Moneyline bets present the most straightforward way to wager on a sports contest. A moneyline wager simply asks the bettor to choose which team will win a game, with no point spread involved.

Here's everything you need to know before placing your bet for this game on FanDuel Sportsbook. FanDuel Fantasia: The Spectrum of Winners. A FanDuel winner who beat impossible odds. Several levels of payouts unfolded via FanDuel. One player turned $50 into $33,605. The strategy was straightforward. Load up the moneyline with prohibitive NBA and college basketball favorites.

The payout odds on the favorite and underdog can differ significantly on a moneyline bet. Using a moneyline calculator breaks down the math on the odds, which allows bettors to assess the true value on each side.

The following page includes the GamingToday.com MoneyLine Calculator, as well as several valuable tables and graphs designed to help bettors gain an edge with moneyline bets.

Moneyline Calculator

Fill in the dollar amount for your bet and the American Odds (for example -110) and calculate the implied probability and the return on the moneyline.:

What Is A Moneyline Bet?

Legal US sportsbooks generally present several different ways to wager on sports. Moneyline bets represent just one of several different wagering options, which include point spread, totals, parlays, and in-game betting.

Moneyline Bets

A moneyline wager allows the bettor to put a bet on which team or athlete will win a contest, straight up. The moneyline underdog will always pay out at better odds than the favorite.

Skilled bettors look for value on moneyline bets by evaluating teams that have a better chance of winning than the implied probability of the odds might dictate.

Moneyline favorites are listed with “-” odds, and the underdog is listed at “+” odds.

For example, here’s a look at a line offered by PointsBet on Game 1 of the 2020 World Series:

American Odds

PointsBet sets the Los Angeles Dodgers as the favorite in the game, with -165 moneyline odds. To calculate “-” odds, divide 100 by the odds, then multiply that quotient by the amount you bet.

For example, suppose you want to calculate how much profit a $50 bet on the Dodgers would yield. First divide 100 by 165 (without the “-”), which yields 60.6. Then multiply that number by your $50 bet to arrive at the profit (60.6*$50=$30.30).

A $50 bet on the Dodgers at -165 odds would yield $30.30 in profit. The $50 wager would return $80.30 to the bettor ($30.30 profit plus the original $50 bet).

To calculate “+” odds, divide the odds by 100 and multiply that product by the amount of the wager.

A $50 bet on the Tampa Bay Rays, for instance, would calculate as 140/100 (which yields 1.4), multiplied by $50 (1.4*$50=$70). A winning $50 moneyline bet on the Rays returns $120 total to the bettor ($70 profit plus the original $50 bet.)

Decimal Odds

Decimal odds can be used to make a simple calculation of odds multiplied by wager amount to arrive at the total amount returned to the bettor.

The -165 odds on Los Angeles, for example, convert to 1.6061 decimal odds using the Gaming Today moneyline calculator. Multiplying that by a $50 bet yields $80.30, and subtracting the original bet amount yields the profit earned ($80.30-$50=$30.30).

What Is A Moneyline Calculator?

The Gaming Today Moneyline Calculator allows for quick calculations for any wager amount and payout odds. Using American, decimal, fractional, Hong Kong, Indonesian, or Malay Odds, you can input the odds and the amount of a wager and see the payout that would come if the bet is a win.

While it’s valuable to understand and be able to calculate favorite and underdog Moneyline odds for all of the different odds notations, the moneyline calculator can save a significant amount of time and energy.

One of the most important features of the Gaming Today Moneyline Calculator is the Implied Probability feature.

For any favorite or underdog input, the calculator produces the implied probability of that team winning. Astute bettors can use the calculator to find teams that have a higher actual win probability than the implied probability dictated by the odds.

The “To Win” window displays the amount of profit yielded by any combination of odds and wager amount. To calculate the return to the bettor, add the “To Win” number to the original amount of the wager.

