> How gambling works

Understanding your bets

Probability and odds

The terms 'probability' and 'odds' are two common ways used to describe how likely it is that a certain event will happen. In gambling, both terms tell you how likely you are to win, but they do this in different ways.

Think of a rolling dice and hoping for a "4" to come up. In this case there are 6 possible outcomes, 1 winning outcome and 5 losing outcomes.

• Probability is the number of winning outcomes divided by the total number of possible outcomes
• The probability of rolling a "4" would be shown as 1/6, or 1 in 6
• Odds compare the number of losing outcomes to the number of winning outcomes, in ratio form
• The odds of rolling a "4" would be shown as 5:1

When you flip a coin, the probability of it landing on heads is the same as the probability of it landing on tails, so you could say that it has a 50% chance or it’s 50/50.

The reason each outcome is as likely as all of the others is that it all depends on chance. If a flipped coin landed on heads several times in a row, it’s easy to think that it has to come up tails on the next flip. However, the coin doesn’t “remember” what it has landed on before in the same way that it doesn’t “decide” what to land on next. No matter what has happened already, the probability of it landing on heads or tails is always 50/50. Unless you can see the future, the result of a rolled dice or flipped coin is unknown and unpredictable, so we can say that the outcome is random.

Remember: despite what you might think, you can’t work out or control an outcome that’s based on chance and randomness – people who try to do this often lose a lot of money. They might win now and then, but this is also down to chance. Thinking that you can beat the system can be problematic. 

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