Betting the Best Line and the Value of Different Sportsbooks
The team here as Sports Insights often preaches the importance of shopping the best line. Our research has uncovered that taking a play with an additional 1-2 points can increase your winning percentage by 3-4%, so it is imperative to any sports investor that you are always able to grab the best line available.
Part of consistently betting the best line is timing, but perhaps the most significant aspect is ensuring that you have a number of sportsbooks set up. If you have multiple accounts set up, you obviously increase the probability that you can find the best line on the board, but it is important to realize that not all sportsbooks are the same. Many people are enticed by big deposit bonuses (which often come with a variety of qualifications and conditions) but there are a number of factors to examine.
For starters, you want to have an account at one of the market-setting sportsbooks which will allow you to see the lines when they are first released. Cris offers solid value and never shades their lines while Pinnacle is a great book to have due to their reduced juice (at least -105 on every game).
Since our company preaches betting against the public, you always want at least one square book. BetUs offers great dog lines, but the book we consistently see offering the best underdog lines is Sports Interaction (SIA). Their lines are routinely a half-point better than the market average and are often a full point off the market average. These points are particularly valuable on Sunday’s during the NFL season where the difference between 6.5 and 7.5 points can separate the winners from the losers.
Earlier I mentioned the reduced juice at Pinnacle, and that is very valuable for your everyday betting. A typical book offers games at -110 which requires a 52.38% winning percentage to break even. However, with -107 lines that figure drops to 51.67% and at -105 you need to win just 51.22%. Canbet and Cascade are popular reduced juice options as is 5dimes.
The last type of book that every sports bettor should have is a sharp book. Sharps tend to share our philosophy and consistently bet underdogs, which means that this is the best type of book to bet on favorites. Books like Cris and Olympic both generate their own lines and won’t shade their lines. These books are less likely to move their lines solely based on public betting and are willing to take five-figure bets.
Sports Insights has highlighted and researched several key sports marketplace indicators and statistics over the years, but this is one of the most important filters for successful sports investing.
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