Simon Thatcher

<a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/ufc-betting-guide">UFC</a> (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is an American MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) organisation. In the sport, competitors from around the world compete in the Octagon, vying for the top spot in their weight category and the coveted UFC Championship belt.&nbsp;

With the increasing popularity of the sport, bookmakers have been keen to get in on the action, offering betting markets for both UFC and other MMA events.&nbsp;&nbsp;

In this guide, we’ll look at the different betting markets available in UFC and other MMA events, and see how the betting odds work.&nbsp;

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) has a rich and fascinating history, from Ancient China’s Leitai to Brazil’s no-holds-barred Vale Tudo and Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do.&nbsp;

In November 1993, Brazilian Rorion Gracie teamed up with businessman Art Davie to create the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Rorion Gracie is a member of the highly influential Gracie family of martial artists, who developed Gracie jiu-jitsu (now known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu).&nbsp;

The rules and format of UFC have evolved over time, with bouts now taking place in an octagonal caged arena, appropriately named ‘The Octagon’. The bouts are broken down into 5-minute rounds. Non-title fights last up to three rounds but title fights can be up to five rounds.&nbsp;

Fighters use striking techniques, with both arms and legs, as well as grapples, throws, sweeps, takedowns, and holds.&nbsp;

Fights can be won by knockout, technical knockout, submission, technical submission, or decision.

Betting odds show how much you win if your bet is successful&nbsp;

<a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-to-read-betting-odds">Betting odds</a> also show how likely an outcome is to occur, with high odds indicating outcomes that are not likely to occur and low odds indicating more likely outcomes.&nbsp;

Although high-odds bets are less likely to win, your payout will be larger than for a low-odds bet if it wins.&nbsp;

There are three types of odds used in betting:

Outplayed have a great tool if you need to convert from one odds format to another, which you can find <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/odds-converter-and-probability-calculator">here</a>.&nbsp;

Fractional odds are expressed as a ratio of the profit on a winning bet to the stake&nbsp;

Also known as British odds, Fractional odds are mostly used in the UK and Ireland.&nbsp;

Decimal odds show how many times higher the return is than the original stake

Decimal odds are also called European odds. Despite the name, they’re worldwide and are the dominant odds format in all countries other than the UK, Ireland, and the USA.

<a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a> uses decimal odds since they’re used by all <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-betting-exchange">betting exchanges</a>, and they’re easier to work with mathematically than the other odds formats.&nbsp;

They’re also arguably the easiest odds format to understand.&nbsp;

Unlike fractional odds, decimal odds include the original stake when calculating. To work out your return on a winning bet (including stake), multiply your stake by the decimal odds.

American odds are also called Moneyline odds. They’re pretty much exclusively used in the USA and are probably the most confusing to non-Americans.&nbsp;

One tricky aspect of American odds is that positive odds are used for outsiders and negative odds for favourites. Due to how they work, the number after the + or - sign is always 100 or higher.

Positive odds are used for outsiders/longshots. They show the profit on a £100 stake if the bet wins.&nbsp;

Negative odds are used for favourites. They show how much you have to stake to make a profit of £100.&nbsp;

Incidentally, +100 and -100 odds are the same.&nbsp;

Implied probability shows how likely an outcome is, as implied by the odds

It’s easiest to work out <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-implied-probability">implied probability</a> from decimal odds. The implied probability formula is:

Implied Probability = 1 ÷ Decimal Odds

This gives the implied probability as a decimal. Multiply by 100 if you want this expressed as a percentage.&nbsp;

A simple and intuitive example is a bet at odds of 2.0, which is 1/1 (evens) in fractional odds. The implied probability for these odds is:

Implied Probability = 1 ÷ 2 = 0.5 = 50%

If they’re fair odds, you have a 50% chance of the bet winning. With a £1 stake, you’ll make a £1 profit half the time and lose £1 the other half. In the long run, you and the bookmaker will both break even.&nbsp;

Since bookmakers won’t make any profit if they only break even on their bets, they don’t use fair odds.&nbsp;

The first step that bookmakers make when setting betting odds is to work out how likely they think an outcome is to occur.

