$11,092.59 Liquidity on Assist Prop?

If you have been keeping up with the re-vamped Risk Takers Podcast (Spotify, Apple) you have heard myself and SportsProjections talk extensively about why you should be VERY CAREFUL betting top down into exchanges.

Why?

This is unfortunately one of those annoying situations where you have to use your brain.

And I will be honest…I got caught not using my brain when working on the NoVig and ProphetX alerts for GP Picks+. I started to get feedback from a few users that they were not getting any CLV on those two sites and they were losing on a medium sized sample of bets.

Obviously I was concerned so I dug into this. I checked all of the alerts into the two exchanges. The results were fine - if you took every alert you would be making money at both exchanges.

But my wheels had been spinning, and the no CLV was weird. So I asked more users what their experience was. A few told me they were doing well, and mentioned some hand-filtering they did.

“I only bet at these times”

“I only bet X type of props”

But one stuck out because multiple people brought it up and it makes so much sense.

They pass on bet notifications if when they go to the exchange the bet has a lot of liquidity available.

Duh - I thought. As I wasn’t betting at these exchanges I didn’t realize the massive variance in liquidity available. Once I looked into it - it clicked.

There were NBA player props for role players with $5k liquidity on one side and like $100 on the other side.

It’s pretty obvious that you don’t want to bet into the side with $5k liquidity - and it’s not for the same reason traditional sportsbooks are sharper in places where they are willing to take more.

The reason is found here by asking “why”?

Q: Why is there way more liquidity on one side?

A: Someone posted it that wasn’t NoVig or Prophetx seeding the market. (If it were them the size would be much smaller).

Q: Why would someone post it?

A: They really want to get filled and are sharp. Squares almost NEVER post liquidity in any game or market. So anyone posting (and posting thousands of dollars) is probably sharp. There are two ways to have a lot of money and be a sports bettor. Either you made the money betting - or you are really rich and enjoy sports betting. The later isn’t posting liquidity….so it’s pretty obvious who is posting thousands on these exchanges.

Q: Why post it on the exchanges and not just bet it?

Okay this is the key question - and the one we really need to understand. It’s a fair question - because it’s actually very hard to randomly get bets filled on exchanges. The user base of exchanges skews VERY sharp. There aren’t a lot of people randomly clicking your orders just to gamble a little on Thursday night.

But there is a “square” bettor on the exchanges that makes up tons of volume…

The arbitrager

If you go back and look at all of the big liquidity spots - most of them will be an arbitrage to some square sportsbook. (Square could also mean Pinny at the open in a market they only take $500).

What’s going on is actually super simple. It’s a transaction.

Sharp bettor wants to bet 5-figures into soft line at DraftKings. But they can’t bet at DK and don’t have VIPs on speed dial to bet for them. So they pay a fee to the army of semi-sharp bettors who are using software to spot arbitrage opportunities.

Say they want to bet LeBron James Under 8.5 Rebounds on DraftKings at -128 because they make it -150. What they could do is offer LeBron James Over 8.5 Rebounds +133 on NoVig or ProphetX. Here they pay the arbitrager a few cents to basically go to DraftKings and bet the -128 “for them”.

This is what’s happening on the exchanges when you see big liquidity. And this is why you should be interested by any bet that shows a big discrepancy in liquidity. Because what is the optimal move in the above situation? It’s to go to DraftKings and bet Lebron Under 8.5 rebounds at -128. But then you must:

1. Pause

2. Use brain

3. Realize you shouldn’t close the arb on the exchange - as someone very smart is willing to pay a fee for the bet you just got for free.

So with that in mind - it became a priority to add liquidity information to NoVig and ProphetX alerts.

Here is a perfect example of this sharp liquidity dance playing out at Novig

Like…okay come on. Someone wants Josh Giddey under assists and is just casually posting $11k liquidity? The chances this person is recreational and betting into this is a good idea are exactly 0%.

So we added the liquidity information and I have made it clear in the GP Picks+ subscriber chat that we should not be taking bets in this situation. I left the alerts as is for now because seeing these big liquidity spots flash present an opportunity to the discerning subscriber to go take the square liquidity without playing into the exchange.

But going forward we will do a lot more with this information - and this is the reason I believe GP Picks+ is in a category of one for betting software.

Most top-down systems come from programmers and people who made side hustle money betting over the last year or two. But as Kevin Kisner says about golf, “This aint no hobby” for me. This is my full-time job, and I am constantly evaluating the betting logic and adding features, filters and discussing ideas that come from years of experience doing this full time.

So if that sounds appealing to you - click HERE to get started with GP Picks+

P.S.

I have received some interest in an advanced version of GP Picks+ where a user would get access to all of the graded betting data and the ability to create a lot of custom alert channels to harness the value of the data. Because of the value of the data and a channel cap in discord, this would be a very expensive product (think OJ Plat, BetStamp Pro) and the number of users would be capped. If something like this is of interest - please email me at [email protected]