How To Use The Moneyline Calculator To Place A Sports Bet

Suppose you wanted to put the Gaming Today Moneyline Calculator to work to decide how you wanted to bet on Game 1 of the 2020 World Series. Here’s another look at the lines offered on that game by PointsBet:

To calculate a $50 moneyline wager on the Tampa Bay Rays, input $50 in the “Bet Amount” window and put “+140” in the “American Odds” window. Hit enter or click on the “Convert Odds” button and see how the moneyline calculator converts that information into several different useful categories.

The calculator converts the “+140” odds into all of the different notations you might see used by a sportsbook.

The +140 American odds convert to 2.40 decimal odds, 7/5 fractional odds, 1.40 for Indonesian/Hong Kong odds, and -0.7143 Malay Odds. A tool like our moneyline calculator can be a crucial component of a betting strategy when evaluating odds at sportsbooks that use different notations.

The “Implied Probability” output tells you that at +140 odds, the Rays have a 41.67% implied probability of winning. A skilled bettor will take that bet if they think Tampa Bay’s actual chance of winning the game is higher than that.

The “To Win” output yields the profit produced if the Rays win. A $50 winning bet on the Rays yields $70 in profit and a $120 total return to the bettor ($70 profit plus the $50 original bet).

Looking for other calculators to use when sports betting? Check out:

Calculating Positive And Negative Moneyline Odds

The math used in calculating the payout on a moneyline is pretty simple. It is one of the most important first steps to understanding sports betting and is crucial to success. Below is a graph of profit won on $100 bets for negative odds. Note that it is a curve that approaches, but will never get to $0. Even -1,000,000 odds still yields some profit from a win:

And here is a graph of profit for positive numbers. The really important difference is that the line is linear. as the odds increase, so does the profit. That goes on forever.

Looking at the odds offered by the sportsbook, note whether they are negative odds (for example -110) or positive odds (for example +120). The calculation changes based on if it is a positive or negative odd. Below we work through an example of a bet of $100 at -110 moneyline odds. It is important to notice that multiplying by -1 is required to give us the positive payout:

PAYOUT = BET AMOUNT / (-1 *MONEYLINE ODDS / 100)

So that looks like:

$90.91 = $100 / (-1 * -110/100)

That also means that you will be returned that amount AND your original bet, meaning you now have $190.91. Let’s work another negative example of a $100 bet at -150:

$100 / (-1 * -150 / 100) = $66.67

Now let’s work through a positive money example. Let’s say you bet $100 at +120

PAYOUT = BET AMOUNT * ODDS / 100

That looks like:

$120 = $100 * 120 / 100

In that case, you are returned your original bet plus profit, so you now have $220.

What Is Line Movement?

Sportsbooks make money by setting lines that bring in an appropriate amount of wagers on both sides of a bet. The house offers odds that factor in a cut of overall wagers, known as vig, that goes to the sportsbook.

In the World Series Game 1 example from above, if 90% of bets come in on the Dodgers, the sportsbook stands to lose big money if Los Angeles wins. A Tampa Bay win in that situation is even more disastrous for the sportsbook.

If the bets coming in on a game are too one-sided, the line on the game will start to move to try to prompt more bets for the other side. It’s important to remember that sports betting isn’t a zero-sum game, and you’ll be losing in the long run even if you win 50% of the time.

Legal Online Sports Betting In The US

A federal mandate known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was overturned in May 2018, giving US states the legal clearance to offer state-regulated sports betting. Several states now offer both retail and online sports betting, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, and several others.

The top online sport betting brands in the US include the following:

DraftKings Sportsbook

One of the biggest brands to emerge in the booming online sports betting industry, DraftKings Sportsbook offers mobile sports wagering in eight states. The sportsbook offers every imaginable kind of wager across multiple sports.

That betting menu includes daily moneyline opportunities on all major US sports leagues, as well as numerous international leagues. A tool like the Moneyline Calculator can be an indispensable tool to use for evaluating the odds and implied win probabilities at DraftKings Sportsbook.

