Betting Odds, Explained Simply

No jargon. No math degree. If you have ever looked at a betting line and thought "what does that even mean," this is for you. We will explain how the odds work in plain English, then show you how to use this site to find a good bet.

By Lakeshore Edge · 6 min read

The two kinds of numbers you will see

Every bet has a price written as a number with a plus or a minus in front. That is the part that confuses everyone at first. It is actually simple:

• Minus means favorite. Like −150. This side is expected to win. The price tells you how much to bet to win $100. −150 means you bet $150 to win $100.
• Plus means underdog. Like +200. This side is expected to lose. It pays more if it wins. +200 means you bet $100 to win $200.

Rule of thumb: the bigger the number, the stronger the effect. A −500 favorite is a big favorite (very likely to win, pays almost nothing). A +500 underdog is a long shot (probably loses, but pays a lot if it hits).

Turning odds into a chance

Here is the part that makes everything click. Every price is really just a percent chance in disguise. The betting site is telling you how likely it thinks each side is to win.

You do not need to do the math. You just need to read the table:

That percent has a fancy name, implied probability, but the idea is plain: it is the chance baked into the price. So when you hear someone say "a 60% favorite," they just mean a fighter or team priced around −150. Likely to win, but far from a sure thing.

Favorite or underdog: which should you bet?

Most beginners think there is a trick: always bet favorites because they win, or always bet underdogs because they pay big. Neither one makes money.

Favorites win often, but they pay so little that the small losses add up. Underdogs pay big, but they lose so often that the payouts do not cover it. We actually checked this across 7,265 UFC fights: betting every favorite lost money, and betting every underdog lost more. The betting sites are good at setting prices.

So if picking a side blindly does not work, what does? Finding the spots where the price is wrong. That is the whole job.

What "an edge" means (this is the point of the site)

We run a model. That is just a computer program that looks at the teams or fighters and estimates each side's real chance to win. Then we compare our number to the betting site's number.

If our model says a team has a 60% chance, but the betting site is pricing it like it is only 50%, that gap is what we call an edge. We think the price is too cheap, so it is worth a bet. When there is no gap, there is no bet. That is it.

How to use this site, step by step

The one sign that a tipster is real

Here is something most people get wrong. They judge a betting service by its win rate ("I'm 9 and 1 this week!"). Win rate lies. Anyone can have a good week. Anyone can pick a bunch of heavy favorites and look great for a while.

The real sign is whether the price moved your way after you bet. Odds keep moving right up until the game starts. If you bet a team at −150 and by game time it is −200, the rest of the market agreed with you. You got in early at a better price. That is a sign you are actually sharp, even on the bets that lose.

This has a name, closing line value, and it is the number we care about most. If you want the longer version, we wrote a plain guide to it here. The short version: a good price that loses beats a bad price that wins, over time.

The honest part

Betting is hard. The sites are good at it, and even a solid model wins only a little more than it loses. You will have losing days and losing weeks. That is normal, not a sign anything is broken.

We show our losses, our win rate, and whether the prices moved our way, all in the open, so you can judge us for yourself instead of taking our word. Bet small, take it slow, and treat it as a long game.