Live Betting

One of our top Optimal users "Matt Matt" wrote up his strategy for one of our new features: Live Betting.

We hope you all enjoy this as much as we did!

OK here are my credentials for live betting since the day it dropped on the Optimal app.

First 2 days were really, really solid. Then I floated back and forth, and had a really bad day last Thursday. But the last 5 days I've been positive, so I'm starting to figure out what works and doesn't work. I'm also tagging my bets but I have a lot to go back on, so that level of analysis isn't ready yet.

BUT here's my "What I've Learned"

Top Rule

‍Most of my bets are when I see a Live Bet with +EV (green), 50% or more Win Rate, and +100 or better odds. Toss like .5u or whatever you'd feel comfortable with on these, but you need a lot to get those coin flips to flip your way. Scroll through the games of the evening so you're not making too many of these bets under the same conditions. I would say most of these are also on Spreads and O/U. This fits NBA and NCAAM/CBB the best.

‍Other Rules

‍So, Money Lines are weird. What I place and how often and how many units is pretty dependent on the situation, game, and even some stats sometimes.

‍NCAAM/CBB offer two good options for ML bets. The first is when you see a close game that has a small live spread and you see the teams going back and forth for +100 or better odds. If you feel better about one of the teams, you can stick to one side of the ML. If you don't know, go with the home team or the favorite, depending on your risk tolerance. The second is when you see a close game AND the odds are rather lopsided toward one team. I've seen too many of these +300 odds in the 2nd half turn out as wins because the books seem to have too much of a bend toward the favorite and these sort of odds can be juicy if you're ok with some extra risk.

‍NHL is wild this year. It's a blast cause I read last week that this year has seen the most multigoal comebacks ever. We're also looking at a record breaking rate of over 5.5 goals too. SO, I typically will bet MLs here when a team is down 0-1, 0-2, maybe even 0-3. These are even SWEETER if the team that is favored is the one that goes down early. (Similar idea for NBA games early...which I'll get to in a second.) For Over/Under I tend to go Over 5.5 whenever that's +EV (green) if it's the 1st or 2nd period, and then I start betting Unders in the 3rd. But I'm not sold on that yet. I also don't love spreads for NHL but I will sometimes.

NBA provides the best value imo. The O/U and spreads are pretty steadily dependable. So you can take the pre-game lines and use those as reference points. I've slammed +100 Money Line odds and +100 +1.5 spread for Favorites and made a decent bit off those alone. Like the other day the Knicks were like 6.5 point favorites or something silly, and at home, and early on they went down by a few points, maybe 5-10 max. And that flipped the books against them. So I went for it with some 2u bets and waited it out and they won by 12 or something not even close. (I'm making up numbers from memory.) I've read that larger spreads are actually more "accurate" over time, so if you see a -12.5 pre-game, if the spread is ever lower, like -8.5, that's a decent bet if it's +EV and over 50% odds at the time per the Top Rule. For smaller spreads, I'd recommend a little arbitrage between Spreads and Money Lines based on what shows up and you "like." During the 3rd or even 4th quarter you can get some really nice O/U bets in too. Cause books seem to have those models down pretty well.

NFL This doesn't really matter cause we only have one game left. But since I only had one weekend of playoff games to bet on (I think?) I don't have enough experience to really say anything. However, I personally know the most about the NFL than any other league/sport and boy howdy does that mess with your head. My results weren't great so we'll just have to wait and see next year.

P.S. Sometimes I just go with my gut. Like I've felt like the Nets have been overperforming lately, so I toss a little more money and bets their way. Etc.