Moneyline

The moneyline is the most basic type of odds - all you need to do is decide which team will win! 

Of course, no two teams are created equal, and depending on the relative strengths and weaknesses of any two teams in a matchup, there will almost always be a favorite and an underdog.

Oddsmakers will set moneylines odds based on how much of a disparity they feel there is between the favorite and the underdog. Let’s look again at our baseball game:

Cleveland is playing in Toronto, who has home-field advantage with Halladay on the mound. With everything being taken into consideration, oddsmakers determine that Toronto is the favorite, and Cleveland is the underdog. 

The odds again, in American format, are: 

Cleveland +180
Toronto -220

Now that we know how to read odds, we know that to pick Toronto, we’d have to risk 220 to win 100. If we picked Cleveland instead, we’d win 180 if we risked 100.

For the favorite, the smaller the number is, the heavier of a favorite they are. For example, if Toronto was -400 instead, then they would be more of a favorite than they currently are at -220. Instead of having to risk 220 to win 100, you’d have to risk way more (400) to win that same 100, so there is a far greater potential downside picking heavy favorites.

On the other hand, when a team is a heavy favorite, then the underdogs become even bigger underdogs. If the odds for Toronto were in fact -400, then the odds for Cleveland would change to something like +300. Risking 100 on Cleveland before would have given you a profit of 180, but now, it’s 300. The more of an underdog a team is, the more of a greater potential upside if they were to pull off the upset!

Takeaway: pick the winning team with moneyline odds, and use the numbers to understand how much of a favorite/underdog each team is.