

MMA Playground House Odds Money Line Wagering System Explained

So just what is a money line? and how does an odds-based wagering system work?

For starters, it should be explained what a money line accomplishes. The purpose of a money line (+/-) is to equal out the appeal of placing a bet both on a fight's favorite and underdog. The odds are set so that more money must be risked to earn a profit when betting on the favorite than when betting on an underdog.

Here is a ficticious example:

Fedor Emelianenko is preparing to fight Eddie Sanchez. In this instance (at the time of this writing), the cyborg Emelianenko would be the heavy favorite going into this bout. As such, the money line and odds between Emelianenko and Sanchez would not be very even. To earn money from this match by betting on Emelianenko, you would have to risk significantly more money than if you were betting for the underdog Sanchez.

We will pretend Emelianenko's odds are listed at -1400 while Sanchez's odds are listed at +850.

The minus (-) indicates the favorite. Emelianenko is a 14-to-1 favorite.

The plus (+) indicates the underdog. Sanchez is a 8.5-to-1 underdog.

In this instance, if you wished to wager on Emelianenko, you must lay equivalents of $1,400 to win $100.

A $140 winning wager on Emelianenko will win $10 for a total payback of $150. It does not matter when or how Emelianenko wins, just that he is the official winner.

In the event that underdog Sanchez should win, a $10 wager on him would win $85 for a total payback of $95.

For fights that our user pick and user wager data indicate should be closer matches, the odds would have a much smaller spread.

If you are still having trouble visualizing the possible winnings for various bouts on the site, simply type in a wager amount on the My Upcoming Wagers page to see your potential earnings in the "Explanation" column alongside the wager box. Wagers are not saved to your account until you click the "Update My Event Wagers" button at the bottom of the page.

How does a parlay wager work?

A parlay is a single wager that links together two or more individual bets, and depends on all of those wagers winning together. The benefit of making a parlay bet is that there are much higher payoffs than placing each individual bet separately since the difficulty of hitting it is much higher. If any of the bets in the parlay loses, the entire parlay loses.

How do you calculate your odds?

In an effort to make our wagering system easy to understand and use for inexperienced bettors we have attempted to make a game that doesn't give too many potentially confusing options, doesn't require intimate knowledge of sports betting terminology, and can be "figured out" simply by entering wager amounts.

It may be a far less sophisticated simulation than the systems you are familiar with, and is based entirely off of MMA Playground fantasy game user data, thus the odds you see for a fight may not always match the odds presented by popular, real life sports books.

Please note: Your wagers are final once the event is locked out. Until then you may update your wagers as you see fit.

Why change the wagering system from the way it was for season 1?

By making the system house-based and resetting bankrolls we...

  1. put all players are on a level playing field
  2. can give per-event and season prizes for this part of the game because the playing field is even
  3. have made wagering less tedious and less time-consuming; players will no longer have to find others to wager with and wait for replies
  4. eliminate duplicate account wager manipulators that were betting against themselves
  5. save our moderators the time and trouble of policing wagers after every event to put the ban-hammer down on the people from #4