Odds | Sports Betting

Tote board

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

A tote board is a large, numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (to display the total amount donated to the charitable organization sponsoring the event).The first tote boards were manufactured for the horse racing industry by the American Totalizator [...]
Daily double

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

A daily double is a type of wager offered by horse and dog racing tracks. It requires bettors to select the winners of two consecutive races. Because of the increased diffculty of picking two straight winners, wining daily double bets often pay off at relatively high odds.The daily double was the first so-called “exotic” wager [...]
Odds

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

In probability theory and statistics the odds in favor of an event or a proposition are the quantity p / (1 − p), where p is the probability of the event or proposition. The logarithm of the odds is the logit of the probability.Odds have long been the standard way of representing probability used by [...]
Soft lines

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Soft lines is a betting terminology representing betting odds that have been poorly researched by sportsbooks.Handicappers commonly use this term to emphasize the value of their play. Since handicappers can focus on a smaller subset of all the possible games, they have the chance to identify soft lines. Soft lines usually exist in the games [...]
Vigorish

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Vigorish, or simply “vig“, or “juice“, is the amount charged by a bookmaker for his services. The term is Yiddish slang originating from the Russian word for “winnings,” vyigrysh. The concept is also known as the overround.Bookmakers use this concept to make money on their wagers regardless of the outcome. Because of the vigorish concept, [...]
Dutch book

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

In gambling a Dutch book or lock is a set of odds and bets which guarantees a profit, no matter what the outcome of the gamble. It is associated with probabilities implied by the odds not being coherent.In economics a Dutch book usually refers to a sequence of trades that would leave one party strictly [...]
Tic-tac

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Tic-tac (also tick-tack and non-hyphenated variants) is a traditional method of sign language used by bookmakers to communicate the odds of certain horses. It is still used in on-course betting in the UK. A tic-tac man will usually wear bright white gloves to allow their hand movements to be easily seen.A few simple examples of [...]
Bookmaking

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Most people believe that bookmakers attempt to “balance” their action, by adjusting their prices so that they get the same amount of money on both sides of a game. Theoretically, the bookmaker’s only financial interest in the bets it accepts is the vigorish it takes from losing wagers, and it simply wants to ensure that [...]
Fixed-odds gambling: types of odds offered

Friday, January 16th, 2009

There are three widely-used means of quoting odds: Fractional odds Favoured by bookmakers in the United Kingdom, fractional odds quote the net total that will be paid out to the bettor, should he win, relative to his stake. Odds of 4/1 (read “four-to-one” or “four-to-one against“) would imply that the bettor stands to make a [...]
Types of bets

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Aside from simple wagers–betting a friend that one’s favorite baseball team will win its division, for instance, or buying a football “square” for the Super Bowl–sports betting is commonly done through a bookmaker. Legal sports bookmakers exist throughout the world (perhaps most notably in Las Vegas). In areas where sports betting is illegal, bettors usually [...]
Sportsbook

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

A sportsbook (sometimes abbreviated as book) or a race and sports book is a place where a gambler can wager on various sports competitions, including football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, horse racing and boxing. The method of betting varies with the sport and the type of game. The more prominent the event, the more wagering [...]
Sports betting systems

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Sports betting systems refers to a set of events that when combined for a particular game for a particular sport represents a profitable betting scenario. Since sports betting involves humans, there is no deterministic edge to the house or the gambler. Systems allow the gambler to have an edge.Sportsbooks use systems in their analysis to [...]
Parimutuel betting

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Parimutuel betting (from the French language: pari mutuel, mutual betting) is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and a house take are removed, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all placed bets.The parimutuel system is used in gambling on [...]
Fixed-odds gambling

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Fixed-odds gambling is a form of gambling against odds offered by a bookmaker, an individual, or on a bet exchange. Calculating fixed odds It is customary with fixed-odds gambling to know the expected odds at the time of the placement of the wager (the “live price”), however this category also accommodates wagers whose price is [...]
Bookmakers

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

A bookmaker, bookie or turf accountant, is an organisation or a person that takes bets and may pay winnings depending upon results and, depending on the nature of the bet, the odds. Bookmaking may be legal or illegal, and may be regulated; in the United Kingdom it was at times both regulated and illegal, in [...]
Betting strategy

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

Betting strategies or betting systems are approaches to gambling intended to increase the odds of winning. Independent Events The following betting strategies have been recorded as being applied to games which operate on independent events. For such games, the odds of a particular outcome are identical for every bet played. No such strategy can beat [...]
Betting exchanges

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

A betting exchange is a p2p gambling website acting as a broker between parties for the placement of bets. The concept is similar to that of a stock exchange or a futures exchange, where in this case the commodity being traded is a bet, rather than a stock or futures contract. Most betting on a [...]