There are very few situations when the true likelihood of an outcome is known, but tossing a fair coin is one of them. There’s a 50% chance of the coin landing on either heads or tails.&nbsp;

Bookmakers sometimes offer odds for a coin toss, for example at the start of a cricket game.&nbsp;

Fair odds for an outcome with a 50% chance of occurring are 2.0 in decimal.

However, this would mean the bookmaker would break even in the long term.&nbsp;

To ensure they make long-term profits, bookmakers factor a margin into their markets by lowering the odds compared to fair odds. For a coin toss, they might drop the odds for either heads or tails from 2.0 to 1.9.&nbsp;

If a bettor places a £100 bet on heads at odds of 1.9, there’s a 50% chance the bookmaker will gain £100 from a losing bet and a 50% chance they’ll have to pay out £90. This discrepancy means the bookmaker will make long-term profits from their coin toss market.&nbsp;

You can discover more about how bookmakers set their odds, and how you can make long-term profits from value betting by taking advantage of mispriced odds <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-value-betting">here</a>.&nbsp;

Unlike football and many other sports, the range of betting options for UFC is relatively sparse. Often, you’ll find you can only bet on the match winner. However, some bookmakers offer more markets, especially for high-profile events like title fights.

In this section, you’ll find some of the markets you might see in UFC betting.

As the name suggests, this market allows you to bet on who will win the fight. The market might have another name, including Fight Winner, To Win Fight, or Bout Betting.&nbsp;

Here’s the ‘Fight Winner’ market on Kwiff:

And here’s William Hill’s ‘Bout Betting’ market:

Bet365 list the market as ‘To Win Fight’:

All bookmakers that have fights listed will offer the match result market.&nbsp;

Also called Total Rounds, in this market you’re betting on whether there will be more or fewer than a certain number of rounds. This number of rounds normally ends in .5 to make it a two-way market.&nbsp;

Here’s the market on Kwiff:&nbsp;

Here, you’re betting on who will win and the method of their win, or if it will be a draw.&nbsp;

Bookmakers tend to offer bets covering several methods of victory for each fighter. For example, in this William Hill market, you can bet on either fighter to win ‘by KO/TKO/DQ or Submission’ as one bet and to win ‘by Decision’ with another:

They also have an ‘Alternative Method Of Result’ market. This has the same ‘By Decision’ and ‘Draw’ markets, but separates ‘By Submission’ from the other victory methods:

Bet365 have the same options as this for their main ‘Method of Victory’ market. Their ‘By Decision or Technical Decision’ market explicitly mentions that technical decisions are included in the bet. William Hill’s market only mentions ‘By Decision’, but this will still include technical decisions:

Bet365 also have a ‘Method of Victory Double Chance market’, giving more options for the range of winning methods you can cover with one bet:

This is a bet on the type of decision that will settle the match. Here’s the bet on William Hill:

If the fight doesn’t go the distance (i.e. is settled by a knockout, technical knockout, disqualification, or submission), all of these bets will lose.&nbsp;

This market doesn’t cover all possible outcomes, since you can’t bet on there not being a decision in the bout. However, there is a separate ‘Fight to go the Distance’ market on William Hill.&nbsp;

In this market, you’re betting on which of the fighters will win inside the allotted time of the bout. If the fight goes to a decision after all rounds are completed, all bets on the market are void, and you’ll have your stake refunded.&nbsp;

UFC Odds Explained: Comprehensive Guide

Stephanie Sorrell

There’s a reason that saying’s a cliche: it’s largely true. Casinos are businesses, with the sole aim of making a profit, and they’re very good at it.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to profit from <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-casinos">online casinos</a> as a customer - you just have to be smart about it.

The way to achieve this is through harnessing the many offers available from online casinos, which can result in making surprisingly high profits over time.

In this article, we’ll talk you through exactly how this works, why it works, and how much money you can expect to make. We’ll also touch on other ways to make consistent <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">profits through betting online</a>, which can be combined with casino offers to give you a significant boost to your income each month.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

To begin with, it’s important to understand how online casinos make their money.

Because online casino software is almost always automated, the casino can be confident of maintaining a consistent profit margin. Usually, a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-house-edge">casino’s margin on games</a> will be somewhere between 2% and 10%.

