Props

Props are a ripe target. For the most part there is no real market for props. The main market maker books tend not to emphasize props. Sportsbooks develop their prop menus both by copying those at other sportsbooks and by coming up with their own ideas and pricing them in-house.

When the main markets like spread and total move at market maker books, those price movements usually aren’t distributed to any related prop markets.

Despite their vulnerability, I expect props to proliferate in the coming years. Americans love betting props. Sportsbooks will try to compete with one another by offering bigger and bigger prop menus.

There are two main classes of props. Player props and game props.

Player props are bets on individual players. Touchdowns for Tom Brady. Points plus rebounds plus assists for LeBron James. Strikeouts for Max Scherzer. You get the idea.

In the past, player props have been very beatable, but I expect them to get a lot of attention in the coming years. Already there are fantasy sports analysts who have pivoted to analyzing player prop bets. It’s likely that the number of people betting these seriously will explode. Explosion means more availability and higher limits—but it also means more market efficiency. Market maker books will likely start making more markets for these. More betting volume means books will pay more attention to these markets at competitors, and the price discovery plus copying process will take hold.

If you like playing fantasy sports, and digging into depth charts and projecting playing time interests you, by all means dive into player props. But I think that we’ll see a lot of growth—and tightening—in these markets in the years to come. Very soon they may not be so easy to beat.

Game props are team- or game-level bets. Will there be a defensive touchdown in the game? Which team will be first to score 30 points? Will there be a goal in the first 10 minutes of the game?

These props, like player props, are likely to proliferate in coming years. But I don’t think they will generate quite the increased attention from bettors that player props will, and as such, there’s a good chance they remain juicy targets for a while.

The great thing about these bets is that you can often deduce logically when these bets are good.

Typically, the pricing of game props is (or at least should be) directly related to the main spread and total of the game. Some props vary more with the spread and total than others.

A common game prop that doesn’t vary much is this NFL prop…

“Will the final score of the game be odd or even?”

At first thought, you might assume this bet should be roughly 50-50. But it’s not—it’s slightly skewed toward odd being the favorite. The main reason is that a tie is an even score, and ties are uncommon.

“Ah. So if the lack of tie games represents the biggest reason odd is a favorite over even, then odd should be a bigger favorite in games with low spreads and a smaller favorite in games with large spreads.”

This is correct, and it’s a perfect example of the type of logic you can use to beat these sorts of props.

Unfortunately, in this particular case, this effect doesn’t move the needle much. Games just don’t end tied in regulation that often—and of those, a good portion end with one team scoring a touchdown for 6 points and an even final score.

So this proposition varies from about 54 percent games ending odd at a pickem spread to about 52 percent games ending odd if the home team is a 17 point favorite. This two percent swing is less than the hold on the bet. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve found a good odd/even NFL bet.

One popular NFL game prop that does vary enough to create good bets is…

“Will one team score three consecutive times at any point in the game?”

If you aren’t familiar with this prop, it’s a widely cited example of a bet that’s counterintuitive to casual bettors. It sounds like scoring three times in a row is hard—but the reality is that when you have all game long to do it once, it ends up being a good favorite to happen.

But exactly how good a favorite depends on both the point spread and the total of the game. Logic suggests that this prop is more likely to win when one team will have trouble scoring. And that’s exactly the effect—in games where one team is a big favorite, this happens more often. And of those games with a nice-sized favorite, it happens more often when the game has a lower total.

Basically, when one team has a particularly low expected team total is when the fair value on this prop really starts to move.

I could put a chart here with spreads and totals and fair values for this prop for each one, but I won’t because that would likely destroy the value—sportsbooks could just read the chart and open this market at the listed prices. So if you want to bet this one you’ll have to work it out for yourself.

But the fair value on this prop can go from about 63 percent on the yes, there will be three consecutive scores, to about 75 percent yes as you go through the extremes of spread/total combinations that are realistic in the NFL. Because it can move up to 12 percent, which is well more than the hold usually is on this prop, you can find good bets. I’ve bet this prop many times.

Other NFL game and team props with fair values that vary enough to find good bets with the spread and total are…

“Total field goals”
“Total touchdowns”
“Will the team that scores first win the game?”
“Will the game ever be tied after 0-0?”
“Will the first score be a TD or FG/SAF?”
“Will there be a score in the last two minutes of the first half?”

And so on. Each of these props have fair prices that vary considerably with the pregame point spread and total. And for the most part, sportsbooks don’t do a great job of capturing this relationship when they open these prop markets.

Props are a great way to get started finding winning sports bets. They’re often weakly priced and not tied to a larger market. If you want a process for attacking these bets, try this one.

Find a prop where it seems the fair value price should change considerably in games with different spreads and totals.

Watch the prop for different games as it’s priced over time and try to reverse engineer the pricing.

If the prop is offered at multiple books, compare this pricing at several different places.

Watch it to see if others are betting the prop and determine how the book moves the pricing when you bet the prop.

Once you understand what is in the price and what isn’t, bet the prop whenever the price doesn’t seem to account correctly for the spread and total. ♠

Ed’s latest book, The Course: Serious Hold ‘Em Strategy For Smart Players is available now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You can also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed at the training site redchippoker.com.