odds

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

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From odd (“uneven, strange”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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odds pl (plural only)

  1. The ratio of the probability of an event happening to that of it not happening.
    I'd say the odds are strongly in favor of the sun rising tomorrow morning.
    • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:
      A thouſand Perſean horſemen are at hand,
      Sent from the King to ouercome vs all. […]
      A thouſand horſmen? We fiue hundred foote?
      An ods too great, for vs to ſtand againſt: […]
  2. The ratio of winnings to stake in betting situations.
    I looked at the odds given by all bookmakers.
  3. (chess) An advantage given to a weaker opponent in order to equalize the game when playing casually, usually by removing one of the stronger player's pieces or by giving the weaker player more time.
    She beat me with knight odds but lost with rook odds.
    The grandmaster gave his opponents significant time odds, of one minute versus ten minutes.
    • 1913, The British Chess Magazine, volume 33, Trubner & Company, page 51:
      The resulting match of fourteen games was won by Mr. Maurian, who had scored all the Knight-odds parties and the majority of the even-term ones!
    • 1989, Raymond Keene, The Simon & Schuster Pocket Book of Chess, Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, →ISBN, page 183:
      Nowadays, giving material odds in this way is rather rare, but the advent of the chess clock has made it possible for strong players to give time odds — taking one or two minutes for all their moves, for example, and allowing their opponents five minutes or more.
    • 1998, George W. Atkinson, Chess and Machine Intuition, Intellect, →ISBN, page 35:
      Harry Golombek, who had returned from Argentina with the British chess team but spent two years in the infantry before joining B.P., occasionally played chess with Turing, giving Queen odds in order to make the game more equal.
    • 2016 November 27, Oliver Roeder, “The World Chess Championship Comes Down To The Final Game”, in FiveThirtyEight‎[1], archived from the original on 2022-05-26:
      And finally, if those are tied, they'll play a final sudden-death game, using a format known as armageddon. In armageddon, black gets "time odds": White gets five minutes while black gets just four, but a draw counts as a win for black.
    • 2018 September 23, Binit Priyaranjan, “Queens on the Board, Pawns in the Sport – the Underrepresentation of Women in Chess”, in The Wire‎[2], archived from the original on 2021-05-06:
      Fischer described all female professionals' play at his time to be that of "beginners", and went on to boast about hypothetically beating any female chess player with knight odds (when challenged to the same, though, he didn't respond).
    • 2021, Larry Kaufman, Chess Board Options, New in Chess, →ISBN:
      The most important handicap historically is knight odds, because it produces play more similar to a normal game than handicaps like f7 and multiple moves, while still being a suitable handicap for rather strong players.
    • 2022 October 31, Luci Kelemen, “Nakamura wins 2022 Fischer Random Chess Championship, Carlsen slides to top-four finish”, in Dot Esports‎[3], archived from the original on 2022-12-17:
      Here, Nakamura took the white pieces and the time odds with the mandatory win requirement, and managed to break Nepomniachtchi's resistance to clinch the title.

Noun

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odds

  1. plural of odd

Usage notes

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  • The word "odds" was formerly sometimes used with a singular verb, e.g. (Stephen S. Foster) "If there be any difference in the two crimes, the odds is in favor of the foreign enslaver."

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • → Welsh: ots

Translations

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See also

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Anagrams

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Icelandic

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Noun

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odds

  1. indefinite genitive singular of oddur

Norwegian Bokmål

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Etymology

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From English odds.

Noun

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odds m (definite singular oddsen, indefinite plural odds, definite plural oddsene)

  1. odds

References

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Norwegian Nynorsk

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Etymology

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From English odds.

Noun

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odds m (definite singular oddsen, indefinite plural odds, definite plural oddsa)

  1. odds

References

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