Understanding Sports Betting: Number Shopping

When looking for lines when seeking to place a bet, it’s important to seek out multiple books on placing your bet, instead of relying on the same book every time you bet. This is one of the most basic sports betting tips around, but it's a crucuial one nonetheless. Numbers typically move prior to the event, with books looking to attempt to have their books break even so they have little risk and primarily collect on the “juice” generated by their bettors.

Because of this, lines will shift to reflect how the bettors at a particular book have been betting, meaning it’s possible to find a different line from one book to another on a particular game. To the random sports bettor, this may never occur to them; there are still bettors that believe the line stays the same across the board. That extra half of a point on a certain book can make the difference between clearing a bet and being stuck losing by the critical point.

Look at a few different boards; online site hopping, including the increasingly ubiquitous iPhone betting site, can help you navigate which sites are leaning which ways. It also helps to look for sites that have a bit of a team bias; a primarily east coast site would likely be biased towards teams from that region, meaning a Celtics/Lakers game is going to have a lot of people betting Boston’s side, no matter what the spread is, which will likely shift the line there more fervently than, say, your local bookie in Texas, where no one has a real bond for or against either team.

Those regional preferences can be something to keep an eye out for, especially in College sports. Keep in line with the bookmaker’s lines and your bookie’s lines, and you’ll have a nice edge over your fellow bettors.