1. How Does The Plus Minus Work In Betting Odds
2. How Does The Plus Minus Work In Betting Results
3. How Does Plus And Minus Work In Betting Football
4. Plus Minus In Sports Betting

Getting action on a game can add a thrill factor that is hard to find in any other aspect of life. Making some money while doing it, well, it doesn’t get much better than that. But what happens when you jump onto your favorite sportsbook and they bombard you with a series of numbers (odds) which are meant to represent the chances of your team winning, when all it really looks like is math on steroids!

If this is how you feel when your trying to place a wager, read on. The following is a simple guide on how to read sports odds and give yourself the best chance of taking home some cash.

Now that you have the basics of how odds work covered, we wanted to give you a few last bits of advice to really enjoy your new betting odds knowledge. If you do live betting, don’t forget that you can enjoy over/unders, Moneyline, Point Spreads, and props even with in-game betting. Find a bookmaker that updates their odds frequently,. What does -7 and +7 mean in NFL betting? A spread of minus-seven (-7) means that a is favored to win the game by a touchdown (technically, a touchdown and the extra point). A team favored by -7 must win the game by eight or more points to win the bet. If the team wins by seven, the result is a “push” and the bet.

What does +200 mean? +200 is a specific set of odds attached to a given sports event. These are in the form of ‘American’ odds’. The +200 represents the amount a bettor would win if they had wagered $100. A profit of $200 and a total payout of $300. Other types of odds are Decimal and Fractional.

What Types of Odds Do Sportsbooks Use?

• The minus sign shows you which team is favored. When you bet on the favorite you get worse payout odds on your bet since they’re more likely to win. The team with a negative number (like -110) is the favorite. The number next to the minus sign is the amount you must bet to win $100 in profit.
• The favorite in a matchup, indicated by a minus (-) sign, will have a given number of points taken away from its final score, while the underdog, known by its plus (+) sign, will have the same number of points added to its final score.

Globally sportsbooks use one of three types of odds:

1. American
2. Fractional
3. Decimal

There are positives and negatives in the use of all of them. One thing is for sure, if you are going to bet on sport, you will run into one of these odds formats and you NEED to know how to read, understand and eventually capitalise on them.

This article will focus heavily on American odds.

How to Read American Odds

The basis of American odds is that they reflect two different aspects to the bet:

• in the case of the underdog: how much money a gambler will win if they bet $100,
• in the case of the favorite: how much a gambler needs to bet to win $100.

Quite a big difference between the two, and definitely a little tricky to navigate at first.

The following is an example of the moneyline market using American Odds, which was offered by a sportsbook during the NBA playoffs

Note:As the Portland Trail Blazers are the home team they are listed second in this market. Interestingly in many international or offshore sports the home team is listed first. Perhaps in this case the home court advantage is what has led the sports books to install the Trail Blazers as the favoured team.

We can tell Portland has favoritism as the odds have a minus sign at the front. Any time a team has minus sign out front, the bettor knows they will be receiving less than a 2 – 1 payout figure. In fact in this case, to win $100 wagering on the Trail Blazers you would need to stake $128.

In this particular example, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the outsider or underdog as they have odds with a plus sign at the front (plus money). This means if you bet $100 on OKC then you would collect $105 profit, a total return of $205.

Clearly the bookmakers considered the game to be potentially close and therefore odds were reasonably tight. As it turned out the Trailblazers dominated the second half and ran out convincing winners 114 – 92. Moneyline bettors who took Portland, go to bed with a tidy profit. In actual fact the margin of victory is irrelevant as the Moneyline requires just one condition be met, a win.

How Does The Plus Minus Work In Betting Odds

How to Do the American Odds Math?

Despite the American odds looking confusing at first sight, the underlying math is not too difficult. Having said that it could be much more user friendly.

Another key point to remember is that American odds do not include the original stake in the calculation. They only reflect the profit from the wager. The original stake needs to be added to reflect the total payout or total return figure.

Referring back to the previous example the following math applies:

The issue with this way of reporting odds is that the bettor has to do more than one level of calculation themselves. While it’s all fairly straightforward it does affect the user experience negatively.

How are American Odds Different to Decimal Odds?

The decimal odds system, which is being increasingly used by sports bookmakers across the globe, removes the extra step of calculation required by the bettor when American Odds are in use. It is a much simpler method to offer odds on the identical market and immediately gives a total return or payout figure by using one simple multiplication.

