Current Vegas Odds?

If a vegas line was posted as … (for example)

Yankees -183
Phillies +170

It means if you have to bet $183 on the Yankees to win $100, and if you bet $100 on the Phillies you win +170. The “juice” on this bet is 13 cents. Which means if Vegas can get half the money bet on each side they will make a nice little profit. Obviously, the larger the juice the easier it is for the casino to make money and the bettor to lose over the long haul.

As far as converting the -183/+170 to odds. The +170 is easy, that would be 1.7 to 1 odds. At a race track it might be listed as 7:4 or 5:3. The -183 on the otherhand would be around 0.55:1 (take inverse of 1.83).

Then if you wanted to convert -183/170 to a win probability percentage, you’d first split the juice which is 13/2=6.5 add that to 170 (1706.5=176.5) and then divide that number by itself plus 100 (176.5 / 276.5) = 63.83%

vr, Xei

As far as the current odds, I don’t know what Vegas has them listed as. I can calculate what they should be by plugging the win probabilities of each of the remaining games into a program that I have. The win probabilities would of course be estimates, but I think I can guess pretty accurately to what Vegas would list them as for the remaining games.

(w/o juice)
Before Game #1: NYA -159, PHI +159, NYA 61.34%
After Game #1: PHI -135, NYA +135, PHI 57.47%

Let’s look one game into the future now…
Yankees Win Game #2: NYA -118, PHI +118, NYA 54.09%
Phillies Win Game #2: PHI -365, NYA +365, PHI 78.51%

In other words, the Yankees better win tonight! :)

vr, Xei