From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishthe oddsthe oddshow likely it is that something will or will not happen The odds are (=it is likely) that he will commit the same crime again.the odds of You can narrow the odds of a nasty accident happening in your home by being more safety-conscious.the odds against The odds against a plane crash are around a million to one. I’m afraid that the odds are heavily against her winning (=it is not likely). What are the odds (=how likely is it) that they will mess up? a new company that has beaten the odds and succeeded (=it was not likely to succeed, but it did) → odds
Examples from the Corpus
the odds are ... against• The odds are heavily stacked against Pears for the final game at Wolves on Saturday.• Although confident, we know the odds are stacked against the climbers.• The fact remains that because of election by constituency quota the odds are heavily against fair representation for a small party.• But now, because of complex permutations resulting from an equally involved scoring system, the odds are stacking up against Conner.• One tries to make that happen all the time, even though the odds are against it.• Do you know what the odds are against a house catching fire in the Red Triangle district of Bes Pelargic? 