KEY TAKEAWAYS
A longshot in sports betting is a bet on an outcome that the market considers very unlikely, so it is offered at long odds and pays a large profit if it wins. Long odds are simply prices with a big positive number, such as +1000 or +2500 in American odds, or 11.00 and 26.00 in decimal odds. A longshot wins rarely, and the price is the sportsbook’s way of saying so. The word describes a gap between how often something is expected to happen and how much it pays when it does. This guide explains what long odds mean, how to turn them into an implied probability, why they pay so much while hitting so seldom, and how a longshot differs from an ordinary underdog. All odds below are hypothetical examples, not current sportsbook lines. Understanding the term is not a reason to bet more: it is a way to read what a price is really telling you before any money is at risk.
What Is a Longshot in Sports Betting?
A longshot is a selection with a low chance of winning and a high payout, such as a team to win a championship it is far from favored to win, a golfer to win a tournament with a large field, or an unfancied boxer priced against a dominant champion. The term is informal: no rulebook sets a cutoff, and a sportsbook never labels a market as a longshot. Bettors use it for any price that looks very long compared with the rest of the board.
It helps to separate three words that are often mixed together. An underdog is simply the side that is not favored in a matchup, so every game has one. Long odds describe a price with a large positive number. A longshot is an outcome that sits at long odds, usually because the true chance is small. A +120 underdog in a close game is an underdog but not a longshot, while a +2500 outsider in a futures market is both. For the basic favorite and underdog labels, see the guide to what favorite and underdog mean.
The idea comes up in every sport, but it appears most often in markets with many possible outcomes. In a two-team game, even the weaker side usually has a decent chance, so prices stay moderate. In a tournament with dozens of contenders, most entries are longshots by definition, because the probabilities of all outcomes must share a total of 100% and only a few contenders can hold large slices. That is why long odds are the normal state of affairs in outright and futures lists.
Long Odds Meaning: Price, Payout and Probability
The longer the odds, the smaller the probability the price is pricing in. For positive American odds the formula is implied probability = 100 ÷ (odds + 100). At +1000 that is 100 ÷ 1,100 = 9.09%. In plain terms, a bettor taking +1000 over many repeated bets would need to win about 9.09% of the time, roughly one bet in eleven, just to break even before the sportsbook’s margin. The same idea is explained for every price in how implied probability works.
The payout formula is just as simple. Profit on a positive price equals the stake multiplied by the odds divided by 100, and payout is the stake plus that profit. Profit never includes the returned stake, which is why a $10 bet at +1000 makes $100 of profit and returns $110 in total. The table below shows how quickly the numbers change as odds lengthen. These example prices are for illustration only.
| American odds | Decimal | Fractional | Profit on $10 | Payout on $10 | Implied probability | Roughly 1 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +200 | 3.00 | 2/1 | $20 | $30 | 33.33% | 3 |
| +500 | 6.00 | 5/1 | $50 | $60 | 16.67% | 6 |
| +1000 | 11.00 | 10/1 | $100 | $110 | 9.09% | 11 |
| +2500 | 26.00 | 25/1 | $250 | $260 | 3.85% | 26 |
| +10000 | 101.00 | 100/1 | $1,000 | $1,010 | 0.99% | 101 |
Reading down the table, profit rises in a straight line while probability shrinks fast. Going from +1000 to +2500 multiplies the profit by 2.5, but the implied probability falls from 9.09% to 3.85%, a drop of more than half. This is why a longshot is exciting: a small stake can produce a big number on the bet slip. It is also why the number alone is misleading, because it hides how rarely the bet is expected to win. A high payout is the price of a low chance, not a bonus on top of it.
One more point matters for honesty. The implied probability in a real price includes the sportsbook’s margin, so the true chance the market believes in is usually a little lower than the figure the price shows. Research on this pattern is covered in the favorite-longshot bias, which looks at why long odds often carry more margin per dollar than short ones. For a beginner, the takeaway is that a longshot costs more than it first appears, since the margin is hidden inside the large number.
