Sportsbooks can be generally categorized as “Sharp” (market-making, like Pinnacle, focused on setting accurate lines and taking on large bets from professionals) or “Soft” (retail-focused, like many US commercial books, focused on attracting recreational bettors).
The Strategy:
- Track the Sharps: Watch the line movement on a sharp sportsbook. When a line moves quickly, it’s often due to large, informed wagers, indicating the “true” price of the market.
- Identify Outliers: Compare the line on the sharp book to the line on a soft/retail book. If the soft book is slow to adjust and offers a significantly better price on one side, that is a potential “stale” or “value” line to exploit.
- Arbing: In some cases, a significant price difference between two books can create an arbitrage opportunity, guaranteeing a risk-free profit by betting on all possible outcomes across different sportsbooks (though books are quick to limit bettors who exclusively use this strategy).