Sportsbet – Understanding the Odds

Sportsbet is one of the largest sports betting companies in Australia. It offers a wide range of sports and racing markets and is available on desktop and mobile devices.

Sportsbet offers a range of features to make your gambling more fun and easy, including Deposit Limits that help you control the amount of money you deposit from your own funds. This is a great way to make sure you can only bet a certain amount and avoid overspending.

They also have a number of sports betting promotions, including Multi-Master that awards you with 3,000 mBtc for guessing 15 matches correctly every week. There’s also Blackjack Master, where you can win 50mBtc for winning 10 hands in a row.

Understanding odds is important if you’re looking to make a profit on your sports bets. Oddsmakers set lines based on a variety of factors, including what they think the game will be like.

In baseball, for example, the odds are based on a nine-inning game; football lines are based on four quarters of play; and hockey odds are based on a three-period game.

Another important factor is implied volatility, which is a measure of how often an outcome will fail. A line that’s a minus 1.5 points indicates that the bookie thinks that an event will fail five times out of ten.

The odds also take into account the strength of the teams. If the favorite has a good chance of winning, the house will place a higher odds on them. This is called a ‘vig’, or commission, and it means you won’t win as much on the underdog.