Why Is Line Shopping So Important?
Wouldn’ it be great if there was an Amazon for sports betting? You’d log on to one site, see all of the lines and with the click of a mouse just bet the best price. With your time saved, you could have those hot chicks you live with feed you grapes. In reality, sports betting doesn’t work like that. While you can still shop around, it takes a little bit more work to do. And while there are some areas where you can be more lackadaisical with your betting, this is definitely one spot where you’ll want to put some effort to find the best lines.
Why It’s Important To Get The Best Line
Nowadays when we shop online, we check multiple outlets. Need a new smartphone? You check your carrier, then Amazon, then Best Buy, and then make buy it at the cheapest price. All things being equal, why would you ever pay more money for the same thing?
The same goes for sports betting. There are fantastic tools out there to check betting odds, as is the SBR Odds checker which – in a matter of seconds – gives you a full snapshop of the market. You can see who has the cheapest price on the favorite and who is paying out the biggest price on an underdog. That’s significant. Don’t believe? Let’s have a look.
Do The Math
Let’s do a little bit of math together. At random, we’ve picked three separate games: one MLB, one WNBA and one from Euro 2016. Let’s see the price differences we can get.
Minnesota Lynx @ Los Angeles Sparks
You could bet the Sparks as little as -2.5 -110 or as high as -3 -111. One sportsbook gives you the option to bet -3 -102. As for the Lynx, you could get them as high as +3 -108 or as low as +2.5 -105.
Chicago White Sox @ Boston Red Sox
In this game, the Red Sox are favored. After a quick look at the SBR odds tool, we can see that you can lay anywhere from -209 on Boston all the way up to -255. For the White Sox, who happened to win as the underdog, you could have earned as little as +185 to as much as +206.
Slovakia @ England
In this game, you could have had Slovakia as little as +425 to as much as +600. On the flipside, England could have cost you anywhere from -115 all the way up to -156.
Looking at the above examples, it’s clear just how important it is to shop around. For a $100 bettor, the difference on the soccer game was $41. In baseball, the gap on a winning White Sox bet was $21. In the WNBA, you’re losing a half-point just for being lazy. And remember, these are all small-time examples. If you’re betting thousands, then getting a bad line costs you plenty of profits in the long run. You have virtually nothing to lose and everything to gain by having multiple accounts. It’s time you started to shop around.
Have At Least Three Books
We recommend having at a minimum of three different sportsbooks to choose from. You won’t have the whole market at your fingertips but you should have enough options to save some money.
Remember that different sportsbooks have different strengths. One book might have low juice on football but be a little stingier with UFC lines. Or one book might offer great lines for live in-game betting but charge more juice for bets before the game. Make sure you get a good profile of the sportsbook and their offering before you open an account. You want to have different sportsbooks; you don’t want to have three accounts with betting lines that mirror each other.