With esports betting becoming more and more popular, it’s good to know about the different types of esports odds. These odds come in several forms. In this article I will take you through the basics so that you may fully understand what the various esports betting sites are showing you.

1. Betting Odds As A Percentage Against
2. Betting Odds As Percentages

The winning odds for those bets is 32.43% in European Roulette, and 31.58% in the American version. Consecutively, this bet will bring you more winnings – the payout for Column and Dozen is 2:1. Odds & Payouts for Inside Bets. Inside bets include betting on a single number, or on a small group of them. Negative odds - Firstly multiply the american odds by -1 and use the positive value in the following formula: american odds divided by (the american odds plus 100), multiplied by 100 to give a percentage e.g. American odds of -300 = (300/(300+100)). 100 = 75%.

The three main types of esports betting odds are the following:

1. Decimal Odds

• A minus symbol in betting odds tells you that you need to wager that much in order to win a $100 profit. A $100 bet at -110 would earn you a $91, while a $10 bet at -110 would earn you $9.10.
• Step 1: 100/odds or odds/100 this step breaks the American odds down into the decimal amount that’s won on the wager. 100/110 = 0.91 (again that numbers rounded up a little but you get the idea). Essentially this means that you’ll win 91% of the amount you risk.

If odds are displayed instead of the pay out dividend, the calculation must always include the stake, i.e. 9/2 (45/10 or $5.50 or 5.5 or +450). Converts to 4.5 to 1 and totals 5.5, so.

Decimal odds are called decimal because they come in decimal form.

Examples include: 1.80, 2.40, 4.00 and so on.

The meaning of these odds is very simple: your total returns are whatever the odds show you multiplied by the amount you wagered.

So if you bet $5 that team A will win the match and team A’s odds of winning are 1.80, you get a return of 5 * 1.80 = $9. If you wager $20 on a team whose odds are 4.00, the amount you get in case of a win will be 20 * 4.00 = $80.

Two things you’ll want to know here is how to convert odds to percentage and how to convert odds to probability.

Decimal Odds to Percentage

Another way of understanding decimal odds is using percentages.

So instead of 1.80, think of this as 180%. Instead of 2.40, think 240%. And 4.00 would actually mean 400%.

Of course, these percentages include the amount you’ve wagered. So it’s not 180% profit but 180% returns. The profit is actually just 80%. In the second case, the profit is 140%. In the third it’s 300%.

So you always have to decrease your initial amount or 100% in order to find what you’re actually making.

Decimal Odds to Probability

If you want to find out the win probability of a given bet in the bookmaker’s assessment, just do it this way: 2.00 is exactly 50%. Anything below that is less than 50%. Anything above that is more than 50%.

The general formula for turning decimal odds to probability is this: 100/odds.

If a team’s odds of winning are 5.00, their estimated chance of winning is 20%.

Of course, all of this is true in the bookmaker’s assessment. But that doesn’t mean it’s 100% correct. In fact, sometimes you will find the real favorite regarded as the underdog, simply because the bookmaker doesn’t understand what’s going on. These are the situations in which you can make a lot of money.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t be worried about what the bookmaker is telling you and simply assess the situation yourself, using your own esports knowledge and seeking bets that give you good risk/reward ratios.

2. Fractional Odds

Fractional odds look like this: 5/1, 8/1, 2/1 and so on. Their general form is x/y, which means this: you make a profit of x dollars for every y dollars you wager.

So in the first example (5/1), you make $5 for every $1 you wager. And that’s just your profit. The total amount you get back is actually $6 (your profit plus the dollar you wagered).

Just like with decimal odds, you’ll want to know how to convert odds to percentage and how to convert odds to probability.

Fractional Odds to Percentage

When turning fractional odds to percentage in order to calculate profitability, the general rule is to determine how many dollars you get for each dollar you wagered and then multiply that with 100. That will give you your profit in percentages.

So in the first case (5/1), you’d get a profit of 500%, while your total returns would be 600%.

But let’s take a more difficult example, such as 7/2. In this case, you’d get a profit of $7 for each $2 you wagered. To figure out the percentages, just divide 7 by 2 and then multiply with 100. What you’d get is 700/2 or 350%.

Fractional Odds to Probability

If you want to turn fractional odds to probability in order to figure out the win probability of a given team according to the bookmaker, just use the following formula: given the odds of n/m, the number you’re looking for can be found like this: (m/(m+n)) * 100.

For example: 4/1 would give us (1/(4+1)) * 100 or (1/5) * 100 or 100/5 or 20%.

3. American Odds

These types of odds are the most unusual and difficult to grasp at first, because it’s hard to deduce what they mean unless someone explains them to you.

And their meaning is this: when you see the minus sign (-), that’s the favorite. And the number followed by it represents the amount you need to wager to make a profit of $100.

When you see the plus sign (+), that’s the underdog. And the number followed by it represents the profit you’ll make for every $100 you wager.

For example:

Team A: -760

Team B: +585

If you wanted to bet on team A, for each $760 you wagered you’d make a profit of $100, meaning that you’d get a total of $860 back.

If you wanted to bet on team B, for each $100 you wagered you’d make a profit of $585, meaning that you’d get a total of $685 back.