The NBA example used earlier in the article using decimal odds would read as follows:

The payout calculation is where the ease of decimal odds is highlighted:

Underdog:

Favorite:

It is clear that the decimal method is a much simpler way for sport bettors to calculate their potential winnings than than the American odds system.

Another downside to using American odds is that they are almost unusable when working with parlay betting. A parlay or multiplier is where a bettor takes classic bet types and parlays several of these into one wager. In order to multiply the individual odds to create the parlay payout figure, the moneyline is first converted to decimal odds. Highlighting the extra step of math sportsbooks require bettors to do when they solely offer odds in the American format.

How Does The Plus Minus Work In Betting Results

It is hoped that one day soon most sports books will offer decimal odds instead of American odds. As legalized sports betting explodes in popularity across the US and more mobile sports betting platforms come online, it is hoped that at the very least, functionality to switch between types of odds is added to all betting apps. After all, sports betting is about entertainment, and user experience should be the number one focus from all corporate bookmakers.

How Does Plus And Minus Work In Betting Football

How to Identify Sportsbook’s Margin When Using American Odds

Sportsbooks clearly need to make money to continue to operate and therefore it is understandable that they will take a cut along the way. Understanding when that cut is too large is critical in giving yourself the best chance of turning a profit.

When dealing with American odds on 50/50 markets like total points or point spread the margin is quite simple to recognise.

For example the market on an NBA game may be offering an over/under points total of +/-214.5 points.

In this market, without any bookmaker edge, the odds would read +100 for each option. That is a doubling of the bettors money based on the market essentially being a coin flip. $100 invested would return a profit of $100. Clearly this is not the case in reality. If you spot a market like this through a sportsbook promotion (a rare occasion), then load up!

The sportsbook is only offering -110 meaning a bettor would need to invest $110 to return a profit of $100. This equates to approximately a 4.5% margin (vig) for the book. To be profitable long term the bettor would have to correctly pick this market 53% of the time. A tall order.

Some books will offer a smaller vig, for example -108 but others will be less generous and wind their margin out to numbers like -112. These numbers are often seen in live betting markets due to the greater perceived risk the sportsbook take on with live markets.

It is best, as a rule, to avoid markets where the market is skewed too far in the favor of the book.

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Before you hit the confirm bet button on your mobile sportsbook make sure you are fully aware of what price you are actually buying. While American Odds can at times be confusing there is still an art to spotting and cashing in on value. Best of luck!

Good Luck and as always, gamble responsibly!

Plus Minus In Sports Betting

The plus (+) and minus (-) in sports betting can refer to either the point spread or betting odds. In terms of the spread, the ' - ' always refers to the favorite and the ' + ' always refers to the underdog. For example, you can bet the Dallas Cowboys as a -7 point favorite to beat the Green Bay Packers or the Packers as a +7 point underdog. If you bet the Cowboys -7 and they win by more than seven points, you win your bet. Similarly, if you bet the Packers +7, as long as they lose by less than seven points or win outright, you win your bet.

It's a similar case for the betting odds, though favorites don't always have a ' - ,' especially in sports like baseball, hockey or soccer where final results are often decided by one run or one goal. It's especially the case in soccer since matches can end in draws, whereas a winner is declared in almost every other sport because of overtime rules. However, in most cases, the favorite will have a ' - ' in front of its moneyline odds while the underdog will always have a '+ .'

For an example of moneyline betting odds, you can bet the Eagles as a -150 favorite to win or the Giants as a +180 underdog to win. If you bet $100 on the Eagles to win at -150, you would net a payout of $166.70. If you bet on the Giants to win at +180, the payout would be $280 because they are an underdog.

For something like soccer, Arsenal could be a +150 favorite against Everton as a +190 underdog, while the draw would be set at +220. In this case, the payout would be decent for every situation mainly because the teams are even and there are three possible results compared to just two for something like football (unless they go scoreless in overtime). In this case where both teams have a ' + ' in front of their odds, the team with the lower number is the favorite. The lower number also means a lower payout, which is always the case for betting the favorite on the moneyline. A $100 bet on Arsenal +150 would net $250, while a $100 bet on Everton +190 would net $290. Going further, a $100 bet on the draw at +220 would payout $320.