Ultimate Guide to Finding the Best Odds in Canada

Alright. We’ve got an intense topic for discussion here. All of you who’s already experienced here may not need this so much. But the newcomers do. We’re going to go deep into how you can find the best odds for your betting duration.

What are Betting Odds?

Well, as this guide is targeted toward newbies, we would only be assuming that they know what betting odds are. But here at Online Bonus, we don’t believe in assumptions. So, let’s just cover what the odds are before we get into how to find the best.

In sports betting, odds imply the likelihood of an event as well as how much you can win from the odds. The first characteristic remains the same for the term if you use it in any other sentence, in any other way.

When we want to find the best odds, it’s simply because we want to have the most accurate prediction as well as win as much as possible.

How to Find the Best Odds, Even for Newbies?

As promised, we’re going to look at the steps you have to follow to find the best odds. Although we’ve covered the basics, you still need to know how to read the odds. For that, you can read this post where we go in-depth, explaining all 3 major odds formats.

Here go the best practices to find the best odds for any given market.

Read the Betting Lines

Betting lines and moneylines are often interchanged in the online betting industry. These “lines” are practically the winning potential for a given team or player in a match. For every possible sport that qualifies for betting, you’ll get betting lines.

It doesn’t matter what format your chosen betting site is using for the odds, you can tell whether it’s good or not just by looking at them. The catch is that you have to read betting lines at multiple bookmakers at once.

To understand why, you need to understand what we mean by “best”. For something to be “best”, it has to be better than all the other options. You look at multiple bookmakers for odds to have a point of reference in your comparison.

Ideally, your goal is to find the longest odds for the same market. Let’s consider a soccer match between Belgium and Netherlands as our example. The betting lines for both teams in Bookmaker A are -170 and +150 respectively.

If you know how to read American odds, you would know that Belgium is the favourite team to win. The odds imply that you can win a $100 profit by betting on Belgium if you wager $170 in its favour.

On the other hand, +150 odds mean you can win a $150 profit by wagering a mere $100 on the Netherlands. As you’re taking a risk putting money on the underdog, the high payout is your reward.

Now, if you search for the same market on Bookmaker B and find -140 Belgium vs +160 Netherlands, you can effectively win more. For Belgium, you have to wager only $140 to win the same $100 profit. And for the Netherlands, you can secure a $160 profit against your $100 wager. You can follow the same process for Bookmaker C, D, and as many as you like.

As you can see, comparing odds at multiple betting sites gives you a better chance to win more profits. Even if you’re in this paradigm to have fun, the time to put into research is worth it. It’s practically free money!

Finding Value in Odds

This is a little tricky for newbies. You have to be on top of your research game if you want to find the actual value of the odds over the implied value. Value in sports betting can be both positive and negative.

The easiest way to understand value is to take a coin for example. One side is the heads and the other side is the tail. Now, if an online bookmaker were to offer odds for a coin toss, you could bet on that. Let’s assume that odds are -120 for heads and +200 for tails.

In this case, heads is the favourite outcome where you have to wager $120 to secure a $100 profit. On the contrary, you can win a whopping $200 profit if you bet on tails.

Here’s the thing. According to the definition of probability, both heads and tails have a 50% likelihood. It means the precedence of heads being the favourite is invalid. So, it’s better if you bet on tails because you lose $100 if you lose but win $200 if the bet is successful. For heads, you lose $120 and win only $100.

The example here is oversimplified. You’re unlikely to find a sports event where you can divide the outcomes into 50% probability each. But you can surely read the discrepancy in odds if you know what you’re looking at.

For starters, if you’re a soccer guru, you should know which team will win the match. It’s simply because to become the guru, you had to study a lot, analyze previous match results, track team management updates, and whatnot.

If you believe Team A has a slight edge over Team B but the bookmaker is pegging it as a heavy favourite, there’s “value” in betting on the underdog.

Follow Tipsters and Predictions

Modern-day online bookmakers have made following the odds a lot easier. There are plenty of platforms where tipsters share their predictions every single day! And you can find tips for every single sport you can think of.

If you manage to find such a platform where reliable tips are shared, all you have to do is follow them. The tipsters have done the research across multiple bookmakers already. So, you’re essentially getting the best odds for all the available markets in one place!

Final Words

Finding the best odds for sports betting is not rocket science. It just takes a bit of time and patience from your end. And we’ve covered the entire journey on where to spend the resources.