[eternalnewbie]

I'll use this as an opportunity to ask a newbie question that I've wanted to ask for a while. I've looked through the posts in this forum and even the faq on major wager and not seen anything exactly on point, so here goes -

On pinnacle sports, the moneyline today for the braves v. reds today is -124 Braves and + 116 Reds.

I know that this means the Braves are favored and that you have to bet $1.16 on the Braves to win $1.00.

My question though is the basic question of what exactly do these odds mean? Suppose I do my handicapping and decide that I think the Braves will win X% of times. How do I do the math to decide if this means that this is a good bet?

Also, are there any other transaction fees involved in this type of bet, or do the books make all of their money off of the spread?

I hope I'm not being to presumptuous, but Mr. Baseball has talked a lot about how its not picking winners, it's about finding good buys. I was hoping for an example of exactly how you work out the math to evaluate whether this is a good bet.

The advanced part of my question, after that, is how do I then decide whether to play the money line or the run line - i.e. how do I compare the two to figure which is the better bet.