Wager Mage
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What do +135 odds mean?

For favorites you are always risking the money to win $100, and with underdogs you risk $100 to win the amount. A -135 favorite means you must risk $135 to win $100 from the sportsbook. You either lose $135, win $100, or your wager is a push. A +350 underdog means you risk only $100, but you win $350.

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What Do the Odds Mean?

American odds always use a baseline value of $100. For favorites you are always risking the money to win $100, and with underdogs you risk $100 to win the amount. A -135 favorite means you must risk $135 to win $100 from the sportsbook. You either lose $135, win $100, or your wager is a push. A +350 underdog means you risk only $100, but you win $350. You either lose $100, win $350, or your wager is a push. American odds can easily be converted into other odds formats, such as decimal odds or fractional odds, using an odds calculator. Most sports betting sites present odds in multiple formats, making it easy to switch between formats and set your preferred format as the default option. We can also convert American odds into percentages. This is useful because it gives you a break-even percentage that you need to achieve long-term to win when betting certain odds. The most common odds are -110, so we will use it for our example. The question to ask is “how often will we need to win, when betting at -110 odds, to break even?” The answer is “enough so that you turn $110 into $210 often enough to overcome the juice” but it is expressed in percentages. So we take our $110 risked, divided by the ultimate $210 payout if our ticket cashes, and come up with .5238 or 52.38%. This means you must win at least 52.38% of your bets at -110 to break even. Here’s another example based on a +200 underdog. How often do they have to win for us to break even? We take a $100 risk and divide by the ultimate payout of $300 and get .3333, or 33.33%. So any +200 underdog that wins 34%+ of the time is a profitable bet. American odds are attached to point spreads in most American sports such as the NFL and NBA. Here’s an example from the NFL:

Atlanta Falcons +3 (-115)

Carolina Panthers -3 (+110)

American odds give the bookmaker influence over the point spread without changing the key number of 3. As we discussed, odds worse than -110 can hurt your break-even percentage and should be taken into account even when betting spreads. On the other hand, underdog plus odds help your bottom line.

Conclusion

American odds are convenient and fast once you get accustomed to them. Just like any other format, it is all personal preference. It is also easy to convert American odds to fractional or decimal odds, and can easily be done using our online odds converter.

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