FanDuel Sportsbook

Another huge player in the legal sports betting market, FanDuel Sportsbook offers mobile sports wagering in seven states. Along with DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbooks stands as one of the top two mobile sports betting brands in the US.

FanDuel Sportsbook’s vast selection of moneyline wagering options becomes a potentially profitable market for bettors using a moneyline calculator. Such a tool allows sharp players to compare odds across multiple sportsbooks and only place the most favorable bets.

FOX Bet

A collaboration between FOX Sports and The Stars Group, the FOX Bet brand operates online sportsbooks in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.

The moneyline odds at FOX Bet can vary greatly versus some of its competitors, and bettors using a moneyline calculator tool gain a significant edge versus players that don’t.

Moneyline Calculator FAQs

Yes. More than a dozen states either currently offer online sports betting or have a launch of mobile sports betting products pending.

New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania represent the three biggest online sports betting markets in the US. Other states with legal online sports wagering include Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, West Virginia, and a few others.

The Gaming Today Moneyline Calculator can be used as a valuable resource on any moneyline bet. It’s especially useful for evaluating the implied probability of winning and payout odds.

The moneyline bet calculator’s ability to display odds across multiple notation formats (American, Decimal, Fractional, Indonesian/Hong Kong, and Malay odds) allows bettors to compare lines across sportsbooks that use different notations.

Fanduel Betting Odds

Even if you’re a veteran sports bettor, running every bet you’re considering through the calculator provides significant benefit.

Yes. Nothing in the terms and conditions of any US legal online sportsbooks prohibits the use of a moneyline calculator.

The calculator provides computations that any person could produce with pen and paper but in a much faster and more efficient manner.

For “+” American odds, divide the odds by 100 and convert that quotient into a fraction. To convert +160 into fractional odds, for example, divide 160 by 100 (160/100) and reduce that fraction to the lowest whole number denominator. American odds of +160 would convert to 8/5 fractional odds.

For “-” American odds, divide 100 by the odds and convert to the simplest form fraction. For -160 odds, for example, the calculation looks like 100/160, which reduces to 5/8 fractional odds.

To convert “+” American odds to implied winning probability, the formula looks like this:

100 / (“+” American odds + 100)*100 = implied probability

For example, +160 odds would be calculated as 100/(160+100)*100. This converts to 100/260*100, which ends up yielding a 38.46% implied probability.

To convert “-” odds, the formula looks like this:

“-” odds / (“-” odds + 100)*100 = implied probability

For instance, -160 odds would translate to 160/(160+100)*100, converting to 160/260*100, which yields a product of 61.54. The implied probability of -160 odds is a 61.54% chance of winning.

Several online sportsbooks offer comprehensive coverage of sports and ways to bet. Some of the best choices for online sports betting in the US include DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook, PointsBet, FOX Bet, and BetMGM.

WAGER WONDERLAND was a carnival of handicapping acrobatics and emotional high-wire acts over the past few days, especially for one particular FanDuel winner.

It featured gamblers hitting some collections of approximately $30,000, a dollar returning more than $6,000 and bets encompassing more than the bread-and-butter likes of college football and basketball, pro football, the NBA and NHL.

Sports-betting jackpot fever went international, with parlay cards featuring soccer (football) games from Argentina, and Portugal.

Let’s unravel it. Starting with an impossible FanDuel winner…

FanDuel Fantasia: The Spectrum of Winners

A FanDuel winner who beat impossible odds.

Several levels of payouts unfolded via FanDuel. One player turned $50 into $33,605.

The strategy was straightforward. Load up the moneyline with prohibitive NBA and college basketball favorites.Pocket the easy ones and reduce a multi-leg parlay card to a handful of tough calls.

Spreads? We don’t need no stinkin’ spreads!

Not for this FanDuel winner.

FanDuel Winner: NBA… Easy!

