Betting Glossary

Dynatyze strips the vig from the sharpest consensus market to find a fair line, then compares it to the best price available — when the best price implies a lower win chance than the fair line, that difference is your edge.

Edge is probabilistic, not a promise. A 5% edge still loses plenty of individual bets; it only shows up over a few hundred plays.

Source · Market consensus + book comparison

Every Dynatyze edge is measured against a fair line built from de-vigged consensus pricing.

A fair line is an estimate of true probability, not a decree. Books reprice constantly, so the fair line is a moving target, not a fixed number.

Source · De-vigged market consensus

A -110/-110 market implies 52.4% on each side; de-vigged, each side is a true 50%.

De-vigging assumes both sides are equally sharp. When one side is all public money and the other is sharp, that assumption breaks and the no-vig line skews.

Source · Standard sportsbook math

A positive-EV bet wins money long-term even when it loses tonight; a negative-EV bet bleeds money even when it cashes.

EV is calculated as (win probability × profit) minus (loss probability × stake). The whole game is finding prices where your win probability beats the price the book is offering.

Source · Probability × payout math

A standard -110/-110 market carries about 4.76% vig — the book's built-in margin if action lands evenly on both sides.

Vig is rent you pay to play. Shopping for the lowest-vig price on a market is the single cheapest way to add expected value.

Source · Sportsbook pricing

Odds of -110 imply a 52.4% chance, +200 implies 33.3%, and the conversion is the first step in spotting whether a price is fair.

The implied probabilities on both sides of a market always sum to more than 100% — that excess is the vig. Remove it and you get true probability.

Source · Odds-to-probability conversion

A bigger edge earns a bigger stake; a thin edge earns a small one, so the bankroll grows at the fastest sustainable rate without going broke.

Full Kelly is mathematically optimal but brutally volatile. Most disciplined bettors run quarter- or half-Kelly to survive the variance and stay under book limits.

Source · Kelly (1956) bankroll math

It compares the price you took to the final price the market settled at — beating the close consistently is the strongest evidence that a bettor has a real, repeatable edge.

CLV can be positive even on a losing bet and negative on a winner. It grades the decision, not the outcome — which is exactly why sharp bettors track it.

Source · Dynatyze pick grading vs market close

Sharps bet in lower volume but higher precision than the public, so a small sharp wager can move a market more than a flood of recreational tickets.

Sharps are not infallible — a bettor grinding 53–55% at -110 still loses nearly half the time. The edge is in the price they take, and no book publishes who they are or what they bet.

Source · Line movement from the open

It usually means respected money or breaking news hit several books together, rather than one book reacting to its own lopsided tickets.

Chasing steam after it lands usually means betting a worse number than the sharps got. The value was in front of the move, not behind it.

Source · Multi-book line monitoring

If 75% of bets are on the favorite but the favorite's price gets cheaper, something other than ticket count is moving the number.

RLM is a flag, not a guarantee. Confirm it against your own read before fading the public on it alone.

Source · Ticket count vs line direction

When 30% of the tickets carry 52% of the money, the average stake on that side is about 2.5 times the other side's — that is the whole claim, not who placed the bets.

The split covers one book's customers, as percentages — no counts, no dollars — so read it beside the line's move from the open, never alone.

Source · DraftKings bettors, published as shares

Movement is driven by money coming in, news breaking, or books adjusting to balance their exposure.

Measure a move from the open: a number that looks still this afternoon may already have moved against the crowd this morning.

Source · Open-to-close price tracking

Dynatyze builds its fair lines from consensus pricing because no single book's number is as reliable as the weight of the whole market.

Consensus weights the books that price most accurately. A regional book that lags the market should not move the consensus much.

Source · Multi-book aggregation

A minus number (-150) is how much you stake to win $100; a plus number (+150) is how much you win on a $100 stake — the format used by every major US sportsbook.

The closer the number sits to even (around -110 / +100), the closer the bet is to a coin flip after vig.

Source · US sportsbook convention

Odds of 2.50 return $2.50 on a $1 bet — $1.50 profit plus your dollar back — making them the cleanest format for calculating expected value.

Decimal odds convert to implied probability simply: 1 divided by the decimal price. 2.50 implies a 40% chance.

Source · International / exchange convention

Odds of 5/2 pay $5 profit for every $2 risked, plus the stake back.

Fractional odds are rare on US prop markets but still appear on futures and racing boards.

Source · UK / racing convention

A team listed at -6.5 must win by 7 or more to cover; the underdog at +6.5 covers by winning outright or losing by six or fewer.

The half-point hook (the .5) exists to remove ties so every spread bet has a clean winner and loser.

Source · Sportsbook handicapping

It applies to game scoring, a player's stat line, or any countable outcome — bet the over if you expect more, the under if you expect less.

Totals are priced with vig on both sides just like spreads, so the over and under are rarely a clean 50/50.

Source · Sportsbook totals market

The price reflects how lopsided the matchup is — a heavy favorite pays little, a long-shot underdog pays a lot.

On big favorites the moneyline carries steep juice, so the implied break-even win rate climbs fast.

Source · Sportsbook moneyline market

When a side moves from -110 to -120 without the point changing, the book raised the juice, not the line.

A juice-only move (price worse, number unchanged) is a margin adjustment, not a sharp signal about the outcome.

