Is Lakers -280 A Good Bet?

Tuesday I posted how to find a good money line bet. Today we'll determine how to know if the bet you find is really a good bet or not.

To determine if it's a good bet, you need to figure the expected value of the bet. In the Lakers example, you are betting $280 to win $100. The ticket will be worth $380 if the Lakers win. You estimated that this will happen 75% of the time. $380 x .75 = $285, which is the expected value of the ticket.

$285 is $5 more than the original bet of $280, so you are expecting to win $5 on your investment of $280. You take the winnings divided by the investment to compute the return on investment. 5/280 = 0.01786, which is 1.79%

A 1.79% ROI is not very good - you want at least 5%, if not higher.

Therefore, if you think the Lakers have a 75% chance of winning, -280 is not a good bet.

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