Charlotte Hornets

Milwaukee Bucks

Orlando Magic

Boston Celtics

Brooklyn Nets

Indiana Pacers

Chicago Bulls

Dallas Mavericks

Los Angeles Lakers

Portland Trail Blazers

College FanDuel Winner Picks

Villanova

Purdue

Maryland

Ohio State

Colorado

Genius Pick: Purdue Upends Virginia

There were two pieces of insight from this bettor. It was worth a “smaller” payout to lay 10-1 odds on Villanova. Close calls? Never happened, as these teams won in a relative breeze.

The magic?Taking Purdue over defending champion Virginia. Purdue came in 4-3, Virginia was 7-0. The sportsbooks had a hunch about this, making Purdue a 3.5-point favorite. So, this bettor decided not to waste time in points and went moneyline. What a call, 69-40.

This was the final “box score”

• A customer placed 15-leg parlay across NBA and College Basketball on Wednesday Night (12/4), all on the Moneyline. The $50 wager paid out $33,605.

Twenty Grand _ By International Transport

One sharpie brought international intrigue into the picture. Presto, $28 on an eight-leg parlay became $20,626 at FanDuel.

One could figure the NBA, NHL and College Football into the picture. But how about Argentina SuperLiga? That’s showing a real depth of knowledge.

The bet involved games on Dec. 7.

Wisconsin covered the football angle at +15.5 adjusted spread against Ohio State. Smart move, that line was nine points and the final margin was 13. Would have been a loss without the teased line.

The NHL is tricky because a player can’t lay just one goal. It’s 1.5 and the Penguins came through with an empty-net goal against the Detroit Red Wings and the Dallas Stars held off the New York Islanders, 3-1.Two half-puck triumphs. Can’t shave it any closer.

How about Argentina Ecstasy? It arrived via this bet on football, or soccer in the United States. The ticket had Lanus over the Racing Club, a 1-0 victory, and a draw between Tucuman and Newell’s, which ended 2-2.

Are you kidding? Soccer has many draws, but many are scoreless or 1-1. Picking a draw when four goals will be scored? In a league that’s not as well-known as the circuit in England? That’s worth every bit of $20,626.

A Buck and A Bundle

You can’t go wrong for a dollar but how much can you

go right? How about a 14-leg parlay on the NBA and NHL, which a patron recently won with FanDuel, turning $1 into $6,051.?

This player had a clear “under” standing of the landscape. The ticket had NBA unders of 209.5, 214, 216, 218 and 230.5. and the Oklahoma City Thunder giving four points in a game they won by 12. So, the NBA portion was The Thunder and the Under.

All the NHL picks won easily, and many were unders. The exception? The Pittsburgh Penguins were giving 1.5 goals to the Arizona Coyotes and they won, 2-0.

We don’t know who the bettor was, but we’re certain the player has at least considered that even a $10 bet would have returned more than $60,000. Nonetheless, 14-for-14 is astounding.

It’s one thing to get bang for a buck. It’s another to get 6,051 bangs.

SUGARHOUSE STRUT

A seven-team parlay turned $220 into $28,869 for a sharp PlaySugarHouse bettor, who combined a dash of pro football and a sprinkle of moneyline acumen atop the main dish of college football games against the spread.

The initial strategy: taking prohibitive favorites LSU and Clemson, which romped by 47 and 27 points against Virginia and Georgia respectively.Ohio State completed the roundup of top national teams, slipping past Wisconsin 34-21 as a nine-point favorite.

And there was a dog component. Baylor needed almost all the nine points it was getting from Oklahoma, covering in a 30-23 loss. Cincinnati used some of its 9.5-point cushion in a 29-24 defeat to Memphis.

What would nearly $29,000 be without a game that looked real close?Appalachian State was a 5.5-point pick against Louisiana Lafayette and snuck out with a 45-38 triumph.

