A moneyline bet is a bet on who wins the game outright. No points are given or taken: if your side wins, the bet wins. It is the simplest market, and the one most other prices are measured against.
Favorites and underdogs
- The favorite carries a minus price: the stake that wins $100. At −180 you stake $180 to win $100, so $100 staked wins $55.56.
- The underdog carries a plus price: what $100 wins. At +155, $100 staked wins $155.
- When the two sides are close, both prices can be minus, such as −110 on each side.
A winning bet also returns the stake, so $100 on the +155 side comes back as $255.
What the prices imply
Each price carries an implied chance (see the implied probability guide): −180 implies 64.29% and +155 implies 39.22%. Together they come to 103.50%, more than 100%; the extra is the sportsbook's margin. Take it out and the fair chances are about 62.11% for the favorite and 37.89% for the underdog.
The question a moneyline asks is never only "who wins?" but "does this side win more often than its price says?" A favorite can be the likelier winner and still a poor bet at its price, and an underdog can lose more often than not and still be fairly priced.
Big favorites
Short prices risk a lot to win a little. At −400 you stake $400 to win $100, and the price implies 80%: one loss wipes out four wins. Big favorites do lose, so a long run of small wins can hide a price that was too short.
Ties
Some games can end level. A two-way moneyline usually treats a tie as a push and returns the stake, but each sportsbook's house rules decide, so check them. Some sports and books also offer a three-way moneyline with the draw as its own outcome.
In Unitley
get_game_odds returns each game's moneyline at FanDuel: each side's price and the chance it implies, the best price at that line across the books Unitley tracks, the no-vig consensus chance and the expected value at that chance. calc_implied_probability turns any price into its implied chance, calc_no_vig_odds takes both sides and returns each side's fair chance, and calc_ev compares your own estimate with the price.
Names set like this are Unitley’s tools: what your AI agent, or the analyst in the web app, calls to get these numbers. See the docs