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Quick. It’s time to set all the betting odds for all of the games you are offering to your customers. Go ahead. Calculate them all. We’ll wait.
If you are running your own sportsbook, you probably recognize that calculating odds, setting lines, and then maintaining them is simply not possible if you want to be successful.
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That’s why you partner with PayPerHead.com, an industry-leading pay per head service that has been in the online bookmaking business since 1998.
Letting your PPH service calculate and manage odds is exactly why you partner with them in the first place. Still, it is important to understand how betting odds calculated.
Calculating Lines & Odds
PayPerHead has the sharpest lines in the industry. A team of professional oddsmakers utilize a number of sources to help them set an opening line for a game or event. They will use different computer betting models, algorithms, and more to establish opening lines.
Professional bettors and handicappers are usually first to the market. They search for early value in the opening lines and place bets accordingly. The casual bettor usually waits until closer to game time to place bets.
As the bets are coming in, the oddsmakers are working to do one thing – balance the amount of action taken in on both sides of the bet. In order to do so, oddsmakers will make line adjustments based on the action.
Take the following example.
Los Angeles Chargers -7 (-115)
Washington Football Team +7 (-105)
In most NFL games, the odds – the number in parentheses – is normally -110. Bettors must wager $110 to win $100. Now, oddsmakers can adjust the odds to encourage or discourage action on either side of a bet.
Notice here, the Chargers are a 7-point favorite. Washington has some injuries and is making a quarterback change. As a result, savvy bettors got in early and backed the Chargers.
In order to even out the action, oddsmakers adjusted the odds on Washington to -105 meaning bettors only have to wager $105 to win $100.
This is the benefit of having PayPerHead do the work for you. You get a staff of experienced professional oddsmakers that set lines and odds for you. You will be provided the sharpest lines in the industry, but you still have the option of customizing them since you know your players.
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Understanding Betting Odds
The easiest way to understand odds is that a bookie – or his staff of oddsmakers – establishes odds in order to make a profit no matter what the outcome of a sporting event. This is done by adjusting the true odds of various outcomes downward thus ensuring a profit.
Odds can be expressed in American, decimal, and fractional formats. The odds serve two purposes. One is to offer the implied probability of an outcome and the other is to indicate how much can be won by betting on a certain outcome.
American odds are given as either a positive or negative number. We can use the following NHL example to help understand implied probability.
Pittsburgh (-130)
Ottawa (+110)
The formula for positive odds is 100/Positive American odds + 100. In this case, Ottawa’s implied probability of winning is 100/110+100, which equals 47.6 percent.
On the other end, to calculate Pittsburgh’s implied probability we take the Negative American odds/Negative American odds + 100. Doing so, we get –(-130)/-(-130)+100 or 56.5 percent.
This makes sense as Pittsburgh is the favorite. We should also note that to win $100 betting on the Penguins we would have to wager $130. A $100 wager on Ottawa would win a profit of $110.
At the very least, you should understand how odds work and how they are calculated. The best thing you can do for your business is to partner with a world-class pay per head service like PayPerHead to take calculating and managing odds out of your hands.
