{"id":4002,"date":"2023-01-05T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newbettingsites.co\/?page_id=4002"},"modified":"2023-01-05T10:06:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T10:06:00","slug":"what-are-stacked-odds","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.newbettingsites.co\/articles\/what-are-stacked-odds\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Stacked Odds?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scalesAnyone that knows anything about betting and gambling will know that the House always wins. It is one of those phrases that has been trotted out time and time again, in a similar vein to the idea of never seeing a poor bookmaker.<\/p>\n

This is largely thanks to the fact that the odds that you take are almost always stacked against you<\/a>, hence the phrase \u2018stacked odds\u2019. The notion is a simple one: there are certain bets that are designed to be poor value for you, which makes them excellent value for the bookmakers and companies that offer them.<\/p>\n

The most obviously example of this is the National Lottery and the EuroMillions. The odds of winning the Lotto are 1 in 45,057,474, but that doesn\u2019t stop millions of us from playing it twice a week. It\u2019s more unlikely that you\u2019ll win the EuroMillions, given that the chance of doing so stands at 1 in 139,838,160.<\/p>\n

Regardless, people all over the continent play it on a weekly basis, in spite of the fact that the stacked odds mean that they\u2019re almost certainly never going to win it. Lotteries are the most obvious example, but there are plenty of others that we fall for all the time.<\/p>\n

Stacked Odds Explained<\/h2>\n

\"businessmanCasinos and bookmakers are businesses. It might seem simple to say as much, but that is something that we often forget. We, as punters, feels as though they should operate in a \u2018fair\u2019 manner, but they are designed and set up to take as much money from us as they possibly can.<\/p>\n

As a result, they work in a way that sees the odds stacked in their favour, which means that they are stacked against us. This can happen in small ways and big ways, but it happens all of the time regardless of what you do and which games you play.<\/p>\n

There are no games in a casino that are fair, nor are there bets at a bookmaker that reflect the true odds<\/a> of an event happening. Stacked odds mean that the companies concerned will always make a profit in the long-term.<\/p>\n

Think of betting on red on an American roulette table. The payout is Evens, but the odds aren\u2019t, thanks to the presence of the 0 and the 00. That shifts the odds so that the chances of it landing on red are 47.4%, meaning that 52.6% of it the House is walking away with your money. Even if you win, someone else almost certainly loses.<\/p>\n

Things To Look Out For<\/h2>\n

\"oddsIf you\u2019re particularly keen to avoid odds that are stacked too<\/em> much in the favour of the House or of the bookmaker, there are certain things that you can look to avoid. One of the best examples of this comes in the form of side bets that you can place whilst you\u2019re at the card tables in casinos.<\/p>\n

In order to explain what we mean, we\u2019ll have a look at some of the side bets that are available at a blackjack table in a casino. In blackjack, the only way to keep the House\u2019s Edge as low as possible is to play Basic Strategy and never deviate.<\/p>\n

If you decide to \u2018go with your gut\u2019 or to play the side bets, you\u2019re automatically deviating from what Basic Strategy tells you to do, which means that you\u2019re increasing the House\u2019s Edge and reducing your chance of winning. Yes, the payout on such wagers are usually good, but that\u2019s because the stacked odds mean that it is worth the casino offering such odds in the hope of tempting you to play something that the House knows is weighted very heavily in their favour.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the bets we\u2019re talking about:<\/p>\n