Betting Terminology

I was in Arizona recently for my friend’s bachelor party, and at one point, a buddy turned to me and said:

“I play a game — every time you tweet, I try to see how much of it I actually understand.”

Part of that, as I’ve mentioned before, is probably because I’m in the bottom one percentile when it comes to grammar and spelling. (Still not sure how Rob decided I was the guy to write a newsletter — but here we are.)

But mostly, what my friend was saying is that I casually talk about topics most people don’t really know much about.

There are a few key concepts in gambling that I think about literally every day — ideas I believe anyone who bets seriously should at least understand on a basic level. So today, I’m going to break down a few of those words and concepts and explain why they actually matter.

Plus EV

Okay, I know I just went on a bit of a rant about diving into important concepts I think about every day — but that’s not really why I added “Plus EV” to the list.

Yes, Plus EV is incredibly important. But the main reason it’s here is because oddsjammers have co-opted the term and removed all meaning from the “EV” — expected value.

In the oddsjam world, “Plus EV” basically just means you’re getting a number that’s off-market at a specific book. So, if Luka Doncic’s over assists is -130 everywhere but MGM posts it at +100, oddsjammers would call that “Plus EV.” Honestly, I’m not even sure most of them know “EV” stands for expected value.

Let’s be clear: “Positive EV” means your wager is expected to return a profit — in a vacuum, over time. If someone offers you +110 on a fair coin flip, that’s Positive Expected Value. As in, the value of your position is positive (expected profit) as opposed to negative value (expected loss). You know a fair coin lands heads or tails 50% of the time, so over the long run, you make money. That’s the core idea.

Now obviously, determining expected value on a sporting event is a lot trickier than on a coin flip. There’s no way to know the exact true probability of Luka going over his assists line — it’s not a 50/50 proposition. But back to that MGM example: it’s entirely plausible — even likely — that +100 is a Plus EV bet. MGM isn’t known as a sharp book, and if every sharper book is sitting at -130, there’s a strong case for grabbing +100.

But — and this is important — it’s also possible that it’s not Plus EV.

All that matters for Luka over assists at +100 to be Plus EV is that the true probability of him going over is greater than 50%. That’s it. Whether or not that’s the case is something you have to determine — and there are a ton of ways to go about it. No one has a perfect read on true probability in sports, but some methods are much better than others.

Edge Stacking

Edge stacking is simple but powerful — in gambling and in life. The idea is exactly what it sounds like: taking one edge and stacking it on top of another to amplify your advantage.

Let’s say you’re a top-down bettor, and you’ve noticed that FanDuel is particularly sharp when it comes to pricing Norwegian soccer. Over time, you’ve realized that when FD takes a position in that market, it’s usually a +EV spot. That’s your first edge.

Now let’s say you decide to start originating in Norwegian soccer yourself. You build a model, and you think it’s decent — but you’re still feeling it out.

Then, something interesting happens: your model agrees completely with those sharp FD moves you’d already been tailing. Suddenly, you’re stacking edges.

• You now have more confidence that your model is valid.

• You have even more confidence that those FD moves are +EV.

• And you’ve created a feedback loop where your top-down and bottom-up approaches reinforce each other.

That’s edge stacking. One edge is nice. Two aligned edges? Way better. The more independent sources of signal you can layer, the stronger your position becomes — and the less you’re guessing.

Adverse Selection

Let’s say you originate NBA and your model shows six edges. You bet all six on open and can get around $500 on each. By morning, five of those lines have moved, and one is still sitting where it was. You think, “Great, I can bet more on this one.”

But here’s the issue: the market already accepted the sharp plays and rejected the weak one. The one that didn’t move is likely not an edge at all. If anything, it’s the most questionable of the bunch.

This is adverse selection — the idea that the bets you’re still able to get down on are often the ones you shouldn’t want more exposure to. Recognizing when you’re being selected against — by sharper money or by the market itself — is key to avoiding compounding bad bets.

Directionally Correct

Using Pinny vigless price on an NBA game as a baseline:

• If you take a team at -6.5 and it closes -5.5 (a point against you), your bet is roughly -11% EV.

• If it closes -7.5 (a point in your favor), your bet is roughly +6.33% EV.

The idea of being right more often than wrong is pretty straightforward — but in gambling, being wrong is really expensive.

I’ve rewritten this paragraph more times than I’d like to admit, but I think it boils down to this:

If you see an NBA total at 222 and think, “I’m not sure if the fair is 224 or 226, but I’m very confident it’s higher than 222,” — that’s incredibly valuable.

That kind of directional conviction is often more useful than chasing down the perfect number.

Too often, people get lost trying to pin down an exact fair price or get overly locked into the specifics of a single matchup. But the ability to consistently recognize when a number is simply off — even within a range — is one of the most underrated skills in betting.

You don’t need perfect precision to be sharp. You just need to consistently understand where the value lies.