Betting on the exact score of a football match:
There are several ways to bet on a match. You can bet on the number of goals, the winner, if there’ll be a draw, and even if a particular player will score in the case of the big leagues. But what about betting on the exact score? That couldn’t be easier.
Calculating Betting Odds: easier than you think
First, you need to understand a bit about betting odds. The odds represent how much you can win if you bet on any sports selection.
In the upcoming Major League Soccer match between Inter Miami and Orlando City, these are the current odds for some possibilities of correct score betting.
1-0: odds of 8.88
1-1: odds of 6.28
1-2: odds of 9.76
As you can imagine, the online sportsbook has odds for all possible results, except for very farfetched and unlikely ones.
The market even has odds for the potential result of Inter Miami 5 – 6 Orlando City. In case you are wondering, the odds are 730.0.
There’s an underlying percentage behind each odd.
If the market has odds of 8.88 to the 1-0 potential result, it means they believe this match has an 11.26% of chance to end with that score!
Here’s the way this is calculated.
All possible results = 100%
Estimated chance of 1-0: 11.26%
100% / 11.26% = 8.88
Calculating your odds: value bets
Here’s a lesson from the professional bettors: you must bet on odds that are higher than the ‘fair’ odds’. A fair odd is the exact equivalent to the percentage you expect for any event.
Imagine a coin flip, like in our 1×2 betting guide. There’s a 50% of chance to each possible outcome, heads or tails. That said, the fair odds would be 100% (all possible outcomes) / 50% (each different outcome) = 2.0.
So you need to estimate the chances of each potential exact score to spot value. But what is value anyway? It’s the difference between the fair odds and the odds available in the markets.
Value can be spotted with easier math in markets with fewer possible outcomes like 1×2 or even Asian handicap once you master it (check our Asian handicap betting guide).
A Lesson from a former mentor: betting on exact scores
Unless you are really betting just for fun, without trying to learn the math behind sports betting, there’s basically just one trick to profit from correct score football betting: understanding why a result happens.
Let’s consider this: in a hypothetical scenario, you know that when the top scorer of your favorite team is absent, the manager plays using counter-attack tactics, and the matches often end 0-0.
The odds of the market are calculated based on the last results of the teams. This means that if you crack the reason behind the chances of each result happening, you have an edge in the market and you can profit.
If you simply try to calculate how often a particular result happens for any given team in the season, that basic math is easy to do and the traders of the market do it easily, even traders with little sports knowledge.
It’s all about football knowledge and some math skills
The winners of the sports betting markets are those that are a step ahead of the market. Odds aren’t perfect and they never will be.
In fact, did you ever wonder how bookmakers work? That’s the topic of our upcoming post over here.
Make the most of your sports knowledge and count on us to keep developing your sports betting skills!
