7.9.08

Understanding Money Lines - A Primer

Sunday, September 07, 2008  – by
When I first started capping games, odds were explained to me in decimal format. For example, my favorite book, on an average game where the line is a touchdown or less is 1.91. Which means $100 on bet on the winning side will yield a return of $191. Easy right? Well, I started betting in the fall, late October-early November. At the end of the football season, I rolled my new-found knowledge into the NBA and NCAA Hoops. And then the Spring came and MLB raised the curtain on their season. I'm not a MLB fan but was interested to see that the lines of their games weren't in decimal format. They were in money line format.

Don't get me wrong once they were explained to me, they were easy to understand. Here goes... Lets say you want to bet on TEAM A and the money line is -110. What this means is that you must risk $110 to win $100. But lets say the money line was +110. This would mean that a bet of $100 would return $110. Once again, easy right? But what if you don't have $100? What if you just want to know what the decimal line is because that's easier? Is there a way that I can convert that money line to the decimal line? The answer is of course you can! WARNING: If you are not a math geek or have a math-phobia, this next section may not make sense or may confuse you. However, the principles are easy to understand. Follow me...

To convert MoneyLines to Decimal style odds we use two separate formulas. One for underdogs, the other for favorites. First things first, MINUS means Favorite and PLUS means Underdog.

UNDERDOGS: [For this example assume money line is +275]
  1. Add 100 to MoneyLine. [275+ 100 = 375]
  2. Divide the result above by 100 [375/100=3.75]
  3. There you have it. The decimal odds are 3.75

FAVORITES: [For this example assume money line is -115]

  1. Divide the number 10000 by the MoneyLine. [10000/115=86.96]
  2. Add 100 to the result above [86.96+100=186.96]
  3. Divide the result from 2. by 100 [186.96/100=1.8696]
  4. The decimal odds are 1.8696

That's it. Simple. Right?