I do not understand this, since I am not a gambler.
Does this mean that the gambling house estimated that there was a 1/8 chance that Hillary would win the election? That the chance that Trump would win was 87.5%? Or do I have that completely backwards?
If that gambling house was placing the likelihood of a Trump presidency at 87.5%, it was doing a far better job of estimating the likelihood than most of our pollsters. I wonder what data they had.
“Does this mean that the gambling house estimated that there was a 1/8 chance that Hillary would win the election? That the chance that Trump would win was 87.5%? Or do I have that completely backwards?”
Nope, pretty sure the way it works is that for every eight dollars she bet, she would would get nine dollars back for a Canckles win. So essentially she bet eight to win one dollar.
Eight pounds bet for every one pound she would win. If there wasn’t a share for the bookie that would mean the oddsmawker saw Hillary having 8 chances out of 9 to win or 88.9%. With the bookie’s share that means they saw Hillary as more than 90% likely.
You have it essentially backwards. They state the odds as 1/8 or “1 to 8”. This means that for every 8 pounds bet, the payout is 1 pound. This is expressing a very high probability of a Hillary win.
So, her bet was 196,200 pounds total. 1/8 = .125, so the payout would be 196,200 * 1.125 = 220,725 pounds, for a gain of 24,525. But they say the gain would only have been 22,716, so maybe there’s some sort of transaction fee?
In any case, that’s a terrible bet. It is insane to lay out EIGHT times as much as you stand to win. Her loss was 196,200 pounds. Had she won, she would only have gained 22,716 pounds, according to the article. That’s got to be one of the worst bets I’ve ever heard of.
At 1 to 8 odds you buy a ticket for 8 dollars and if you win the bet you get 9 dollars, meaning you won one dollar, but risked 8.
If the odds are 8 to 1, if you bet one, you get back 9 meaning you win 8.