This doesn’t sound like a huge amount. But when you consider that online casinos have fairly limited overheads (unlike live casinos, they don’t need a physical building, and comparatively few staff), and that enormous amounts of money will be wagered, it ends up being an exceptionally reliable way of making money. All an online casino really has to offer to its customers is the opportunity to risk their money.

One exception to the normal profit model is poker, where a casino’s customers are playing against each other rather than against the house. This makes it slightly more complicated to make a profit (and it makes poker a somewhat less profitable game for online casinos than other games).

For poker, casinos make money through ‘the rake’ (a percentage cut of the pot), through entry fees for tournaments and by encouraging players to wager extra money on side games (which use the more normal online casino profit model).

Online casinos will also invest the money their customers hold with them (as is the case with pretty much any institution, in any industry, that holds customer funds).

There are certain restrictions as to what they can do with this money, but it’s easy enough for them to make steady returns from those investments, especially as they aren’t paying their customers interest on the money they hold.

The majority of an online casino’s games are in the form of slots (including variations on slots) and live casino. These are all powered by random number generators, which ensure unbiased, fair results and a specified <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-does-rtp-mean-in-gambling">return to player</a>.

The return to player, or RTP, is the average percentage of money staked that players will win back. So for example, if a game has a listed RTP of 95%, players will on average win £95 for every £100 staked. The remaining £5 is the casino’s margin, and where they make the bulk of their money.

Online casinos don’t always display RTP prominently, and sometimes it’s very difficult to track down - but it can usually be found somewhere in the information about the game, or on the initial loading page, as shown below.

It’s important to bear in mind that this is the average return to player, meaning that your individual results for any one game aren’t going to be an accurate reflection of the RTP. It may well take millions of spins for a game’s returns to actually hit its advertised RTP.

From the casino’s point of view, that’s absolutely fine - collectively, its customers will make millions of spins, so they can be pretty confident that their profits will work out as they expect.

From the customer’s point of view, the situation is a bit more complicated. They will be well aware (one hopes!) that on average they should walk away with less money than they started off with.

But on a smaller scale any individual game’s volatility can be very high - meaning you’ve got a chance of wagering, say, £100, and coming away with nothing, but also a chance of ending up with an enormous win, potentially thousands of times the value of your original stake.

If you’re hoping to gain an edge over the casino, it’s important to not to focus too hard on the possibility of a huge win. Sure, it could happen, but you’re more likely to come out with less money than you started.

To make any sort of reliable profit from casino play, you need to find a way of gaining a statistical advantage over the game - and that’s where casino offers come into play.

Online casinos are always trying to attract new customers, and one of the most effective ways for them to achieve this is to offer out freebies.

Even if you’ve never gambled in your life, you’ll probably have encountered advertising or marketing emails from casinos offering you free spins or bonus funds if you sign up.

Those offers give savvy bettors the chance to gain an advantage over the casino, improving their chances of coming out in profit. With the benefit of the free extras, many offers can result in an RTP of over 100% - i.e. on average, you can expect to win more than you lose. This is usually referred to as <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-expected-value">positive expected value</a>, or +EV.

We can work out the expected value of any offer we see advertised with some relatively simple maths, and this allows us to assess if it’s worth doing.

As an example, we’ll take a look at Betfred’s casino sign up offer: deposit and wager £10 and get 200 free spins.

You can choose between a few different slots games to wager your initial £10 on. It’s best to choose a game with a high RTP, such as Silver Bullet, which has an advertised RTP of 96.84%. On average, you would have £9.68 after you’ve completed your initial wagering.

You then receive 200 free spins, with a value of 5p each. These have to be used on Age of the Gods; God of Storms 2, which has an RTP of 96.14%. This means that, on average, players will make £9.61 from their free spins.

This brings you to a total of £19.29, making a £9.29 profit on your initial £10 of wagering. This offer therefore has positive expected value, and is extremely worthwhile.

Of course, as we’ve established, these average figures apply over millions of spins, rather than a couple of hundred. It’s perfectly possible (if fairly unlikely) for a player to lose their initial £10 and win nothing from their free spins.

However, when you complete an offer like this, the odds shift from being against you to in your favour. And the more offers with positive EV you complete, the more your profits are likely to correlate to the overall theoretical EV from everything you’ve done.

