There are many different sports that you can play. The popularity of these sports in terms of games will vary depending on where you are. Betting on ice hockey, for example, is much more popular in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
However, all the best gaming companies will have most sports such as football, tennis, golf and ice hockey watching you. So how do you read the odds for all its sports?
football Odds
The biggest market for football matches is Match Winners and for this you will see three sets of odds. A set of odds will refer to the home team, also known as "1" in game terms. The second set of odds is for the away team and is known as '2' and the third set of odds is too draw and this is known as 'x'.
Based on your understanding of how odds work from the information above, you can quickly determine which results are most likely to happen and which results are considered highly unlikely.
Take Chelsea against Newcastle United in the Premier League for example. Using British odds, as they would in the UK where the match is played, we find Chelsea to 2/9, Newcastle United to 12/1 and a draw to 5/1.
This tells you that Chelsea are big favorites to win this match and Newcastle United are big underdogs. You will find many more gaming markets for football but when it comes to understanding odds, Match Winners is a good place to start. You can see how the modeling of football match results is calculated for fixed odds.
Golf Odds
With golf odds we will switch to decimal odds as this is a sport that is played all over the planet, with various international and domestic matches taking place throughout the year. But the first major golf competition of the calendar year is The Masters.
Unlike the soccer and tennis odds listed above, the odds of golf tournaments are more like a list. Every player who plays in the tournament will be listed and next to their name you will find the odds for them to win the tournament.
If you look at the odds for the 2019 Masters, both Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth are at 11.00, and Dustin Johnson at 12.00 and Rory McIlroy at 13.00, along with Justin Thomas.
The first thing you will notice is that the odds are much higher than those to win a football or tennis match. Golf is not a one-off event and major tournaments are played over four days. There are many players who are capable of winning, which you can see from the names above because the odds are so close between the players.
Therefore, you know by looking at these odds that despite the potentially good return from backing a favorite to win the 2019 Masters, there are actually many players who are considered good enough to win the tournament and that is where the risk comes in.
Odds on Ice Hockey
In our last example of sports to understand odds, we will look at ice hockey. This is a sport that is played all over the world, but the most popular is arguably the National Hockey League in the US and Canada.
As you may have guessed from previous examples, when we look at the NHL, we will use American odds. When playing in the NHL, you will find that you have no choice but to use American odds, especially when betting on the moneyline, discussed above.
If we take the Winnipeg Jets against the Pittsburgh Penguins as an example, the Jets are at +110 and the Penguins -130 at the moneyline. There is no market for a draw and by using the information from the American Odds section above you can immediately see that the Penguins are favorites as they have a (-) symbol in front of one of the numbers while the Jets are underdogs because they have a (+) sign in front of the number .
You also know that you have to place a bet of $ 1,300 on the Penguins to potentially win 1,000 and a bet of $ 1,000 on the Jets to win $ 1,100. You can also conclude that, since the Jets number is quite low, they are not a huge underdog and could certainly cause a bang.
Understanding gambling in a simple way will help you a lot with your gambling. If you do not have a basic understanding of how odds work, what they mean and different forms of odds, you should not play. Use the information above to familiarize yourself with the odds before you place a bet and never bet more than you can afford.
