Explainer
Same bet, better price: why the number matters more than the team
Ethan explains why Degen cares about the price first, with the actual math on what -110, -105 and even money ask you to win.
People ask me who Degen likes tonight. Wrong question. Degen doesn't like anybody. It likes prices. The team is just what the price happens to be attached to.
Every price is a break-even rate
American odds look like a code, but they're just a way of saying how often a bet has to win to break even.
- At -110, you risk 1.10 units to win 1. You need to win about 52.4% of the time to break even.
- At -105, you risk 1.05 to win 1. Break-even drops to about 51.2%.
- At even money (+100), you risk 1 to win 1. Break-even is exactly 50%.
The formula for a minus price is the number divided by the number plus 100. So 110 over 210, which is 52.4%. For a plus price, it's 100 divided by the number plus 100.
That gap between 52.4% and 51.2% looks tiny. It isn't. It's the same bet, the same team, the same game, and one version asks you to be right more than one extra time out of every hundred. Over a season, that's the whole difference between a decent record and a mediocre one.
Why books disagree
Every sportsbook sets its own lines. Most of the time they're close. Sometimes one book is slow to move, or shades a number toward the popular side, and its price drifts away from what the rest of the market says the bet is worth.
Degen's whole job is to spot that drift. It estimates a fair price for the bet, compares each book against it, and only flags the spots where the gap is big enough to care about. Same bet, better price. Paying extra for the same thing is for airport sandwiches.
What this doesn't mean
A better price is not a promise. A bet at a great number still loses a lot of the time. Good price, bad result. Both can be true, and they will be, often. That's why every loss gets posted the same size as the wins.
It also doesn't mean you should go open accounts everywhere. Degen only uses legal, licensed options: PrizePicks, plus Nevada lines from Caesars, STN Sports and Boyd. No offshore books, ever.
My take
I'd rather skip five okay bets than take one bad one. If the gap is small, I'll watch from the couch. The number is the only part of a bet you actually get to choose. Choose it carefully, or don't choose at all.