Outplayed members completing casino offers usually make anything from a few hundred to a thousand pounds on average each month - a huge boost to your income!

Getting started with casino offers isn’t particularly difficult, especially if you’re an Outplayed Diamond member following our handy guides, but there are still things you can do to maximise your profits and your success.

We’ve summarised some of the most important below:

It’s natural to be wary of casino offers. There is risk involved, and it’s important to be aware of that, and only to wager money you could, in a worst case scenario, afford to lose.

However, you shouldn’t be discouraged if your initial results don’t match up to the EV of the offers you’ve completed. Variance is inevitable with this kind of strategy, but the more offers you do the more your overall profits should start to come into line with their EV.

It’s more important than you might think to keep track of your profits. Although it won’t actually affect how much you make, it allows you to observe trends and compare your real profits to the EV of the offers you’ve completed.

People are often terrible at mentally tracking their progress, liable to exaggerating their wins or losses, depending on their outlook. You’re far better off having an objective record of your progress, which will help you make informed decisions as to what to do next.

Part of trusting the process is accepting that your progress won’t be linear. The nature of casino means that you’ll have periods where you seem to be winning a lot, and periods of the opposite.

In neither case should you conclude that your current run of luck will continue. There’s a lot of volatility in casino profits, but in the long run it does even out. Most people end up with graphs that look something like the one pictured below; lots of peaks and troughs, but a steady trend upwards overall.

Before you embark on an offer, make sure it’s actually worth completing. Sometimes the offers bookies make are of so little value that it’s simply not worth doing them - either because you stand to make just pennies from large amounts of wagering, or because the EV turns out to be negative in spite of the offer.

You can work out the EV for any offer yourself based on the amount of wagering, number of free spins, and RTP of the games involved. Outplayed diamond members, though, can check the EV for worthwhile offers in our trusty guides, or use our EV calculator if you happen to come across an offer that we haven’t featured.

The problem with casino games is that they’re designed to encourage our irrational, unhelpful impulses, and to be fun while they’re at it. Even the most hardened statistician would struggle not to get excited by a sudden big win in a slots game - and your brain then craves the same excitement again, making you more likely to keep playing.

Casino games can also make you more prone to emotional decision-making. It’s easier than you’d think to fall into the trap of <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/gamblers-fallacy">gambler’s fallacy</a> (believing you’re more likely to win if you’ve had a run of losses) or believing you’re on a ‘lucky streak’, no matter how rational you imagine yourself to be.

You therefore have to be strict with yourself and avoid any temptation to keep playing beyond your required wagering or free spins - at that point, you’re simply handing your advantage straight back to the casino.

Matched Betting is, in some ways, quite similar to taking advantage of online casino offers. Here, too, you’re profiting from the promotions run by bookies, but here they’re for <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/sports-betting-guide">sports betting</a>.

<a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a> is the strategy of betting both for and against the same outcome. So for example, you might bet both that Manchester United win a match, and also that they don’t win a match.

You make your profit by combining this technique with the many promotions bookies offer to lure in customers. For example, you might see an offer where you have to place a £10 bet (known as a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/qualifying-bet-guide">qualifying bet</a>) to receive a £10 free bet.

If you match both bets, you can roughly break even on the first bet, and then use your free bet to make a profit. Between sign up offers and reload offers, you can make £300 - £1000+ a month. A few people even make a living this way!

The key advantage of Matched Betting is that, if you do it right, you’ll end up with a guaranteed profit. This can work incredibly well when combined with casino offers, as your Matched Betting profits will make it easier to weather any downswings from the casino side of things. Any unexpected large wins, meanwhile, can contribute to your bankroll for Matched Betting.

Between casino offers and traditional Matched Betting, you’ve got the opportunity to make hundreds, or even thousands, in extra cash each month - not bad for something you can do from the comfort of your own sofa!

So, it turns out that the house doesn’t always win - not quite always, anyway. When you capitalise on the offers online casinos make, you tilt the odds into your own favour, which enables you to make consistent profits from casinos.

And when you combine this with Matched Betting, it can be an even more profitable strategy!

