Breakeven Percentages & Line Shopping

Welcome to all new readers who have joined us since last week! If you haven’t subscribed yet, join a community of sharp sports bettors by subscribing:

Breakeven Percentages & Line Shopping

With sports betting, you cannot ignore the math, especially the basics.

A breakeven percentage is the minimum win percentage you need to profit at the odds you’re betting.

With sports betting, you cannot ignore the math, especially the basics. A breakeven percentage is the minimum win percentage you need to profit at the odds you’re betting.

The best betting tools help users calculate edges and make long-term winning bets.

Line shopping can have a massive impact on your long-term profits and is the easiest way for any sports bettor to make a good bet.

Finding the best possible odds ensures you get the most value from every bet.

Let’s dive into how line shopping & understanding breakeven percentages can help you find winning long-term bets.

Calculating Breakeven Percentages on Bets

Knowing your breakeven percentage helps you assess the value of a bet.

If your win percentage is lower than the breakeven percentage, you’re losing money over time.

Calculating breakeven percentages is simple.

• For Positive Odds (e.g., +150):

  • Breakeven Percentage = 100 / (Odds + 100)

  • Example: For odds of +150, the breakeven percentage is 100 / (150 + 100) = 40%.

• For Negative Odds (e.g., -120):

  • Breakeven Percentage = |Odds| / (|Odds| + 100)

  • Example: For odds of -120, the breakeven percentage is 120 / (120 + 100) = 54.5%.

This means that to be profitable, betting lines at +150, you must hit over 40% of your bets. With -120 odds, you need to hit over 54.5% of your bets to be profitable.

How Line Shopping Increases Long-Term Profit

Line shopping involves comparing odds across multiple sportsbooks to get the best price.

Even slight differences in odds, like half a point on a spread or a few cents on the moneyline, can have a massive impact on your bankroll over time.

When you lineshop, you win more money when your bet wins, or you lose less when your bet loses.

These daily occurrences, where you pick up profit or limit losses simply by betting the best available prices, compound over time.

The more you shop around and bet at the best price, the higher your chances of long-term profitability.

Odds comparison tools allow you to line shop at scale, and real-time odds comparison tools will enable you to watch live movement as it is happening.

Having accounts at several sportsbooks allows you to compare odds in real-time, ensuring you always get the best price before placing your bet.

Suppose you bet on a moneyline at -110 on one sportsbook but find another sportsbook offering -105; that $5 difference per bet adds up throughout a season. Over 100 bets, that's an extra $500 in your pocket.

Let’s Get This Straight

Every week, we dissect a relevant sports betting topic to determine its validity.

Trap Games

Whenever a rec bettor or content creator sees a line that seems odd to them, they refer to it as a “trap game.”

These are usually games where a team with a worse record is favored over a team with a better one, or, in college sports, when an unranked team is favored over a ranked team.

The thesis is that sportsbooks are purposely pricing an event in a way where betting on the “obvious” side is…well, too obvious.

Here’s the reality:
There is no such thing as a trap game.

In a past newsletter, we broke down how sportsbooks set odds. They release odds at low limits, sharp bettors attack, books adjust numbers, and the line becomes more efficient.

Considering this process, how could there ever be a “trap game”?

The line is the line. If your numbers disagree with a line, that’s another story, but in those cases, it’s best to refer to the market, unless you have a sophisticated origination method.

Sportsbooks don’t set traps. They set lines, and shrap bettors shape them.

Featured Tool Spotlight: Pick The Odds

Every week, we highlight one of our featured tools that helps our readers become better and more profitable sports bettors.

Pick The Odds is a world-class sports betting tool, and its arbitrage features are one of the best in the market. Its live betting is elite.

Read our full review of Pick The Odds.

What separates Pick the Odds from other live betting tools is its speed and the number of sportsbook options they have. Odds update as quickly as every 1.2 seconds, and Pick The Odds has 110+ sportsbooks on its platform.

The best part? It’s free to use. The free version of the tool comes with some limitations, but all features work as intended. You can find risk-free profit (capped at 2%) at 110+ sportsbooks.