MMA Betting Culture
The world of MMA has always been linked to the universe of Las Vegas betting, in fact the most prestigious fights of franchises like the UFC normally happen in the city and one of the most important governing bodies of the professional MMA world is the Nevada Athletic Commission.
News about medical bans after knock-outs often come from that institution which is a name that many fans of martial arts have heard before.
A sport that grew around the city of Las Vegas obviously is closely related to the betting culture and in fact many Brazilian fans of martial arts were introduced to the world of gambling because of the UFC events in Las Vegas.
Not a Lot of Math Required
To bet on MMA doesn’t take nearly as much math as other kinds of bets such as football markets like overs / unders or handicap betting.
If you are able to estimate the chances of a fighter in simple numbers you can transform it into betting odds easily.
Let’s say you can predict the result of the upcoming UFC 249: Khabib vs. Ferguson. There’s an easy ‘trick’ to transform knowledge of fights into odds that is used by professionals.
You can think that the upcoming fight, just as it is, considering the recent past of both fighters, would happen 100 times or a thousand times. Let’s use a hundred times for easier calculation, but at times bigger numbers can be easier to estimate your odds.
Please note we will use ‘decimal’ odds which is the most popular form in Brazil, in fact the betting sites have an option at their menus to ‘translate’ the odds into different systems – that can be especially useful if you get to bet on foreign sites like Americans that tend to use moneylines.
Back to the ‘creation’ of your numbers, Khabib is considered a favourite to win the match, and you can see that because his odds are significantly lower than his adversary. The key to the betting world is to understand that this is an impression and not the reality. Just because many punters are betting on a specific outcome it doesn’t mean an event is more or less likely to happen; there are several bettors that follow professionals that also make mistakes, which means dropping odds do not necessarily mean an event is becoming more likely.
If you want to bet yourself, you must create your numbers. Let’s suppose you are convinced that if this fight happened 100 times, Khabib would win at least 80 of them. It means if you divide 100% by 80% (which is your estimation), you would get the number 1.25 – that is the ‘decimal odd’ that represents a true chance of an event with 80% of probability of happening.
You can learn more about the concept of fair odds or valuable odds but for starters, just try to bet on odds that are higher than your estimations. The market is now offering odds of 1.40+ to Khabib’s victory, which means If you believe for example that 80% is the right number here, the odds available at the market are good ones to buy!
The best way to test your skills to estimate the outcomes of fights is to start betting for real!
