The MLB is a long season. The regular season begins in April and finishes in early October. There are over 2,400 games to bet on and there’s a good chance as an MLB sports bettor, you’re betting on at least 162 games a year, give or take.
It’s hard to be profitable betting sports. It’s not easy no matter what people tell you. Finding the best lines for the best bet you’re looking for goes a long way. If you’re betting -110 wagers for $50, you’re losing $4.50 for every wager you win that you could’ve bet at +100.
Here’s an example:
We’ll say your unit size is $50 and you bet one unit on 162 games a year at -110 odds. If you won 100 of those 162 wagers at -110 odds, you would profit $1,455. However, if 50 of those winning wagers were at +100 odds, you would profit $1,677.5. That’s over $200 that you would earn extra on the same wagers with slightly different odds. It’s a big difference after all. Taking a +100 wager instead of a -110 doesn’t seem like much but it’s 10 cents every time you bet a game. It all adds up. That’s why it’s very important to shop around and find the best lines when looking to place your wager. The better the MLB odds are, the more profit you’ll make and the more units you’ll be up.
By just finding better odds on your wagers, you could increase your unit profit by, in this case, four units, which is four bets that you wouldn’t have had if you stuck with -110 wagers. Each top- rated sportsbooks independently decides its market and some don’t catch up on breaking news quick enough. Some oddsmakers don’t pay attention to sharp action nearly as much as they should. You can always find discrepancies between books to find a really good line that won’t be there for much longer.
You can find arbitrage opportunities or even just bet positive expected value type bets to become profitable. But you can’t do any of this with just one sportsbook. You need to have several different books and understand how each book operates when it comes to setting lines. If you want to be a profitable sports bettor and want a secondary income to your day job, line shopping and finding the best value on any bet is crucial.
It’s worth taking the extra five or ten minutes to find the best line available to you via the markets you are in. It goes a long way when you’re betting every single day, between multiple games and what not. Most bettors will place more than just 162 bets in the MLB a year. Some bettors might place three bets a day in the MLB. Those bettors could be betting 600 MLB games a year. By line shopping, they would earn way more profit by finding the best line in comparison to being lazy and taking whatever line they see first. The more volume that you bet, the more important it is. Keep line shopping on your mind when you’re looking for your next wager.