Source · Sportsbook pricing

Props price one player's role and matchup rather than the game result, which makes them the deepest pool for finding mispriced numbers.

Props move on news fast. An injury to a teammate can swing a player's projected workload before the book reprices the number.

Source · Sportsbook prop markets

It replaces eyeballing one game at a time with a sortable board that surfaces the mispriced numbers fastest.

Source · Dynatyze prop tooling

A player who has gone over 22.5 points in 8 of his last 10 games carries an 80% recent hit rate against that number.

Hit rate is descriptive, not predictive — it measures the past against tonight's line and must be weighed against matchup, role, and sample depth.

Source · Dynatyze game-log rollup

The combined odds multiply, so a parlay pays far more than its legs separately — but one missed leg loses the whole stake.

Books love parlays because the vig compounds with every leg. A four-leg parlay of -110 legs hands the book a margin several times larger than a single bet.

Source · Sportsbook parlay market

A 6-point football teaser shifts every leg six points your way, but all legs still must win together.

Teasers only beat the vig when the points cross key numbers like 3 and 7 in football. Off the key numbers, the reduced payout usually erases the benefit.

Source · Sportsbook teaser market

Because the legs are correlated — a quarterback throwing for 300 yards makes his receiver's yardage prop more likely — books price SGPs with extra margin to cover that linkage.

The book's correlation adjustment is where most of the edge disappears. Treat the quoted SGP price as already padded against you.

Source · Sportsbook SGP market

Positive correlation — a high game total and a star receiver's yardage over — makes both more likely at once, which is exactly why books restrict or reprice correlated parlay legs.

Finding correlation the book has not priced is one of the few durable edges in same-game markets.

Source · Dynatyze correlation modeling

Buying a passing-yards prop down from 250.5 to 200.5 raises your win chance but shrinks the payout; buying it up to 300.5 does the reverse.

Alt lines are how you express a strong opinion at a price — and occasionally where a book's pricing of the tails is softest.

Source · Sportsbook alternate markets

Take the over 44.5 early and the under 47.5 after the line moves, and any total of 45, 46, or 47 cashes both tickets.

Even when the middle misses you usually lose only the vig on one side, which makes a well-priced middle a low-risk, high-upside play.

Source · Sportsbook line-movement exploitation

It only exists when two books disagree enough that their no-vig prices leave a gap.

Arbs are real but fragile — typically 0.3-0.8% returns that vanish in under 90 seconds, and books that catch you arbing will limit or close the account.

Source · Cross-book price discrepancy

Because there is no built-in vig on the price, exchange odds are often the truest read on a market's fair value.

Exchanges let you lay a bet — take the book's side of an outcome — which opens hedging and trading strategies unavailable at a traditional book.

Source · Peer-to-peer betting platforms

It looks like prop betting but is structured as a fantasy contest, with the platform setting the lines.

Pick'em lines often lag the sportsbook market, so a sharp sportsbook number can flag a soft pick'em projection.

Source · Daily fantasy operators

Overlay is a rare gift of positive expected value — the prize pool is larger than the entries paid in to support it.

Overlay favors entering large fixed-prize-pool contests late, once it's clear the field is short, rather than small or capped ones.

Source · DFS contest mechanics

Proper sizing keeps a normal losing streak from wiping you out and is the difference between a bettor who survives variance and one who busts.

Even a genuine long-term edge will go broke if it bets too large into a routine downswing. Sizing is risk control, not timidity.

Source · Staking discipline

Tracking results in units instead of dollars lets you compare performance honestly across bankrolls of any size.

A pick reported as +3.2 units means it returned a profit equal to 3.2 of those standard bet sizes — bankroll-agnostic by design.

Source · Staking convention

Each book prices markets independently, so the same bet can carry a different number and a different vig at every book on a given night.

Because books disagree, holding accounts at several of them is how a bettor captures the best available price on each play.

Source · Licensed betting operators

Getting -105 instead of -115 on a bet you'd make anyway is free expected value with zero added handicapping work.

Line shopping is the highest-return habit in betting and requires no model — just accounts at enough books to have a choice.

Source · Multi-book price comparison

A starting quarterback ruled out can swing a spread several points and quietly reshape every teammate's prop projection in the same lineup.

The edge lives in the lag — the window between the news breaking and the book repricing the dependent props.

Source · Injury reports + line response

High wind suppresses passing and kicking totals; in baseball it can turn a hitter's park into a pitcher's park and back within a single afternoon.

Wind is the heaviest hitter in outdoor football and baseball totals. Rain matters less than the public assumes once you control for wind.

Source · Forecast feeds + scoring response

Books price most of these, but the public over- or under-reacts to the obvious ones.

The reliable edges are the situations the public ignores, not the marquee ones everyone is already betting.

Source · Schedule and situational data

It is the sharpest number a book will ever post because it has absorbed every dollar, every injury update, and every sharp opinion — which is why it's the benchmark for grading a bet's value.

Beating the closing line repeatedly is the cleanest proof of a real edge, since the close is the market at its most efficient.

Source · Final market price

The looser the pricing, the more often a fair-line edge appears, since fewer sharp dollars have sanded the number down.

Edges concentrate in soft markets, but so do low limits and slow grading. The pricing is loose precisely because the book doesn't take much action there.

Source · Market liquidity analysis