Tutorials
Live ScoresUnderstanding Unit Calculations
If you spend much time talking to your fellow sports betting fans, you may find you hear the term 'unit' quite a lot. People like to speak of their unit wins / losses, and units are often used to calculate their online sports betting picks.
If you haven't heard the term before, it can sound confusing, but in reality, the term 'unit' is just used to define the cost of a single bet - making it easy for people who have different sized bankrolls to communicate with each other when discussing online betting. Some people can bet $1,000 per bet, others can only bet $20 - but when they just talk about units, everyone has an idea what to expect.
Usually, a unit is 1% of your bankroll - so if you have $10,000 to play with, you would have a unit size of $100. If someone mentions a 2-unit play, then you would be risking $200.
Calculating units won or lost is not quite as simple as just counting per bet. In many bets - such as ones 'against the spread', you will have to account for the commission, or 'juice' taken by the bookmaker. Usually, this is about 10%, so you will need to risk $100 to win $91. This means, in the 2 unit play mentioned earlier, your $200 bet could win you $182. You would need a winning percentage of just over 52% to break even. If you win the 2 unit bet, you will have +1.82 units, if you lose, you have -2 units.
Betting against the money line is different to betting against a spread - you are simply betting that a team will win or lose, and there is no spread to worry about. If your team loses, then you have lost the bet, if they win, you have won - it does not matter how much they won or lost by. Betting on the money line requires you to risk more, and win less, when betting on favorites, but can be quite profitable if you bet on an underdog that goes on to win.
Calculating units won or lost requires accounting for the money line that was offered on the bet. If a team is $300 for $200, and we bet two units on it, and win, then we would count it at as 1.34 unit win. If we lost that bet, we would have counted it as a 2 unit loss.
If the team were an underdog, with betting odds at +300, then we would count their win as a +3 unit win. Should the underdog lose, it would still be counted as a 2 unit loss.
When you are betting against the 'money line', you are always risking a certain number of units. The amount you win depends on the line offered.
If you use a handicapping service to help with your online sports betting, the picks they send you will usually be rated by a certain number of units. Typically, day to day bets will only recommend a low number of units. You may find the service going to five or more units on picks that they are very confident about, and that offers betting odds that mean it would be profitable if you win. Make sure you are comfortable betting such a large amount of your bankroll before following such a pick.
