53
Question

Why is the same game +145 on one app and +160 on another

ok so i've got like 4 sportsbooks on my phone because of all the promos and i was about to bet the Pacers moneyline and noticed one had them at +145, another +160, and a third had +152. same game, same market. is one of them just wrong? feels like i've been leaving money on the table for months without realizing lol. someone explain like im dumb please
Asked by mkelly_44
19 answers
Best
166
quietrunner81
nobody's wrong, they just each set their own number. books have different models, different risk they're already holding, and different customers. if a ton of people at book A hammered the Pacers, they shade that price down to balance it out, meanwhile book B didn't take that action so they're still sitting at +160. i got obsessed with this like a year ago and started keeping a spreadsheet. over ~400 bets, always taking the best available number instead of just betting wherever i had money, my roi went from slightly negative to like +2.8%. that's it. same picks, better prices. i keep My Bookie in the rotation because they're usually a bit sharper on NBA sides and i've caught some decent outliers there, but honestly the point is having 3-4 accounts so you can compare. one book alone and you're just accepting whatever they hand you.
83
deb_watches_football
can confirm. i only shop lines on nfl spreads and even just going from -110 to -105 on the juice adds up scary fast. i tracked it last season, 118 bets, and the difference in vig alone was like $190 of my bankroll. that's a whole extra unit and a half i just handed over for no reason.
61
topher_g
yep this. also the half point thing on nfl. getting +3.5 instead of +3 has won me games i had no business winning. two weeks ago Bears +3.5 at one book, +3 at another, lost by exactly 3. free money if you just look.
64
not_a_capper
worth adding that some books basically copy the market and some actually make their own number. the copycats follow whoever they think is sharp and lag a few seconds behind. that lag is where a lot of the discrepancies live, especially right after injury news drops.
64
sam_in_denver
the other big factor is who they cater to. a book with a lot of casual money in a big market city will shade the local team. living in colorado i see nuggets prices consistently worse than what i find elsewhere. same with anything involving the cowboys or lakers, those numbers are almost always juiced because everybody bets them.
38
hollowpointe
idk about the +2.8% roi claim. that sounds like the kind of number people post right before they stop posting. line shopping is real but you're also gonna get limited the second a book notices you only bet outliers. how many of your accounts are still full stake?
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8
quietrunner81
fair pushback. two of the four have cut me down, one of them max bets me at like $40 on sides now. but that's for guys grinding it daily with real volume. i bet maybe 6-8 times a week and mostly regular markets, not weird korean baseball props at 4am. and even if you eventually get limited, the answer isn't to stop shopping, it's to keep more accounts open. also 2.8 isn't some magic number, it's just what not donating 5 cents of juice per bet looks like over a season.
33
rachelmm
fwiw the state you're in matters too. odds on the same book are not always identical across state lines because each state licenses separately and the liability pools can differ. i moved from NJ to AZ and noticed my usual app had slightly different pricing on some player props. not huge but it's a thing.
3
brnt_toast
honestly this whole thread feels like it's overselling it. shaving a few cents of juice doesn't matter if your picks are bad. i've watched people spend an hour comparing +145 vs +160 and then bet a 6 leg parlay where the hold is like 30%. priorities lol
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26
topher_g
i mean you're not wrong about parlays but that's a separate problem. line shopping is the one edge available to literally everybody that costs zero skill. picks being bad is an argument for improving picks, not for accepting worse prices on the picks you already made. those are additive not exclusive.
22
gm_perez
another thing nobody said yet: timing. a number at 9am tuesday and 7pm sunday are totally different animals. sharp money hits early, public money hits late. sometimes the "best price" is just the book that hasn't moved yet.
15
jules_avery
wait so if the books all disagree, does that mean you can bet both sides at different books and guarantee a profit? or is that too obvious to actually work
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12
not_a_capper
that's arbing and yeah it exists, but the gaps are usually tiny and short lived. you'd need like +160 one side and +145 the other side of the same thing, which almost never sits there for long. plus books absolutely notice when your only bets are half of an arb and they'll limit or close you fast. some people do it, most burn accounts doing it.
13
wendell_p
there are free odds comparison sites, just google it. takes 20 seconds per bet.
9
mkelly_44
OP here. so i've been checking all 4 apps before every bet for about a month now. found a spot on a Sunday NFL slate where one book had a total at 44.5 and another at 46, that's a full point and a half apart on the same game. is that normal or did somebody just screw up? felt like i was cheating
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11
sam_in_denver
1.5 on a total is big but not unheard of, usually means weather news or a late scratch hit and one book adjusted before the other. if the wind report drops and book A slashes the total to 44.5 while book B is still snoozing at 46, you take the under at 46 immediately. that gap closes in minutes though. and no, you weren't cheating, you were just paying attention which puts you ahead of like 90% of people betting that game.
7
d_holloway
small thing but keep an eye on bet limits when you shop. i found a beautiful number once, went to put $300 on it, and the max was $75. the outlier price was outlier for a reason, they weren't willing to take real money at it.
4
pete_from_ohio
also worth knowing the same book will price differently across sports. some places are genuinely good on nfl and college football and then absolutely terrible on nhl or tennis because they barely staff it. so it's not really "book X is better", it's more like "book X is better for this market". i've got one i basically only open for hockey pucklines and never touch otherwise.
5
deb_watches_football
coming back to say i finally added a 4th account after reading this thread and caught Chiefs -6.5 while two others were at -7.5. game landed on 7. would have pushed at best, instead it cashed. one bet basically paid for the effort of the whole month.

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