Understanding Value And Betting Lines
The betting odds then change in the build-up to the game as various people place sports bets. Bookmakers need to balance their risk, so if one team proves popular among, you can expect the odds on it to shrink. Betting the spread is popular on sports that have high scoring games, like betting on theNBA lines.
The next bet to look at is what is called betting against the spread. This is the line set by the sportsbooks to create a more level playing field. The first strategy we will discuss is “middling”, one of the most common ways to take advantage of line movement. By definition, middling means betting both sides of a bet when the line has moved significantly, leaving a “middle” outcome where you can win on both sides. Personally, in betting the NFL, I love to bet early lines.
For simplicity purposes, we’re going to say that each bet is set to pay out at +150. When we convert this to an implied probability, we see that the sportsbook thinks that this bet is going to win 40% of the time or 4 out of the 10 bets. Here’s what our profit would look like if the sportsbook is right. In other words, this is what it would look like if the actual probability and the implied probability were the same. The best way to see why this is so important is to look at some examples where the implied probability and what the actual probability are differ in our favor.
In the above example, the total, or “over/under,” in the Bills-Jets game is 49. You can bet whether the final score will come in over or under that total by laying $110 to win $100. Money line bets tend to be even more popular with underdogs.
In a spread bet, even if the Texans won straight up, you’d still only win the bet because they lost by less than three points. In this example the Jets are listed as four-point favorites (-4) over the Bills and the 49ers are three-point underdogs (+3) against the Seahawks. So, if you bet $110 on the favored Jets, they must defeat the Bills by more than four points in order to win $100.
The -10 price is the most common value in the industry while many books offer reduced ‘juice odds’ and that would fall into the -08 category. Chris Altruda has been a sportswriter with ESPN, The Associated Press, and STATS over more than two decades. He recently expanded into covering sports betting and gambling around the Midwest. Note that the conversion from moneyline to spread varies from sports to sport.