To find out more about Matched Betting, check out our dedicated guide to beginners. Or, if you’re more interested in getting started with casino, have a look at our <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/our-membership-levels-explained">membership levels breakdown</a> so you can decide what’s right for you. And if you need any help, our <a href="https://outplayed.com/news/matched-betting/how-to-get-matched-betting-support">support team</a> is available 7 days a week to lend you a hand.

6 Tips And Tricks To Gain An Edge Over Online Casinos

Online casinos succeed or fail partly on the strength of the games they provide. Because of this, they need to offer a great selection of exciting games to encourage their customers to keep playing with them.&nbsp;

Most casinos don’t make their own games, although Tombola is a rare exception. Most have partnerships with game providers, who create slots and table games, bingo, lotto, and live casino games.&nbsp;

You can find out more about how online casino software works <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-does-online-casino-software-work" target="_blank" title="">here</a>.&nbsp;

In this article, we’ll look at some of the best providers of casino software and a selection of their most popular games.&nbsp;

Whether you’re a recreational gambler or do profitable <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/why-you-need-to-do-casino-offers" target="_blank" title="">casino offers</a>, having some insight into the best casino software providers can enrich your time playing online slots and games.&nbsp;

Online casinos host a range of different types of games. These originated from versions in land-based casinos, bingo halls or other physical format like lotteries.

Here’s a list of some types of games you’ll find in online casinos:

How Were the Best Software Providers Chosen?

There are hundreds of online casino game providers, with 654 currently listed by <a href="https://slotcatalog.com/en/Providers" target="_blank" title="">Slotcatalog</a>.&nbsp;

To compile the list of some of the best providers, a combination of personal experience of doing hundreds of <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/best-casino-bonuses" target="_blank" title="">casino offers</a> was used, alongside these internet sources:

Most Popular Casino Games Listed by SlotRank

Slotcatalog is a website that lists and reviews online casino games. It provides useful statistics like <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-does-rtp-mean-in-gambling" target="_blank" title="">Return To Player</a> (RTP), variance, maximum win, game features, and slot theme.&nbsp;

To make their SlotRank list of the most popular slots, Slotcatalog checks over 2000 online casinos worldwide daily. They look at the main ‘lobby’ part of the casino, using incognito mode to avoid any personalised recommendations affecting the results.&nbsp;

Slots in more prominent positions in the lobby are scored most highly. A weight multiplier is applied with more popular casinos in the country having a higher multiplier. The slots are then listed in score order to give them a popularity ranking.&nbsp;

The SlotRank will change daily, so the rankings below are just a snapshot of the list at the time of writing (13th February 2025) rather than a definitive list of the greatest slots. However, it gives insight into the current popularity of slots.

You can find more information about SlotRank at this link:

<a href="https://slotcatalog.com/en/read/What-is-SlotRank" target="_blank" title="">What Is SlotRank?</a>

Most Popular Casinos Listed by ProviderRank

Slotcatalog uses the information gathered by SlotRank to compile a list of the highest-ranking Game Providers. Game providers are granted points according to how many games they have listed on SlotRank and their rankings on the list.

You can read more about ProviderRank here:&nbsp;

<a href="https://slotcatalog.com/en/read/What-is-ProviderRank" target="_blank" title="">What Is ProviderRank?</a>

Here are the top 25 game providers in the ProviderRank list as of 13th February 2025:&nbsp;

We all know that industry awards aren’t perfect (there have been plenty of contentious winners and omissions over the years in awards ranging from the Oscars and BAFTAs to the GRAMMYs and Brit Awards, for example).

However, looking at casino gaming awards is a good way to gauge the importance and influence of game studios over time. With this in mind, we’ve listed historic winners of key awards most relevant to game providers.&nbsp;

First off, here are the awards in five categories from 2008 to 2025 from the International Gaming Awards (IGA).

Some of these categories have been renamed, and those in the second table were introduced later. Companies with an asterisk next to them are involved in online casino software but aren't game providers.

You can read more about the International Gaming Awards at their site <a href="https://gaming-awards.com/international-gaming-awards/" target="_blank" title="">here</a>.&nbsp;

EGR (eGaming Review) is a website covering online gambling industry news. It hands out annual awards, including the EGR B2B (Business-to-Business) awards.&nbsp;

Again, the categories most relevant to game providers were chosen, as follows:

The awards have been split into two tables for ease of reading:

In this section, we’ll list many of the game providers listed 
above. Providers that don’t offer their products in the UK aren't 
listed.&nbsp;Click on the game provider to expand the section.