But this was not heavy sweat, because App State had a 42-17 lead. It did, however, give up two touchdowns in the last five minutes.

The ticket finally needed nerves of steel, where a stand must be made and where underdog status heightens the pay line.

The bettor took two of them, starting with the Chicago Bears, at 3- and 3.5-point underdogs at the major sportsbooks, on the moneyline against the Dallas Cowboys on Thursday Night football.Bing! The Bears came through 31-24.

The gutsiest call may have been saved for last. Oregon was a 6.5 underdog against Utah at home for the Pac 12 tittle. But the spread was not involved in this pick.

The bettor went all-in, taking Oregon on the moneyline itself at +205 and was that ever prophetic. Oregon romped 37-15, providing the needed underdog score to make a card pay well.

Another PlaySugarHouse bettor hit a $50 nine-leg parlay to win over $11,000. Highlights of the anxiety: Saint Bonaventure was down by eight at the half but ended up winning by seven over FloridaAtlantic to cover the four-point spread, and Hofstra made two free throws with seven seconds left to cover the six-point spread by a single point in a seven-point win over Canisius.

How’s that for pressure? Good thing Canisius was fouling in an attempt to get the ball back. And it’s a good thing both free throws were drained. After the first one went in, 11 grand and change was riding on ONE FREE THROW.

That’s big-time gambling.

The international flair surfaced here too. This ticket included a moneyline victory for S.C. Braga over Rio Ave. for soccer, in Portugal.

POINTSBET: Sweating Out $60,000

PointsBet has gained notoriety with its margin-of-victory component at its sportsbook, making every additional yard or score multiply the payout of victory or defeat. But that’s only one section of the operation.

Last week, in its traditional sportsbook area, a gambler took one of the routes we’ve seen deep-pocketed players use: leverage.

The bettor put $60,000 in play on the 49ers moneyline at -130, when they led the New Orleans Saints 28-27 at halftime. When the Niners won 48-46, with a field goal as time expired, the bet returned $46, 152.

The player emotionally earned it. The Niners fell behind in the final minute and were down to their last play. It was 4^th-and-2. They trailed 46-45.

The game was nationally televised, you know the bettor was watching. One unsuccessful play and $60,000 would be lost on this ticket.The Superdome was rocking, trying to bring the Saints to victory.

Could we take that kind of pressure?It’s what gamblers live for if they can live through it. This player was bailed out by tight end George Kittle’s terrific fourth-down catch and run, putting the Niners in field goal range for the kick they made on the final play.

I would not be surprised if Kittle was sent a thank you card.

Another big bet came in during halftime in the 49ers/Saints game on the second-half half total (OVER 24) after 55 points were scored in the first half. The client stake was 50,000 at -120 odds. After 39 points were scored in the second half, the ticket was paid out a little over $40,000.

A Little Razzle Dazzle

Big money was wagered and pocketed on a different bet, a four-part parlay that highlighted adjusted lines.

One leg involved the Tennessee Titans -3 over the Oakland Raiders, whom they throttled 42-21. Then there were “two-fers,” spreads mixed with teased point totals on each winning selection.

The Los Angeles Chargers gave three and hit the over 35.5 line with a 45-10 win in Jacksonville. The Kansas City Chiefs were teased up to +9.5 and the over-under was moved down to 56 as Kansas City won 23-16. The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 23-17 and were teased to +4 and the underwent to 50.

This was an intelligent use of line movement and resulted in $15,020 for $1,050.

Keep It Comin’

The big hits make the news, but unlike major payouts like slot-machine jackpots, sports betting tickets involve analysis. We see a common theme of loading up on big favorites on the moneyline to create a foundation for a large winning ticket.

Then it’s a matter of bringing some close bets in. It is likely that bettors lay the foundation with several favorites and play multiple cards with different combinations on the rest.

In any case, the triumphs are exhilarating. So is the pursuit.

Fanduel Betting Lines

Will you be the FanDuel winner story? Maybe.