match.
If you calculate the implied probability, then you can see that the odds for each final outcome of the match are similar:
- Albania to win - 37.7%
- The victory of Belarus - 37%
- Draw - 33%
As we can see, there is still a winner in this match, but only 0.7% separates them from their opponent. In this case, we cannot find a clear favorite.
Therefore, to compare, let's take an example of a football match between the Faroe Islands and Malta.
In this case, the odds of winning the Faroe Islands are equal to 1.57 with the odds for the victory of Malta equal to 6.20, but the chances of a draw in this match are 3.60. So if we compare the odds of the Faroe Islands 1.57 and the odds of Malta 6.20, then we can see that the Faroe Islands is the clear favorite in this match. The Faroe Islands have very low odds compared to Malta's odds. Thus, the Faroe Islands will most likely win a victory over Malta.
Let's try to calculate the implied probability:
- The Faroe Islands to victory - 63.7%
- Malta to victory - 16.1%
- Draw - 27.8%
Based on this, we see that the probability of victory for the Faroe Islands is almost four times higher than the probability of victory for Malta, which makes the Faroe Islands the clear favorite of this match.
Conclusion
Now that you have learned all the best bet odds tips, you are even closer to making informed and winning sports betting. But we still have some tips to help you level up your skills. Be sure to check out our other sports betting guides:
But if you are already itching to start making winning sports bets, then do not doubt your desires. After all, we all know that practice helps to learn better than theory. So don't wait long, visit the Parimatch website or download our sports betting app and win today!