How I’m Gonna Bet works
Might as well get the best price.
1. You tell us the bet
Search a team, player, game or bet. We never pick winners, and we never try to talk you into betting.
2. We estimate a fair price
Every book builds a cut (the “vig”) into its odds. For moneylines, spreads and totals (and some player props), we take prices from sharp sportsbooks (Pinnacle, Betfair, Matchbook, BetOnline and LowVig), strip out each book's cut, and average them, weighting Pinnacle the most. We only use sportsbook data that's at most 90 minutes old.
3. We compare that to the best price on Novig
If Novig pays more than the fair price, that's an estimated edge. Strong value is 5%+, good value 2 to 5%, fair-ish 0 to 2%. Below fair is never labeled value. When we have no fresh sharp-sportsbook price for a bet, we just show it as the best price on Novig and make no edge claim.
Novig's fee is included
Novig charges the bettor who takes a price a fee of c × P × (1 − P) per $1 contract, where P is the price (the chance it implies) and c is the market's fee rate. Novig publishes the rate on every market, and we read it from there instead of hardcoding it (right now 3% on NBA and NFL markets, 6% on MLB and NHL). On game markets the fee is charged only on live, in-game bets. Everything on this site is pregame, so those prices carry no fee. If a market charges the fee before the game, we add it to the Novig price we show and use that price in every edge calculation. Example: at P = 0.50 and c = 0.03, the fee is 0.75¢ per $1 contract.
4. Thin markets get no estimate
If a Novig market only has orders on one side, the buy/sell gap is wider than 5¢, or less than $25 is available, we show the price with “Not enough market data” and leave it out of every ranking.
5. Prices go stale fast
Novig prices refresh about once a minute and show how old they are. After about 3 minutes they're marked stale, and after 10 they drop out of the rankings. Sportsbook prices are cached copies, labelled with their age and “price may have changed”.
Where the data comes from
- Novig prices come from Novig's public order books: the price you could take now (1 minus the best bid on the other side).
- Sportsbook prices come from a cached odds feed and can be up to 3 hours old on screen (we never use anything older than 90 minutes for value).
- We don't have state-by-state availability for DraftKings, FanDuel or BetMGM, so we never mark them as available. Pinnacle, Betfair and Matchbook aren't US-licensed and are shown only as references. Offshore books are hidden.
- Fliff is a sweepstakes sportsbook, not a licensed sportsbook. We only mark it available once you've set a state its official sweepstakes rules allow.
- Novig isn't available in Arizona, Michigan or Nevada.
Estimates can be wrong. No bet is guaranteed. A better price doesn't make a bet win. Bet only what you're fine losing.