For most British punters, odds are best understood as being fractional. It’s simple to work out that if something is 5/1 then for every £1 you bet you’ll get £5 back. Yet as more and more foreign bookmakers are entering the UK market they’re also offering decimal odds more readily than fractional ones, confusing people that have never dealt with them before.

• 1 5 As A Decimal Betting Numbers
• 1 5 As A Decimal Betting Rules
• 1 5 As A Decimal Betting Line
• 1/5 As A Decimal Betting

In actuality, decimal odds are just as easy to understand as their fractional cousins. The decimal format is used across Europe, with only British bookmakers steering away from them. The key thing to remember is that the unit stake of 1 is always included, so decimal odds of 1.97 mean that you’ll get 97p back on top of your £1 stake.

Decimal Odds

The decimal way of displaying odds is the favoured manner of doing so across continental Europe as well as in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Canada. Defectively any country that uses metric measurement will generally use decimal odds.

Learning how they work is also useful for you’re looking at a betting exchange, therefore, but also if you want to place bets when you’re abroad and don’t want to have to convert things into fractional odds.

Original Bet 100 x Decimal Odds 1.82 = Your Potential Winnings $182. Your potential net profit is $82, a stake of $100 and $82 in winnings. Let’s look at another example. You are backing Tottenham, a big underdog in their match for $100 at 2.75 decimal odds. The math for your bet. The probability of rolling a 5 or 6 is the fraction of the number of events over total events or 2/ (2+4), which is 1/3, 0.33 or 33%. When gambling, odds are often the ratio of winnings to the stake and you also get your wager returned. So wagering 1 at 1:5 pays out 6 (5 + 1). The simple formular to convert from fraction odds to decimal is to divide the numerator (top number) by the denominator (bottom number) and add 1. The 1 represents the returned stake which is included in the decimal odds but not in the fraction odds. Odds of 2/1, will be 2 divided by 1, which gives 2, then add 1 equals 3. Odds of 9/4, will be 9 divided by 4, which gives 2.25, then add 1 equals 3.25. The 3.00 indicates your return including stake should you bet 1 Euro or 1 GBP on this particular selection. Decimal odds are getting increasingly popular as they explain the exact return. Fractional Odds. You might commonly find fractional odds in the UK, with the prices expressed in a format such as 2/1. In decimal terms, this would be 3.00.

Simply put, decimal odds give you the payout amount that includes the stake. As a result, the decimal odds of an event are the same as fractional odds converted to decimal and adding 1. Even odds, therefore, come out as 2.00 in decimal. If you opted for something like 4/1 then it would be displayed as 5.00, whereas 1/4 would be 1.25.

Whilst chucking formula into the conversation is unlikely to make things easier, here’s how to think of decimal odds:

Return = Initial Wager x Decimal Value

In other words, returns on a £100 bet on Liverpool to beat Manchester United at decimal odds of 2.00 would be £100 x 2.00, or £200. To phrase it differently, simply multiply your stake by the odds and you’ll get your return. So a £100 bet on a wager with odds of 1.25 would return £125. That’s why they’re favoured on the exchange, because they’re so easy to calculate.

Working Out The Odds

Odds are another way of discussing the implied chances of something happening. Let’s say that darts player A is going up against darts player B and the bookmakers have decided that A has an 80% chance of winning. This obviously means that B has a 20% chance of winning, meaning that our fair bookie needs to price it up 80% / 20%.

In order to come up with the decimal odds our bookmaker takes the total chance of all outcomes happening, or 100, then divides it by the 80% chance they think player A has got. 100/80 is 1.25, so they’re player A’s decimal odds. For player B, meanwhile, we divide 100 by 20%, or 100/20. That equals 5.00, so they’re that player’s odds.

In order to figure out the probability given to an event, you simply need to reverse engineer that line of thinking. If something has been given odds of 6.00 then the math is 100/6, which works out at 16.6%. The reason 2.00 is the equivalent of Evens is that 100/2.00 equals 50%. Odds of 1.5 in decimal means the probability of that happening is 100/1.5, or 66.6%.

Decimal v Fractional Odds

The trouble with decimal odds is that they seem more complex than they actually are for people that have grown up using fractional odds in betting. In reality, of course, it’s much easier to figure out your total return using decimal odds as opposed to fractional, because with fractional odds you need to add your stake in afterwards.

To put it another way, fractional odds are good at working out your net profit, whereas decimal odds are best for figuring out your total return for your bet. In decimal odds, Evens is 2.00. That means anything above 2.00 is you getting a larger return than just your stake and anything less than 2.00 is the equivalent of getting your money back plus less then what you bet.

If you’re using a bookmaker that is offering fractional odds and you want to figure out what that would be in decimal then you simply divide the first number by the second and then add 1. So odds of 1/4 is 1 divided by 4, or 0.25, plus 1 for 1.25. Equally you might find yourself in a position where the odds are decimal but you want to know what they’d be in fractions.

When that is the case, the easiest way to do it is to take 1 away from the decimal and then convert what’s left into the most simplified fraction possible. So odds of 6.00 would be 6.00-1, which is 5 and becomes 5/1. To use a more complex example, 8.50 as decimal odds would be 8.50-1, which is 7.50. The most simplified fraction would be 15/2.

The table at the top show a list of the most obvious odds as both decimal and their fractional equivalents.

Having read the above, you might be able to see the table making a bit more sense. A £1 bet at 5/2, for example, would return £2.50 plus your initial £1 stake. That amounts to £3.50, which is why the decimal odds equivalent of 5/2 is 3.50. Equally, a £1 stake on something with fractional odds of 1/3 would mean that you’d get 33 pence back plus your £1 stake, of £1.33. The fractional odds are 1.33.