Worked Example: +1000 and +2500 Longshots
Suppose a sportsbook lists a hypothetical golfer at +2500 to win a tournament. A $10 stake would make $250 profit and return $260 in total if the golfer wins, and it would lose the full $10 otherwise. The implied probability is 100 ÷ 2,600 = 3.85%, so the price assumes about one win in 26 tries. A bettor who repeated this exact bet 26 times with a true 3.85% chance would expect one win ($250 profit) against 25 losses ($250 in stakes), a net result near zero before margin.
Now take a hypothetical +1000 price and a bettor who places $10 on 20 separate longshots, all at +1000. The total risk is $200. A single win earns $100 of profit but the other 19 bets lose $190, leaving a net of -$90 after one win. Two wins produce $200 of profit against $180 of losses, a net of +$20. Even if the true chance were exactly 9.09% on every bet, the expected number of wins in 20 tries is only about 1.82, and the chance of no winner at all is about 14.9%. That is roughly one run in seven finishing with nothing but losses.
The lesson is not that longshots are bad. It is that long losing streaks are an ordinary feature of longshot betting, not a sign that something is broken. A bettor who expects frequent wins from +1000 prices will feel misled, while one who understands the one-in-eleven picture will see a losing run as expected variance. That understanding also makes it easier to keep stakes small enough that a bad run does not matter.
Common Mistakes About Longshots
The first mistake is treating a big payout as proof of value. A +2500 price is not a better deal than a +200 price just because it pays more. Value depends on whether the real chance is higher than the implied probability, and that is something the payout cannot tell you.
The second is assuming a longshot is due. If a +1000 bet has lost ten times, the next one is not more likely to win, because each result is independent of the last. Believing otherwise is the gambler’s fallacy, and it quietly pushes bettors to raise stakes. A third mistake is chasing losses with longshots: using one large-payout bet to win back earlier losses is exactly the pattern that turns a hobby into a problem, and it should be avoided entirely.
A final error is stacking longshots into parlays. Each leg multiplies the difficulty, and the real chance of every leg winning drops quickly, as shown in parlay probability. Combining several long prices produces a huge number on the slip and a very small chance of seeing it paid. The bigger the headline payout, the smaller the chance that it is ever collected.
Long Odds vs Short Odds: Reading Them on the Board
Short odds belong to favorites: -300 or -150 means a high implied probability and a small profit per dollar. Long odds belong to outsiders: +1000 or +2500 means a low implied probability and a large profit per dollar. The two ends of the scale describe the same trade-off, frequent small wins versus rare large ones. Neither is safe and neither is a trick, and the numbers explain why: the plus and minus signs are not mirror images, as plus and minus odds explains in detail.
On a real odds board you will meet longshots in three places. Futures and outright markets list dozens of teams or players, with most of the field at long prices. Player props and exotic markets, such as a long-range scorer or a specific final score, often carry long odds too. And in individual games, a heavy underdog on the moneyline can reach +500 or more when the matchup is lopsided. In each case, the reading skill is identical: convert the price to an implied probability, then ask honestly whether that chance seems too small, about right or too large.
Practical habits make longshots easier to handle. Decide a small stake before looking at the payout, and never use money needed for rent, bills or other essentials. Treat the stake as the cost of entertainment and assume it will usually be lost. If a longshot ever feels like a plan for recovering money, that is a signal to stop and use the responsible gambling tools your sportsbook offers. Dollar sizes vary, but the principle holds whether the stake is $5 or $500.
Related Concepts and Next Steps
To go deeper, start with the beginner mistakes covered in common sports betting mistakes, then read why no outcome is ever certain in the guide to what a lock means in sports betting. When you are ready to weigh favorites against outsiders as a decision, favorite versus underdog value picks up where this article stops. Learning to read long odds is one of the first steps toward understanding every price on the board.
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