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Take a game against the New England Patriots and the Cleveland Browns. If all you had to do was pick the team you liked to win, sportsbooks would be extremely one-sided with Patriots bets.
The sportsbooks in the business of making money, just like all of us bettors are, so they apply a spread to the game.
For example, the Patriots might be a 10-point favorite over the Browns.
That 10-point handicap is put in to level the proverbial playing field for both teams and also to force bettors to make a decision whether they want to bet on the Patriots to win by 11 or more or the Browns to win the game or lose by nine or fewer points.
How Money Line Betting Fiffers From the Point Spread
The most common betting option in baseball is a lot different. It is called a money line. Instead of taking away or adding runs to a team like the spread does in terms of points, the odds on the money are how sportsbooks level out the two teams.
Let’s take the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox against the worst team in baseball from that season, the Baltimore Orioles. If all you had to do was pick the Red Sox to win, betting would be so easy!
However, in order to bet the Red Sox to win, you might have to lay odds of -250.
What that means is that you would have to bet $250 to win $100 profit. The Orioles, on the other hand, might be an underdog at +230, which means that you would win $230 profit on a $100 bet.
How do Oddsmakers Come Up with These Numbers?
Money lines are correlated to a percentage of implied probability.- For example, a -150 favorite would equate to a 60 percent implied probability of winning the game.
- A -300 percent favorite would equate to a 75 percent implied probability of winning the game.
- A +120 underdog would have an implied probability of 45.45 percent of winning the game.
- A +200 underdog would have an implied probability of 33.33 percent of winning the game.