Whether you’re a recreational gamer or someone who regularly takes part in <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/why-you-need-to-do-casino-offers">casino offers</a>, it’s good to have some knowledge of the current state of the online casino gaming market.&nbsp;

With over 650 game providers at the moment, there’s certainly plenty of choice, and the quality and variety of what’s on offer is constantly increasing.&nbsp;

Game providers create a wide range of products, from table games like <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-to-play-roulette">roulette</a> and <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-to-play-blackjack">blackjack</a>, to live dealer games, slots, scratch cards, Slingo, and bingo.

If you want to find out how to make long-term profits from doing casino offers, be sure to check out Outplayed’s <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/free-matched-betting-trial">free trial</a>. As well as giving you access to all of the worthwhile <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a> sportsbook sign-up offers, you’ll also be able to try out several casino sign-up offers.&nbsp;

You’ll then have the opportunity to upgrade to <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/our-membership-levels-explained">Diamond membership</a>, which includes all worthwhile casino sign-up and reload offers, which have a value of around £2,000 per month.

What Are The Best Casino Software Providers?

Paul Trevor

Football is the most popular sport in the United Kingdom and when it comes to <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/sports-betting-guide">sports betting</a>, it takes the top spot too.&nbsp; Therefore, it’s no shock that the bookies roll out the red carpet to their customers with the football betting offerings.

The <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-to-bet-on-football">football betting</a> markets are flooded with different <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/types-of-bets">types of bets</a> to accommodate every betting desire and entice punters.&nbsp; But, are the football punters getting value?

Calculating odds is an incredibly complex practice and involves a lot of specialist people and software.&nbsp; If we’re honest, the bookies aren’t going to tell us how they do it and the margins they add on to football odds.

During this article we’ll walk through the factors and considerations that bookies take into account when setting odds for football bets, the different types of odds and provide some examples of calculating football bet winnings.

How Do The Bookies Calculate Football Odds?

The bookies don’t just pick a number out of the air when allocating odds to football betting markets.&nbsp; They use a combination of specialist software, specialist analysts and mathematicians.&nbsp;&nbsp;

If we’re truthful, there’s a huge amount of effort undertaken and the complexities are probably something that would be enough to cause our heads to explode.

For that reason, we’ll discuss things at a much higher level.

This is top of the list and by far the most important factor when calculating odds. Gone are the old days of bookmakers recording bets in a physical book at the side of a race track or football pitch and adjusting their odds according to the bets received.

As things moved on, so did the technology and the bookies approach to setting odds.&nbsp; These days, they employ odds compilers, traders, and analysts to help do the number crunching and create the betting markets.

Combine these experts with the very latest tools, software and algorithms and they produce near perfect odds from millions of lines of database information.

One thing to mention is that a lot of odds compiling is outsourced to specialist companies.&nbsp; This can mean near identical odds across multiple bookmakers as some will use the same odds compiling companies and some bookies will follow what other bookies are doing.&nbsp;

After the data analysis, the bookies need to include the cash forecast.&nbsp; We did tell you calculating odds wasn’t straight forward.

Bookies are like elephants, they forget nothing.&nbsp; When looking at cash forecasts, they will refer to databases of past projections to help refine the figures.&nbsp; They then combine this with incredibly intelligent algorithms to project what cashflow they are expecting to be bet on individual markets.

The question is, what’s the importance of cash forecasts? By projecting the cash flow expected on every single market, they can monitor balances easier and avoid losing too much money.&nbsp;&nbsp;

If the cash projection was low on a particular event, it’s possible that the bookies might incentivise the odds for customers to try and encourage more money into that market.&nbsp; This can work to the customers advantage sometimes.

Also known as the ‘margin’ or ‘juice’, this is the adjustment to odds that bookies make in order to give them an edge and make their profits.&nbsp;&nbsp;

It might seem a bit unfair but hey, they are a business at the end of the day.&nbsp; This is also a reason that a lot of bettors use <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-betting-exchange">betting exchanges</a> to place their bets.

