beat the odds

idiom

: to succeed despite not having a good chance of succeeding

Most new restaurants fail, but this one somehow managed to beat the odds.

Examples of beat the odds in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The family was emotional on Wednesday night: Dallas is a lot farther from Maine than Charlotte, N.C. or Washington D.C, whose teams both had better chances to land the No. 1 draft pick over the Mavericks, who beat the odds with a 1.8% chance of drafting him. —Anna Lazarus Caplan, People.com, 26 June 2025

Nor is there doubt who will take him: the Dallas Mavericks, who somehow beat the odds coming into the NBA Draft Lottery — a 1.8 percent chance of getting the top pick — to walk right into their post-Luka Dončiċ era without breaking stride. —David Aldridge, New York Times, 19 June 2025

Then again, Miami beat the odds this past weekend, winning the four-team Hattiesburg Regional as the three seed. —Walter Villa, Miami Herald, 5 June 2025

Idle beat the odds after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019 and survived. —Zoey Lyttle, People.com, 26 May 2025

Rhymes for beat the odds

• amphipods
• arthropods
• carronades
• copepods
• demigods
• gastropods
• isopods
• pleopods
• tetrapods
• applauds
• facades
• tripods