Idiom: Beat the Odds (and other expressions with "odds")

Let's talk about THE ODDS

But, don't confuse ODDS with ODD, because they have a completely different meaning.

ODD -that's in the singular- can mean strange,

it can also... you can also say "an odd number" as opposed to an "even number."

But ODDS... Well, that's coming up.

The odds are the chances that something will happen.

This word is very common in everyday English...

...and in the specific context of gambling as well.

Let's focus on that.

In its usage in the world of gambling.

Gambling is very common in sports.

For example, in boxing people are used to betting money on fights.

So, based on who you think is going to win a fight -a boxing fight-, you are gonna put money on that fighter.

So you could ask:

"What are the odds in this fight?"

And someone could answer: "ok, fighter A has an advantage in the odds of 9 to 1"

That means that 9 out of 10 people believe fighter A is going to win...

And, therefore, 9 out of 10 are putting money on that fighter.

"The odds are in favor of fighter A."

"The odds are staked against fighter B" or "The odds are against fighter B."

As I said before, this word is very common in everyday English.

It's just another word for:

So, let's say for example you're in a plane, and you suffer from fear of flying.

Someone could say to you "Relax, you're safer on this plane than in any car...

The odds of us dying on this plane are one in 11 million"

Let's now go through some collocations 'cause this word is very rich in this sense.

It has a lot of different collocations.

We say low odds, or slim odds when there's low probability.

For example, "The odds of your China not winning any gold medal at the Olympic Games are ridiculously slim."

"...ridiculously low."

...Or "high odds" which means the opposite.

"The odds of China racking up a lot of gold medals at the Olympic Games are very high."

Another collocation is "to go against the odds"

"Every time you play the lottery, you're going against the odds"

The chances of you winning the lottery are very slim.

or "against all odds"

"Against all odds, Ecuador won the gold medal in ping pong against China"

That means no one was expecting it to win the Gold Medal against China...

...which is the best team in Ping Pong.

You could say "Ecuador beat the odds."

When there are very low chances of something happening in your favor, but it does happen nonetheless.

You beat the odds.

For example...

"He had a serious accident that compromised his life,

but, he beat the odds and came through."

He survived.

Also, "the odds are in your favor." I used this before when talking about gambling.

"You studied a lot, the teacher likes you, odds are in your favor, you're gonna pass that exam"

Or the odds are stacked against you.

"You only studied the day before, the teacher doesn't like you, the odds are stacked against you...

You're not gonna pass the exam."

Wrapping up, one thing I'd say is if you don't use this word already, start using it.

If your native tongue is Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, you know, any of these romantic languages.

odds are that you rely on the words that already exist in your native language like for example...

Probability, possibility.

But my piece of advice here is that you should start using this word, this expressions with the word odds.

Because in this way you're gonna be speaking a lot closer to the ideal model of an Native English speaker.

And you're English is gonna sound a lot better.

So... that's it my friends.

We're done.

Until the next video, bye!