Finding Good Money Line Bets

I've been reading Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong and I thought I'd blog about some of the information in the book.

How do you know if a given money line is a good bet or a bad bet?

Let's take the upcoming game 1 of the NBA finals as an example. The Lakers are at -280 and Orlando is at +220. If you want to bet on that game, which bet makes the most sense?

You first have to come up with your own money lines. This actually isn't as difficult as it sounds. There's a formula you can apply based on your expectations. You come up with a percentage of time you think the favorite will win the game. Let's say that if the Lakers and Orlando played an infinite number of games in this same situation (game 1 of the finals, at Los Angeles, etc) that LA would win 75% of the time. To compute what the money line would be in that situation, here's the formula for the favorite (for "x", use 75, because of our 75% estimation):

-100 * x / (100 - x)

That's -7500 / 25, or -300, so that's your money line for the Lakers.

For Orlando, they would win 25% of the time. Here's the formula for the underdog:

100 * (100 - x) / x

That's 100 * 75 / 25, or +300, so that's your money line for Orlando. Note: the formulas above always work out so that the money lines total zero - this is YOUR money line, not the money line with a built-in vig that the casinos use.

The Lakers are -280, but you think they should be -300. Orlando is +220, but you think they should be +300. With Orlando, you think you should win $300 for a $100 bet, but the casino will only be giving you $220 in winnings if you win the bet. Thus, Orlando is not a good bet. With the Lakers, if you bet $280 and they win, you win $100. But you think you should actually have to bet $300 to win that same $100, so betting on the Lakers is actually a good bet.

Again, thanks to Sharp Sports Betting for the formulas above.

In my next post, I'll explain how to compute how good of a bet that would be.

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