American Odds to Percentage

For underdogs, transforming American odds to percentage is simple: the odds themselves constitute the profit percentage. So in the above case, the percentage is 585%. Because you’re wagering $100 and making a profit of $585, So the percentage of the total return is actually 685%.

For favorites, what you do is this: you divide 10,000 by the number associated with them and you get the percentage you’re looking for.

In the example above, the result would be 10,000/760 = 13,15%. This would be your profit. So in total, you’d get back 113,15% of what you wagered.

American Odds to Probability

For the underdogs, the win probability can be obtained using the same method used for fractional odds.

So in our example, we’d have 5.85/1 and that would give us (1/(1+5.85)) * 100 or (1/6.85) * 100 or 100/6.85 or 14.6%. To calculate the win probability for the favorite, just subtract that from 100% and voila!

If you want to learn more about Dota 2 odds, League of Legends odds or any other kind of esports odds, just check out our guides!

When it comes to gambling, you won’t be able to find two more essential concepts than odds and probability. They are what makes the entire thing work. Odds are used to calculate both the payout a gambler can expect to receive from a winning wager and the implied odds of an outcome happening. Probability is just the likelihood that a given result will occur.

One essential concept to remember is that while probability and odds are both related and may seem very similar, they aren’t exactly the same thing. Probability represents the likelihood that something will happen.

It is calculated by dividing the number of wanted results by the total number of possible outcomes. Odds, on the other hand, present a ratio of wanted results to unwanted outcomes.

There are three primary ways of expressing odds. They are decimal, fractional, and moneyline (or American). No matter what odds format you use, these three types of odds all represent the same thing.

In fact, it is easy to convert one format to another, as you will see further down this guide.

Beyond governing how the entire world of sports betting works, odds play a vital role in helping a sports bettor decide if a bet is worth placing or not. All odds carry with them an implied probability, which we then compare to the real probability to determine whether a wager possesses positive value or not. A rule to live by in the gambling world is only to place bets with positive value.

Let’s say we are gambling on the outcome of a single coin flip. Because there are only two sides of a coin, we know that each result has a 50% probability of occurring. For the sake of this example, we are betting tails. We can calculate this like so:

Our desired outcome is for the coin to land on tails, so there is one desired outcome.

We divide the amount of desired outcomes by the total amount of outcomes possible, then multiply the result by one hundred to get the probability. The formula looks like this:

1/2 = 0.5 X 100 = 50%

Now that we know the probability, let’s look at the odds being offered on this bet. For some reason, the odds for heads are set at -300, while tails are +260. This would be a very odd occurrence for such a bet but bear with me. Now we must calculate the implied probability of both lines being offered and determine which bet contains the most value.

First, we will solve the implied probability for heads. I find it easiest to convert the moneyline value to decimal odds before converting to a percentage:

Now we take our decimal odds and convert them to a percentage:

This means the implied odds are a much higher percentage than the actual 50% probability that we already calculated. A bet on heads here would be a terrible decision with a negative value.

Now we will solve for tails:

In this instance, the probability of tails landing far outweighs the implied probability determined by the odds being offered. This is a high-value bet.

Calculating the real probability and comparing that number to the implied probability set by the odds is the primary strategy with which one should approach every bet.

Understanding how to calculate betting odds and find value bets is essential to your long-term success in gambling.

In this guide, we will show you how to convert any format of odds to any other, as well as how to find the implied odds from any type of odds.

Types of Odds Formats

Decimal

Decimal odds are the favorite way to express betting lines in Europe. They are the most straightforward method of communicating odds. The decimal value is the amount that will be returned per each dollar bet. What makes this system particularly helpful is that both the amount staked and the winnings are included.

So let’s say we made a $10 bet at 3.5 odds. Our total return for winning that wager would be $35. $25 is the profit, with the other $10 being the return of our stake.

Fractional

Fractional odds are most commonly found at racetracks or for futures bets when there are entire pools of participants that can possibly win. This format expresses odds in the form of fractions such as 4/1, which would be pronounced “four-to-one.” Four-to-one odds means that you will earn $4 for every $1 that you stake.

Sometimes the fractions will be less straightforward. You may see numbers like 9/2, for example. To calculate the return on a 9/2 bet, let’s pretend that we bet $20 at 9/2 odds for a horse race.

Unlike decimals, fractional odds provide the total payout. They calculate the winnings only. To determine the total amount that you will receive for a winning bet, simply solve the equation above and add $20 to the total. So the formula looks like this:

Moneyline/American

The moneyline system of presenting odds utilizes negative and positive three-digit values to represent which bets are favored or underdogs. A positive number means that a play is considered the underdog. The quantity after the “+” is the amount that will be won for every $100 bet.

On the other end of the spectrum, favorites are displayed with a negative value such as -350. This means that you must bet $350 to win $100. Moneyline odds only calculate the amount potentially won on a bet, and not the total payout.

Calculating Odds

To learn how to calculate odds, let’s make things a bit more interesting with a switch from a coin toss to a roll of a six-sided die. The wager that we are making is that the die will land on 3. In this example, we are looking at one desired outcome. If there are six possible outcomes on a roll of the die, and only one outcome is desirable, that means there are five undesirable results.

