A margin calculator is a valuable tool that allows you to quickly and easily assess the value of the odds a bookie offers you.
Value is key to betting if you want to give yourself the best chance of having long-term success. Our profit margin calculator lets you check how much profit margin the betting site takes for itself. Using the payout calculator, therefore, is a quick way to see if the odds offer much value.
To use our margin converter:
- Click whether the market is two-way or three-way.
- Next, use the dropdown menu to select your preferred odds format.
- Finally, enter the odds for each selection in the relevant boxes.
Our margin calculator will then display the margin and payout percentages, as well as the implied probabilities for each pick.
The profit bet margin is the way bookmakers make money. Whatever they believe the true probability for a team, horse, or player to win, the odds will be slightly lower. You can use our payout calculator to see how the margin varies from one bookie to another. Since the margin is the way the bookie makes money, a lot of people refer to as the hidden cost that punters must pay to wager.
Because they have different odds, the payout percentage varies. If you consistently make bets with a bookmaker that has a margin of 8%, your results will be significantly worse than if you made the same bets with a site that has a 4% margin.
In other words, your goal is to try and find a bookmaker whose margins are lower than others. It may not seem that important at first, but users who plan to wager in the long run will get better results.
One thing you can do is to use more than one online bookmaker at a time. A lot of people do that to keep an eye on the margins, but some are even interested in arbitrage betting. We have a special article for Arbing and everything related to it.
How to calculate the margins using the Two-Way market?
Even though our margin calculator will do the job for you, a lot of people want to know how to calculate their own margins. Here is the formula you must be aware of:
- (1/odds of the first option {in decima odds}) * 100 + (1/odds of the second option {in decimal odds}) * 100
Let’s face it: most people do not like formulas, so here is a real-life example of a tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Grigor Dimitrov. The odds for Nadal to win were 1.20, whereas Grigor had odds of 5.50
In this case, we have used the formula as mentioned above – (1/1.20) * 100 + (1/5.50) * 100. After doing the maths, it became clear that the total percentage is 101.51%, which means that the margin was 1.51%.
How to calculate the margins using the 1×2 market?
If you take a good look at our margin calculator, you can see that our calculator has a 3way market type. This usually refers to the popular 1×2 market that people can bet on when wagering on football and other sports.
If you want to calculate the margin for this market, you should use this formula:
- (1/odds for the home team) * 100 + (1/odds for the away team) *100 + 1(odds for a draw) *100
As you can see, this formula is slightly more complex, but we will give you a real example so it is easier to understand. In the UEFA Champions League match between Real Madrid and Manchester City, the odds were as follows:
- 2.56 for Real Madrid to win
- 3.30 for a draw
- 3.20 for Liverpool to win
After using the formula from above, we learned that the total percentage was 100.61%, meaning the margins applied by the specific bookie were not that high.
The fact that you know how to calculate the margins will allow you to choose the best possible online bookmaker. Thankfully, there is no need to use complicated formulas because our tool will do all the work.