Draw no bet explained: meaning, odds and when it pays
By FootInsights · Published · 3 min read
Draw no bet (DNB) is a bet on one team to win where a draw hands your stake back. Back the home side draw no bet and there are three outcomes: they win and you are paid at the DNB price, they lose and you lose the stake, the match ends level and the bet is void — stake returned, nothing won.
It is the 1X2 market with the draw taken out, and the price reflects exactly that: shorter than the straight win, longer than double chance.
Where the draw-no-bet price comes from
DNB carries no information of its own. It is the win bet with insurance against the draw, and you can build it from the 1X2 prices yourself: put enough on the draw to get your total stake back if the match ends level, and the rest on the team.
Take a match priced 2.10 home, 3.40 draw, 3.60 away. A fraction 1/3.40 of the stake on the draw returns the whole stake on a draw; the other 2.40/3.40 goes on the home win. The combined bet pays:
DNB home = 2.10 × (3.40 − 1) ÷ 3.40 = 1.48
The same sum for the away side gives 2.54. That is the whole formula: win price × (draw price − 1) ÷ draw price.
Building it yourself costs more margin
Turn those prices into implied probabilities and the 1X2 book adds up to 104.8% — a 4.8% margin. The home and away DNB prices you just built add up to 106.8%. Covering the draw with a bet that itself carries the bookmaker’s margin means paying that margin twice over.
The fair price, with the margin removed first, is what the two teams’ chances say once the draw is set aside: 45.4% home and 26.5% away become 63.2% and 36.8%, fair odds of 1.58 and 2.71. A bookmaker’s own DNB market usually sits between the two — better than building it from 1X2, still short of fair. Our margin calculator strips the overround from any market so you can compare before you choose.
Draw no bet, double chance and the Asian handicap
Three bets cover the draw in different ways:
| Bet | Your team wins | Draw | Your team loses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draw no bet | Paid | Stake back | Lost |
| Double chance (1X) | Paid | Paid | Lost |
| Asian handicap 0 | Paid | Stake back | Lost |
Draw no bet and the Asian handicap 0 (or “level ball”) are the same bet under two names; the Asian handicap guide covers the quarter lines either side of it. Double chance goes one step further and pays on the draw, so its price is shorter again.
When draw no bet makes sense
About a quarter of matches end level — 25.4% of the 17,495 in the dataset behind our double chance guide — and the share moves with the league and the matchup. DNB earns its keep when you rate one side clearly above the other but a draw is a real possibility: a strong away team at a side that defends deep, or a favourite in a league where draws run high. It does little for a heavy favourite: a 1.25 win price with the draw at 6.00 becomes 1.04 draw no bet, most of the profit given away to insure against a draw that rarely comes.
What it never does is improve value. DNB is the same probabilities sliced differently: if the win price was poor, the draw-no-bet price is poor too, and the extra margin from building it yourself makes it worse. Check the price against the teams’ real chances — our match predictions put the model’s call beside the bookmaker’s price — before you decide which slice to buy.