Because we are calculating the odds, not the probability, we are expressing a ratio of desirable results to undesirable results. In this example, the ratio would look like this:

That means there’s one chance that we will win versus five that we will not. It is important to keep in mind that we are not calculating how likely we are to win, only the ratio of good results to bad.

Now we can calculate the odds against us winning, as well as the odds in favor of a win. To calculate the odds in favor, simply divide the one possible desired outcome by the total outcomes possible.

Conversely, the odds against our win can be solved the same way:

Converting Probability to Odds

You may want to calculate an odds ratio based on a particular probability. In order to solve this equation, we will need to express the probability as a fraction. Using the same six-sided die from before, the possibility of our number landing formatted as a fraction is 1/6.

Next, just subtract the numerator from the denominator:

The answer once again gives us the number of unwanted possible results. Now we just present the odds in ratio form, bringing us to 1:5 odds.

To solve for probability given an odds ratio, we merely reverse the equation. First, we put our odds ratio in fraction form:

Add the numerator and denominator together, which will give us the total number of potential results:

Last, just put the number of wanted outcomes over the total outcomes possible, and we’ve got our probability again!

Converting Odds

There are numerous odds calculators available online that are probably faster to use, but it’s still best that you understand the formulas for converting different odds types to other formats. Below are all of the equations required to transform any kind of odds to any other arrangement.

The odds always stay the same; they are just represented differently. At times, being able to convert formats can be extremely helpful, especially when switching to decimals when solving for implied probability.

Moneyline to Decimal

To convert positive moneyline odds, the equation is:

(Moneyline odds/100) + 1 = Decimal odds

To convert negative moneyline odds, the equation is:

(100/Moneyline odds) + 1 = Decimal odds

Moneyline to Fractional

Betting Odds As A Percentage Against

To convert positive moneyline odds, the equation is:

(Moneyline odds/100) = Fractional Odds

To convert negative moneyline odds, the equation is:

-100/Moneyline odds = Fractional Odds

Fractional to Decimal

(Numerator/Denominator) + 1 = decimal odds

Fractional to Moneyline

(Numerator/Denominator)

If the result is greater than or equal to 1:

100 X (Answer) = Moneyline odds

If the result is less than 1:

-100/(Answer) = Moneyline odds

Decimal to Fractional

Decimal odds – 1 = X

Put X over 1

Example:

• 3.5 – 1 = 2.5
• 2.5/1 = 5/2
• 3.5 decimal odds = 5/2 fractional

Decimal to Moneyline

If decimal odds are greater than 2:

100 X (decimal odds – 1) = Moneyline odds

If decimal odds are less than 2:

-100/(decimal odds -1) = Moneyline odds

Calculating Implied Probability

To make use of our calculations solving for real probability, we must also determine the implied probability. Implied probability converts odds into a percentage.

Betting Odds As Percentages

That percentage can then be compared to the actual likelihood of an event happening, which allows for intelligent decision making.

In the early coin toss example, we converted our odds from moneyline to decimal before solving for the implied probability. This is not necessary but is often the easiest way to complete the calculation.

From Decimal Odds

Finding implied probability from decimal odds is extremely easy. Let’s say the decimal odds are 2.5.

• 1/2.5 = 0.4
• 0.4 X 100 = 40% Implied Probability

From Moneyline Odds

Calculating implied probability for a -150 favored moneyline bet:

• (- (-150)/((-(-150)) + 100 =
• 150/(150 + 100) = 150/250 = 0.6
• 0.6 X 100 = 60% Implied Probability

Calculating implied probability for an +250 underdog moneyline bet:

• 100/(250 + 100)
• 100/350 = 0.2857
• 0.2857 X 100 = 28.57% Implied Probability

From Fractional Odds

Denominator/(denominator + numerator) X 100

• Calculate the implied probability of 15/2 odds.
• 2/(2 + 15) X 100 = 2/17 X 100 =
• 0.12 X 100 = 12 % Implied Probability

In Conclusion

Understanding what odds and probabilities are, and being able to calculate both, are fundamental skills that anyone aspiring to find any success in sports gambling must possess. The two concepts are closely related and always intertwined, but they are not the same thing.

Odds are represented in ratios of wanted results to unwanted results, while probability is a calculation of wanted outcomes divided by all possible results. Whatever number that calculation produces is the percentage of likelihood that the outcome we want will occur.

To judge whether a bet is worth making or not, calculate both the real probability and the implied probability given by the odds being offered. If the actual likelihood is higher than what’s being suggested by the odds, that bet possesses value and should be wagered on. However, if the implied probability is higher, the gamble has a negative value and should be avoided.

Some of these concepts may seem confusing now, but the more you focus on value and calculating odds and probabilities, the easier betting becomes. No longer will you fall for suckers bets offering negative value, nor will you merely make picks based on who you think should win.

The sooner your betting habits become all about identifying valuable odds and betting accordingly, the sooner you’ll see your bankroll start increasing. And that entire process begins with calculating betting odds, so you’ve come to the right place.