In which odds should I bet on?

The term “odd” in sports betting means the inverse of the probability. You can find more information in these articles: “The odds on a bookmaker can vary?” and “What are the main types of odds?”, and most important “in which odds should i bet on?”.

Paulo Rebelo (Betting Academy official representative) quoted the following: “To gain money in sports betting, we have to bet with expected positive value.”

Most betting beginners won’t understand the meaning of this sentence but it makes sense since not all the odds are good to place bets. They can also be too low (and have value) or too high (and no value at all).

But it’s important to have in mind that:

A bet with a very low odd needs great responsibility, that is, you need to place a low stake to have a somehow high return (or positive), in case you lose the bet, the loss will be much higher than the winnings. But in terms of probabilities it’s going to be a much more likely winnable bet.

It’s important to understand the following table, it might be a great help to understand which the odds you should bet on are:

• Odds from 1.01 to 1.14 (99% to 86%) – odds considered VERY LOW
• Odds from 1.15 to 1.49 (87% to 66%) – odds considered LOW
• Odds from 1.50 to 1.99 (67% to 49%) – odds considered MEDIUM
• Everything that is greater than 2 – odds considered HIGH

Besides this odds classification, it’s necessary that you understand that “betting with value” is divided in:

• Betting with a fair expected value (null);
• Betting with a positive expected amount;

Betting with fair expected value

It means that we are going to bet the same value in two equal odds, for example:

What’s the probability of tossing a coin and heads is up? 50%, that is an odd of 2.00

What’s the probability of tossing a coin and tails is up? 50%, that is an odd of 2.00

If we bet £2 on these two probabilities, the expected value is fair because we have the same probability of winning and the return is the same.

Betting with positive expected value

It means we’re going to place a stake on a position that is favorable to us, that is, we bet always with value, as long as the bet is not null.

For example:

Team A is the favourite to win against Team B, at home, but I’m only going to bet with value on team A if the bookmakers offer me an odd greater than 1.53 (in this case, Team A has 65% of winning probability), although Team A is considered to be the favourite team and should be with an odd of 1.10 (90% probability of winning).