If you’re new to the world of South African internet betting in 2024, our beginner’s guide to online gambling odds will help you understand how simple this seemingly daunting concept actually is. By learning the basics, you can more accurately predict potential earnings each time you place a bet and have much more fun playing online. Let’s get started!
In this beginner’s guide to odds in online gambling, we’ll cover:
- Chance and betting
- Decimal odds
- How to calculate winnings
- Basic terminology
A Bit About Chance
In everyday life, we refer to chance in terms of percentages, with everything always adding up to 100. For example, if you toss a coin, there’s a 50% chance of it landing on heads and a 50% chance of it landing on tails. If you roll a six-sided die, there’s a 16.66% chance of your favorite number coming up. But coming out on top isn’t all there is to betting.
Your Basic Guide to Odds When Gambling Online
We know that chance refers to the probability of a specific outcome occurring. For example, if you drive a car with very little petrol from home to work, chances are you’ll break down, but you might also just make it to work. If you had to gamble on this scenario, you would bet on the outcome that you believe has the best probability of occurring. Odds are simply a representation of each outcome. Make sense?
All About Betting
The purpose is to predict the outcome of a situation with a bet, and if your prediction is correct, you usually win money. If it’s wrong, as you know, you’re bound to lose some too!
Understanding Decimal Odds
Instead of percentages, casinos and bookmakers use odds to represent possible outcomes. You can use these betting odds to calculate the probability of winning a bet. The most important tip we can teach you in this beginner’s guide to online gambling odds is to start thinking in decimals. Although it’s possible to work out odds using fractions, decimal odds are by far the simplest. All leading online casinos give players the opportunity to view betting odds in a decimal format so that they are easy to work out.
Calculating Your Bet
For example, if you bet $100 and the decimal odds are 1.82, your stake is $100, the odds are 1.82, and the potential win is $182. The sum would look like this: 100 x 1.82 = 182.
Calculating Your Winnings
Now that you better understand how real money betting odds work, you can start to calculate your potential winnings more easily. If you’ve decided to try gambling online, a beginner’s guide to odds is a useful tool to help you understand what bets are safest to start out with. Here’s some of the terminology you might come across.
- Fixed Odds Betting: This is when you bet a specific fixed amount to predict the outcome of something. The odds represent how much you will win if your prediction is right.
- Stake: This refers to the amount of real money you put on the line.
- Odds Against: This is when you stand to profit more than double what you originally bet.
- Even Money: This refers to when a bookmaker and you are both risking the exact same amount on a bet, and when the return is likely to be double your stake, which is a top outcome in a bet.
- Odds On: Odds are reversed in this case, as odds on refers to bets where you are required to stake more real money than you will potentially win.
- Short Odds: Although short odds mean you aren’t likely to win a large amount, it usually indicates an outcome that has a fairly high chance of winning.
- Long Odds: The opposite of short odds, long odds have a poor chance of winning, but if you do, you’re likely to win a large amount.
Now that you’ve read through our beginner’s guide to online gambling odds, why not try it out for yourself on one of the top recommended South African sites for 2024? Good luck!