Decimal odds are mostly used in Europe, Canada, and Australia. They are probably the easiest to understand and calculate winnings. Their ease of use makes them probably the favorite among most bettors.
To calculate your winnings with decimal odds, you just multiply your stake with the odds given by bookmaker.
Potential Winning = Your Stake x Odds
For example, if your stake is 100Eur and the odds you have is 1.61 the potential winning is:
100EUR x 1.61 = 161EUR
If you are using decimal odds, keep in mind that in potential winning you have both the profit and your initial stake. In order to calculate your profit, you need to deduct your stake from potential winning.
Potential Winning – Your Stake = Profit
In our example total profit if you win the bet would be:
161EUR – 100EUR = 61EUR
Given the provided example and ease of use and calculation, you can see why the decimal odds are one of the most popular ways to display odds.
As you can see, the higher the odds are, the bigger the winning is. But keep in mind that the higher the odds, the probability to win the bet is lower.
In the core of creating decimal odds, lies a simple calculation:
1 / Probability of winning the bet = Odds
Example: On the match between England and Colombia, bookmaker predicts that there is a 70% chance that England will win the game. The odds for England winning the match are:
1 / 70% = 1.4286
If you stake 100EUR on England winning the game against Colombia you would earn:
100EUR * 1.4286 = 142.86EUR
142.86EUR – 100EUR = 42.86EUR
When you are planning your bets, if you would like to check the probability that bookmaker predicts, you can simply reverse engineer the odds to find out:
Probability = (1 / Decimal Odds) * 100%
Let’s take a look the one example in the same game. Bookmaker sets the odds of 3.50 for Colombia winning the match:
(1 / 3.50) * 100% = 28.57%
By using the odds with the formula can calculate that the bookmaker predicts that there is 28.57% chance for Colombia to win the match.