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Written Monday February 1st, 2021 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time (spreads/odds may have changed) Last year, I crushed Vegas sportsbooks by winning $8,330 USD on Super Bowl proposition bets. Will I enjoy the same success wagering online this year? First, it is critical that you understand HOW the picks are made. I have set up an Excel spreadsheet where I track the lines from 15-20 online sportsbooks on all possible prop bets. The file has several thousands of rows. This is a gold mine of information allowing me to find great bargains very quickly. I’ll do my best to explain to you how it works. The best way to do so is via a concrete example, so let’s dive right away into the first pick. SUPER BOWL PROP BET #1: CHRIS JONES OVER 2.5 TACKLES+ASSISTS (@130 odds with 10Bet) First, let me show you the lines on this market from five different online bookies: The lines from a given sportsbook can be converted into “fair odds.” Let’s look at the odds from William Hill Canada: +110 on the over, -140 on the under. What would be “fair odds”, i.e. odds if the bookie wasn’t taking a commission (also called the “vigorish”)? I do not want to bore you with the mathematical details, but the answer is: +123 on the over, -123 on the under. If you wish to know how I came up with those numbers, I invite you to read the following article I wrote a few years ago (https://www.professormj.com/pages/sports-betting-lessons-value-betting). Then, you can convert those “fair odds” into “fair probabilities.” Again, you can check out the article above for more details, but in the case of this exemple we obtain a fair probability of 44.9% on the over and 55.1% on the under. To make things clear: William Hill Canada believes Chris Jones has a 44.9% chance of posting more than 2.5 tackles+assists (and obviously a 55.1% chance of recording less than 2.5 tackles+assists). You can repeat the same process for each sportsbook. And then take the average across all sportsbooks who have lines on this specific proposition bet. In the Chris Jones example, the average true probability on the over is 47.1% versus 52.9% on the under. This is literally the average “opinion” of the numerous sportsbooks. If you convert those true probabilities back into odds, you get +112 on the over versus -112 on the under. Those are the critical numbers! They represent the break-even odds, or the minimum odds required to bet. The conclusion goes like this: Bet over 2.5 tackles+assists by Chris Jones if you get odds that are better than +112 (or 2.12 in decimal format); Bet under 2.5 tackles+assists by Chris Jones if you get odds that are better than -112 (or 1.89 in decimal format). Now, since 10Bet is offering +130 odds on the over, that’s a good value wager! Hopefully, your head is not spinning too much from reading all of those numbers. Thank God, I do not need to do these calculations manually for each prop bet! The lone task required is to enter the odds for each prop bet from lots of sportsbooks. My Excel spreadsheet does the rest! See what it looks like: SUPER BOWL PROP BET #2: SHORTEST TOUCHDOWN UNDER 1.5 YARD (@-138 odds with Bet365) Let’s take a look at the lines from a few online bookmakers: Clearly, Bet365 has a weird line on the under. That’s why I am taking advantage of it. SUPER BOWL PROP BET #3: NO ONSIDE KICK ATTEMPT (@-175 odds with Bodog/Bovada) Again, let’s take a look at the different odds on this prop bet: You can tell very quickly which sportsbook has a soft line: Bodog/Bovada at -175 odds on “NO”. Believe me, the Super Bowl becomes so much more exciting when you have 10-20-30 prop bets going on. I really had a blast last year. Enjoy the game my friend!!! Professor MJ https://youtu.be/0hZDE74Q7zA