Betting on Baseball – How to Calculate Your Break Even Percentage

In order to be successful at betting on baseball, you need to understand baseball odds and your breakeven point on any given wager. Just because your hometown team is playing at home field and are considered the favorite to win the match doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best choice to risk your money. Beginning sports bettors fall into this trap all of the time…

Let me give you an example: Milwaukee is playing at home against Houston. Milwaukee is the favorite and the line or odds are set at -200 Milwaukee if you bet on the Brewers to win. Seems like a reasonable bet until you look a little closer. The Brewers may be having a winning season going 25-17 overall but are playing poorly at home going 5-10 or .50%. Does -200 sound so good now? Not if you consider that a -200 wager needs to win 66.67% of the time to just to break even. In this scenario, the Brewers are a losing proposition, and we haven’t taken in to consideration if the road team is better than the home team.

How do you determine if a team is a favorite?

First, let’s define what a favorite is – a favorite is any team with a negative point spread. The negative spread will look like -105, -110, -115, etc. They have this negative number because the sports books needs to offset the odds to balance their betting pool.

So how do you calculate breakeven percents using baseball odds?

This is a very simple equation using addition, subtraction, and division… To calculate breakeven points for dogs is very simple:

Divide 100 by the Spread + 100 or 100/(spread + 100)

Remember, in math, the equation in the parenthesis is completed first so you would need to add the spread + 100 before dividing by 100. Example: If the dog team is listed with +140 odds, then the equation would be 100/(140+100) or 100/240 which equals 41.67%. This is the winning percentage that this dog team will need to win in order to break even.

Let’s try another one. The dog team is listed with -180, so your formula would be 100/(180+100) which equals 35.71. Did you get the same number? Simple, isn’t it.

Now let’s try one with a favorite. Favorites are a little trickier because the odds are listed as negative numbers. For these, you will need to subtract 100 from the spread, not add it, and then add 1 to you end result. See, I told you it was trickier, but here it is in equation form:

Divide 100 by the spread – 100 + 1 or (100/(spread–100))+1

Example: If your favorite team is listed with a -120 line, then your equation would be (100/(-120–100))+1 or (100/-220)+1 or -0.45455+1 which equals 54.5%. Confused?

Let’s try one more. The favorite is listed with -160 odds, so your formula would be (100/(-160-100))+1 or (100/-260)+1 or -0.38+1 or 62%. If you were to wager on this favorite, they would need a win rate of more than 62% for your wager to look attractive. Do you see how importance it is to know the breakeven?

To help you even more, I have calculated the winning percentages you need to break even for the most common baseball lines.

List of Break Even Percentages

-240  70.6%
-235  70.1%
-230  69.7%
-225  69.2%
-220  68.8%
-215  68.3%
-210  67.7%
-205  67.2%
-200  66.7%
-195  66.1%
-190  65.5%
-185  64.9%
-180  64.3%
-175  63.6%
-170  63.0%
-165  62.3%
-160  61.5%
-155  60.8%
-150  60.0%
-145  59.2%
-140  58.3%
-135  57.4%
-130  56.5%
-125  55.6%
-120  54.5%
-115  53.5%
-110  52.4%
-105  51.2%
+100  50.0%
+105  48.8%
+110  47.6%
+115  46.5%
+120  45.5%
+125  44.4%
+130  43.5%
+135  42.6%
+140  41.7%
+145  40.8%
+150  40.0%
+155  39.2%
+160  38.5%
+165  37.7%
+170  37.0%
+175  36.4%
+180  35.7%
+185  35.1%
+190  34.5%
+195  33.9%
+200  33.3%
+205  32.8%
+210  32.3%
+215  31.7%
+220  31.3%
+225  30.8%
+230  30.3%
+235  29.9%
+240  29.4%

By now you should have a good idea why break even percentages are so important.

Betting on baseball allows the sports handicapper a unique opportunity that you can’t find in football or basketball betting… You can actually have a losing percentage season and still make money by betting baseball. For example, if you were to only bet on dog teams with -120 odds, then you only need to win 45.6% of the time to make money betting on baseball. By paying attention to baseball odds in your handicapping process you will be able to spot opportunities to wager on.

To check on your games, Las Vegas Sports Insider provides opening baseball lines from Statfox. Use the guide above and start cashing some tickets!

Good luck and happy handicapping!