Strategy Articles

The Vig Is the House's Whole Business Model

Fundamentals · 4 min read

Add up the implied probabilities of both sides of any moneyline and you'll get more than 100% — typically 103–106% for MLB. That extra few percent is the vig, and it's why most bettors lose even when they pick winners at a decent rate.

At standard −110/−110 pricing you need to win 52.4% of your bets just to break even. On MLB moneylines the break-even point moves with the price: laying −180 on a favorite means you need 64.3% wins to profit, while a +160 underdog only needs to hit 38.5% of the time.

Two practical consequences. First, line shopping is the cheapest edge in betting — getting −105 instead of −115 on the same game costs nothing and compounds enormously over a season. The odds board on this site highlights the best available price for every game. Second, always compare your opinion to the no-vig line, not the posted one. The posted line contains the book's margin; the no-vig line is the market's actual probability estimate.

Why MLB Is the Value Bettor's Sport

Fundamentals · 5 min read

Baseball has structural features that make it friendlier to analytical bettors than football or basketball. There's no point spread culture — MLB is a moneyline sport, so you're betting directly on win probability, which is exactly what statistical models estimate. The 2,430-game regular season generates enough volume for small edges to matter, and enough data for those edges to be found.

The starting pitcher is the single biggest lever on any game's odds, and pitcher performance is well captured by skill-based metrics like FIP, xFIP, and K-BB% — which stabilize much faster than ERA. When a pitcher's ERA is far below his FIP, the market often prices the ERA; that gap is a classic source of value on his opponents.

Other MLB-specific angles worth studying: bullpen fatigue (who threw yesterday matters and isn't always priced), park factors (the same total means different things in Coors and in Oracle Park), day-after-night lineups, and umpire strike-zone tendencies on totals. None of these is a guaranteed edge — but they're places where public money and sharp money reliably diverge.

Closing Line Value: The Only Honest Scoreboard

Process · 4 min read

Short-term win-loss records are mostly noise. A bettor with a real 3% edge still has losing months all the time; a bettor with no edge can run hot for hundreds of bets. So how do you know if your process works before your bankroll finds out the hard way?

Track closing line value (CLV): the difference between the price you took and the price when the market closed. If you bet a team at +140 and it closes +120, you beat the close — the market moved toward your opinion after you bet. Do that consistently and profit follows, because the closing line is the most accurate probability estimate available; it contains all the sharp money.

Log every bet: date, odds taken, closing odds, stake, result. After 200+ bets, your average CLV tells you far more than your record does. Consistently positive CLV with a losing record means keep going — variance will catch up. Negative CLV with a winning record means you're running lucky, and the market will eventually collect.

Pair CLV tracking with disciplined sizing (flat stakes or fractional Kelly from the Tools page) and you have the full framework: find value, size correctly, measure honestly.