So what sort of margin or vig do the bookies take?&nbsp; An average online bookmaker margin ranges between 3% and 5% whilst retail bookies are slightly higher due to overheads.

Now we’ve established that the odds rarely reflect the actual <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-implied-probability">implied probability</a> (likelihood) of an event happening. &nbsp; So what might that look like?

If both results have the same percent probability, you’d expect the odds to be even (1/1 fractional or 2.0 decimal).&nbsp; However, once the bookies have applied their margin, you could be looking at odds of anything between 1.5 (1/2) and 1.91 (10/11).

Okay, so we’ve looked at the methodology that the bookies use to calculate the football betting odds but what do they actually mean?

In simple terms, odds indicate what chance there is of something happening.&nbsp; Irrespective of what format odds appear in, they give you key information as to who the favourites and outsiders are in any competition.

In the betting industry, odds come in three formats:

Fractional odds are the odds that most casual bettors are used to seeing and are dominant in the UK and Irish betting markets. They come in formats such as 5/1 or 8/1 for example.

Using the example of 8/1 and a £1 stake, it would be like this:

Obviously, people don’t only stake £1 so an example when using a £5 stake would be:

Decimal odds are the most straight-forward of all odds formats and are used in Europe, Canada and Australia.&nbsp; They are also the favoured odds format for <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">matched bettors</a>.

Decimal odds stipulate what you would get back for each £1 you stake (this includes your original stake).&nbsp;

The good news is the conversion from fractional odds to decimal odds is very logical.&nbsp; You’re basically adding one decimal point to the fractional odds.&nbsp; As an example of fractional odds of 7/1:

Let’s say you placed a £10 bet on Watford to beat Man City in a cup game at odds of 8.0 and the unexpected happened. What would the calculations be:

Of course, the odds aren’t always this straight-forward so let’s look at a more obscure example of fractional odds at 11/5:

Thankfully, you’re unlikely to deal with moneyline odds when betting in the UK on football matches.&nbsp; We say this as they are a little more complex than the other two formats but it’s not a bad thing to be aware of and understand them.

There are no fractions or decimals as such.&nbsp; Moneyline odds are displayed as either positive or negative figures and are based on a $100 stake.&nbsp; We know, the Americans have to go big on everything.

In layman's terms, positive odds are odds against a result and negative odds are the same as odds on in fractions.&nbsp;

We get it, all these different numbers can get quite confusing and converting between three different formats is a nightmare.

Rest easy, there’s help at hand.&nbsp; You can use the <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/odds-converter-and-probability-calculator">Odds Converter Calculator</a> to do all the work for you.

It’s all about the odds but I suppose that’s the idea of this article.

Let’s move forward and see if we can give you an advantage when it comes to finding the best odds for your football bets.

The first thing you should look out for is offers and promotions.&nbsp; The bookies often offer deals such as Bet £10 and Get £10 if your bet loses.&nbsp; This offer is quite frequent at Bet365 on high profile football matches.

Another regular (almost daily) offer is boosted odds on selected markets such as first goalscorer, player shots on target and pre-made bet builders.

Other useful tools are odds comparison websites such as <a href="http://oddsportal.com">OddsPortal.com</a> and <a href="https://www.oddschecker.com/football">oddschecker</a>.&nbsp; If you’re looking to bet on a particular football match or considering a football acca, these sites provide you with the odds on offer from multiple bookmakers so you can pick the highest odds available.

A firm favourite at Outplayed is oddschecker as they have great coverage of football odds and all the other major sports too and they don’t just stop there.

Once you enter the football section, you’ll be shown the upcoming football matches and a snapshot of the highest odds available for home wins, draws and away wins for each game. If you divert the gaze about the matches, they provide the best odds on all matches for different over/under markets, <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-draw-no-bet">draw no bet</a> (DNB), both teams to score (BBTS) etc.

Another thing to mention is oddschecker trawl the bookies to find the best sign up offers and they list some of these down the right hand side of the page.

Once you click into a specific match, you’re then given a load of information relating to that particular game.&nbsp; You can see the odds on offer for win and draw at over 25 bookies with the top odds available highlighted above the individual odds.

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