The key thing with this is not to overly test yourself. Most bookmakers will give you the choice about whether you’d like to see your odds displayed as fractional or decimal, so figure out which one is for you and then go from there. You don’t need to sit and do maths problems to work out what you’re betting, but it’s handy to know how it all works.

If you are interested in American Odds and how they work see our dedicated article.

With esports betting becoming more and more popular, it’s good to know about the different types of esports odds. These odds come in several forms. In this article I will take you through the basics so that you may fully understand what the various esports betting sites are showing you.

The three main types of esports betting odds are the following:

1. Decimal Odds

Decimal odds are called decimal because they come in decimal form.

1 5 As A Decimal Betting Numbers

Examples include: 1.80, 2.40, 4.00 and so on.

The meaning of these odds is very simple: your total returns are whatever the odds show you multiplied by the amount you wagered.

So if you bet $5 that team A will win the match and team A’s odds of winning are 1.80, you get a return of 5 * 1.80 = $9. If you wager $20 on a team whose odds are 4.00, the amount you get in case of a win will be 20 * 4.00 = $80.

1 5 As A Decimal Betting Rules

Two things you’ll want to know here is how to convert odds to percentage and how to convert odds to probability.

Decimal Odds to Percentage

Another way of understanding decimal odds is using percentages.

So instead of 1.80, think of this as 180%. Instead of 2.40, think 240%. And 4.00 would actually mean 400%.

Of course, these percentages include the amount you’ve wagered. So it’s not 180% profit but 180% returns. The profit is actually just 80%. In the second case, the profit is 140%. In the third it’s 300%.

So you always have to decrease your initial amount or 100% in order to find what you’re actually making.

Decimal Odds to Probability

If you want to find out the win probability of a given bet in the bookmaker’s assessment, just do it this way: 2.00 is exactly 50%. Anything below that is less than 50%. Anything above that is more than 50%.

The general formula for turning decimal odds to probability is this: 100/odds.

If a team’s odds of winning are 5.00, their estimated chance of winning is 20%.

Of course, all of this is true in the bookmaker’s assessment. But that doesn’t mean it’s 100% correct. In fact, sometimes you will find the real favorite regarded as the underdog, simply because the bookmaker doesn’t understand what’s going on. These are the situations in which you can make a lot of money.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t be worried about what the bookmaker is telling you and simply assess the situation yourself, using your own esports knowledge and seeking bets that give you good risk/reward ratios.

1 5 As A Decimal Betting Line

2. Fractional Odds

Fractional odds look like this: 5/1, 8/1, 2/1 and so on. Their general form is x/y, which means this: you make a profit of x dollars for every y dollars you wager.

So in the first example (5/1), you make $5 for every $1 you wager. And that’s just your profit. The total amount you get back is actually $6 (your profit plus the dollar you wagered).

Just like with decimal odds, you’ll want to know how to convert odds to percentage and how to convert odds to probability.

Fractional Odds to Percentage

When turning fractional odds to percentage in order to calculate profitability, the general rule is to determine how many dollars you get for each dollar you wagered and then multiply that with 100. That will give you your profit in percentages.

So in the first case (5/1), you’d get a profit of 500%, while your total returns would be 600%.

But let’s take a more difficult example, such as 7/2. In this case, you’d get a profit of $7 for each $2 you wagered. To figure out the percentages, just divide 7 by 2 and then multiply with 100. What you’d get is 700/2 or 350%.

Fractional Odds to Probability

If you want to turn fractional odds to probability in order to figure out the win probability of a given team according to the bookmaker, just use the following formula: given the odds of n/m, the number you’re looking for can be found like this: (m/(m+n)) * 100.

For example: 4/1 would give us (1/(4+1)) * 100 or (1/5) * 100 or 100/5 or 20%.

3. American Odds

These types of odds are the most unusual and difficult to grasp at first, because it’s hard to deduce what they mean unless someone explains them to you.

And their meaning is this: when you see the minus sign (-), that’s the favorite. And the number followed by it represents the amount you need to wager to make a profit of $100.

When you see the plus sign (+), that’s the underdog. And the number followed by it represents the profit you’ll make for every $100 you wager.

For example:

Team A: -760

Team B: +585

If you wanted to bet on team A, for each $760 you wagered you’d make a profit of $100, meaning that you’d get a total of $860 back.

If you wanted to bet on team B, for each $100 you wagered you’d make a profit of $585, meaning that you’d get a total of $685 back.

American Odds to Percentage

For underdogs, transforming American odds to percentage is simple: the odds themselves constitute the profit percentage. So in the above case, the percentage is 585%. Because you’re wagering $100 and making a profit of $585, So the percentage of the total return is actually 685%.

1/5 As A Decimal Betting

For favorites, what you do is this: you divide 10,000 by the number associated with them and you get the percentage you’re looking for.

In the example above, the result would be 10,000/760 = 13,15%. This would be your profit. So in total, you’d get back 113,15% of what you wagered.

American Odds to Probability

For the underdogs, the win probability can be obtained using the same method used for fractional odds.

So in our example, we’d have 5.85/1 and that would give us (1/(1+5.85)) * 100 or (1/6.85) * 100 or 100/6.85 or 14.6%. To calculate the win probability for the favorite, just subtract that from 100% and voila!

If you want to learn more about Dota 2 odds, League of Legends odds or any other kind of esports odds, just check out our guides!