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Assume that you want to bet for football game and the odds are as following:

Victory Team 1: 2.30 No Winner: 3.00 Victory Team 2: 2.30

Is it correct, that in this case, the bookie considers both sides as even and in this case, the best thing you can do is to bet for tie/draw? (of couse only if you do not have any information or reasons to assume that Team 1 or 2 has better chances to win.)

And if so, then why is tie/draw-odd higher than the other two?

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Draw is usually higher odds partly because most people bet on one team to win, which drives the odds in particular directions. In the case you stated, it is likely the case that Team 2 are the better team, but Team 1 have the home advantage when working out the odds. I tend to bet on draws if the result is good for both teams or if the style of play of both team negates each other, so West Ham v Aston Villa I usually bet a draw on.

The important thing to remember is that odds aren't solely decided on how good teams are, they're also driven by the market. So if the first 10 people to bet all bet on Team 1, Team 1's odds will drop and the other odds will rise to try to limit the bookie's risk.

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    The important thing to remember is that odds aren't solely decided on how good teams are, they're also driven by the market. Just to give some additional reference for this claim I'll add a link to this post: How do bookmakers select their opening odds?
    – Martin
    Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 13:48
  • I'd also point out that even disregarding how bets drive the odds in one direction vs. the other, it's possible for teams to be "evenly matched" but the odds for a draw to be higher. For example, the chances of winning may swing wildly towards the team who scores first. So, with two aggressive teams they may both have a 40% chance of winning (depending on who scores first), which would leave only a 20% chance at a draw.
    – Duncan
    Commented Feb 20, 2015 at 15:40
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Draws are the least common result in football. If you think about it the result can only be a draw if there are an even number of goals in a game, but it's not always a draw. An even number of goals is only fractionally more likely than an odd number of goals if you look at the historical break down of goals in a large data set of results. Home win/away win.draw typically split in the ratio 45/30/25

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