What are Decimal, Fractional and American Betting Odds?
What are Decimal, Fractional and American Betting Odds? - Differences & Examples
If you’ve ever placed a bet here at Stake Sportsbook, you’ll notice that there are a number of different ways you can have your odds displayed. Do you know exactly what they are and what they represent, though? In this guide, we’ll break down the differences between the three major odds formats, decimal, fractional, and American.
What are Sports Betting Odds?
First up, what exactly are sports betting odds? If you’ve never placed a bet on live sports before, you might not know exactly what you’re seeing, the slang and terminology you’re reading, and how to make your selection. All you need to know is that odds represent the probability of the different outcomes of a tournament or match and can be used to calculate the potential payout that you will expect to win if it comes in once you’ve learned how to read odds.
What are Decimal, Fractional and American Odds & Examples?
At Stake, there are three main ways that these odds are represented. Depending on where you are from, a different type may be more common than others. For example, you have American odds that are most popular in the US for sports like American football; decimal odds popular with most of Europe, Canada, and Australia with different sports like basketball and ice hockey; and fractional odds that are most commonly found in the UK on the most popular sport there, soccer. So what do all these look like and how do they work?
How Do Decimal Odds Work?
The decimal format of odds is probably the most popular globally and much of that is down to their sheer simplicity, especially compared to the other formats. To work out your total return should your decimal odds bet win, including your initial stake, you just need to multiply your stake by the decimal values.
It’s also easy to tell what the most likely or favourite outcome is - the lower the number, the more likely it is! Here’s an example of a decimal odds moneyline bet:
| Selection | Stake | Return (Including Stake) |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool - 1.80 | $10 | $18.00 |
| Draw - 3.50 | $10 | $35.00 |
| Manchester City - 5.00 | $10 | $50.00 |
How Do Fractional Odds Work?
The UK’s favourite way of formatting odds, fractional odds have the potential to take you back to math class. They are a little less intuitive than the decimal representation as they require a little bit of basic maths in order to get to the bottom of what they mean. Not that it’s too hard, though.
In the case of fractional odds, the numerator (the first number in the fraction) is what your profit would be based on if the denominator (the second number) was your stake. So, 10/1 would mean a profit of $10 from a $1 bet, with a total of $11 return. However, they won’t always be so instantly obvious. Here’s what our previous example would look like in fractional format:
| Selection | Stake | Return (Including Stake) |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool - 4/5 | $10 | $18.00 |
| Draw - 5/2 | $10 | $35.00 |
| Manchester City - 4/1 | $10 | $50.00 |
How Do American Odds Work?
The USA, much like the UK and its love of fractional odds, has its very own format that very few other countries use. They’re imaginatively known as the American format of odds and they are entirely unique from the previous two kinds.
So, instead of being laid out as decimals or a fraction, these odds are displayed with a (+) or (-) at the start, followed by a number. In these, the odds with a (+) represent the amount you would win on top of your stake if you bet $100. If it is a (-), that number represents what you would need to bet to win $100 on top of your stake.
So, a $100 winning +150 bet would net you $150 profit and $250 in total. Conversely, a -150 bet would need you to bet $150 to get $100 in profit and a total of $250 back. Obviously, this isn’t how sports bettors tend to operate, so we’ll take another look at our previous example of betting action on a Liverpool v Manchester City game.
| Selection | Stake | Return (Including Stake) |
|---|---|---|
| Liverpool -125 | $10 | $18.00 |
| Draw +250 | $10 | $35.00 |
| Manchester City +400 | $10 | $50.00 |
Differences Between Betting Odd Types
As you can see from the example provided above, while all the major formats look very different from one another, they all relate to each other in some way. It can sometimes seem a bit more difficult to do the conversion of American or decimal odds to fractional but, even if you’re not something of a maths whizz able to do it mentally, there are betting calculators that can do the conversion for you.
The only real difference is how they’re presented and it depends on what the people betting prefer. All odds can be added to different tickets like parlays and handicaps, and can be used in different betting strategies and markets like prop betting, spread betting, and same game multi-bet builders.
Benefits of Each Type of Odds Format
As we already mentioned, there is very little between each of these different formats. At Stake, we offer all three of them for every one of our online sports betting markets, and they will never change the outcome or payout depending on which you choose. However, that isn’t to say that there aren’t pros or benefits to each format.
Decimal
The big benefit of the decimal digit odds is the ease at which you can work out your return. There’s a reason they’re the most globally popular odds. Just do the quick multiplication of your stake by the odds provided and you’ve got yourself your return.
Fractional
While the fractional format may have fallen out of style a little, there is still a pretty big benefit. You can quite easily tell the value of the odds presented. If your first number is smaller than the second in the fraction, you’re not going to get a big return. The other way around? There’s value in those odds!
American
When it comes to the American odds format, the real benefit of using them is the ease with which you can often identify the favourite in any given match up. If there’s an out-and-out favourite, these will always be easily identified by the use of the minus symbol at the start of the odds.
Sports Promotions, VIP Club & Responsible Betting
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