My Opinion on Odds Screens and Bet Notifications

"You can't visualize 10-dimensional space."

Rufus Peabody said this to Bet the Process co-host Jeff Ma when discussing how he visualizes his model. I don't know exactly how Rufus displays his bets - but I agree with this statement.

The common way to "visualize" the market is through an odds screen. Odds screens show the odds for a given event at different sportsbooks. See below for a sample of my SpankOdds screen (not a sponsor):

Odds screens are easy to understand after spending 10 minutes with one. Say the Cubs are playing the Yankees. The game is given a row on the odds screen. Then each column is the price at different sportsbooks.

BetMGM is Cubs +110. Is that a good price? Just look left and right. Maybe you see FanDuel at +120, so you log into FanDuel and bet there.

Odds screens also allow you to quickly "chase steam" if you are at your computer. If you see the Cubs go from +120 to +110 at multiple books across the market - you can hop on any remaining +120 that you see.

Odds screens win in steam chasing, price shopping, and ease of use. They are great tools because of this and I recommend everyone learn how to use an odds screen.

They aren't the end goal though. There are three big problems with odds screens.

Problem 1: They aren't flexible

To use an odds screen, you have to be sitting at your computer. When you hear professional bettors say they want to cut down their time "staring at the screen" - they are talking about odds screens. There is no way to derive value from an odds screen when you aren't at your computer.

Problem 2: They aren't scalable

The person reading the odds screen is the one generating the bet. There isn't a clear indication of what EXACTLY you need to bet - which is needed for scaling. If you are working with a partner, you need to be able to tell them the exact bet you want them to take.

Even if you had a partner on the phone while you were looking at an odds screen, the main strategy from a screen (steam chasing) is time sensitive. You will miss most of the fills.

Problem 3: They aren't customizable

What you see is what you get.

Whatever markets the odds screen provider shows are the markets that you will be able to bet. And IF they are showing it, there will be less value. Meaning most of the value is "off screen".

Our solution: Bet Notifications

Our betting group uses notifications instead of odds screens. It allows us to:

1. Operate from our phones if necessary

2. Send notifications directly to partners to cut ourselves out of the process and scale

3. Automate bet finding in markets that are "off-screen"

4. Use our model as a source of truth instead of a top-down market average. applied by odds screen.

5. Be efficient - instead of staring at the screen, you can do other work then bet only when notified.

Our strategy is 90% origination - so it quickly became apparent that odds screens weren't the best fit.

We needed our model to ping the sportsbooks, compare to their prices, and return a bet notification if our EV threshold was met.

We also were able to price niche markets with our model - so we needed a way to quickly cut down the time it took to identify opportunities in those markets. Note - these markets were not on an odds screen.

What do you need to create bet notifications?

You need three skills:

1. Scraping

2. Program logic for compare/ notify

3. Experience with a messaging system API (Telegram, Discord, Slack)

Now wait - GP do you have these skills? 

NO!

Personally, I only check the second box, and barely check it. I have scraped odds in a non-robust way that wouldn't meet the test of a good notification system.

That's why we are a group. My partner is a tremendous scraper - and has built our notification system from scratch to become what I imagine one of the best in the space.

My recommendation is that when it comes to more advanced programming (ie production level programs not data analytics in python) - get help.

I recommend partnering with someone who has these skills - but you can also hire out projects. One note when hiring out a project - it helps to hire someone in the space if you have no programming experience. When I have worked with people outside the space - it wouldn't have worked if I had 0 programming experience. This is because you need to build an air-tight project brief for them to get it right.

How to start?

Start small - find one market you want to target that isn't available on any odds screens. Once you build the rails for the first market - the others can be added easily.

Maybe you know how to scrape - but you aren't familiar with the Discord or Telegram apis. That's fine - you can hire out sections of the programming work as long as they aren't dependent on each other.

How to get notifications if I don't want to do all that?

I also understand if you don't have the time to build a notification system - but you still want to get the benefits of using one. There’s good news for everyone who wants to bet profitably in the least amount of time possible.

Last week I launched a public notification service called GP Picks+. It's (in my opinion) the most robust public notification system on the market.

What sets it apart from the dozens of others I see in discords?

- Multi-Strategy: It uses price movement, along with vig-removal to give you the most coverage of profitable top-down bets available.

- Account health rating: I turned my opinions on account health into a "stoplight" system that rates each bet a green, yellow, or red light. This is will be updated as we get more data - and adds context to the bets

- Bet Size Recommendation: Proprietary staking formula that will also be tweaked to take into account market nuance.

For September I am running a giveaway for the yearly package of GP Picks+. If you buy any of the yearly plans (apps, sportsbooks, or sportsbooks + apps), you will get the entire GP Academy Video library for FREE!

If you want to start making profitable bets while simultaneously learning how to take it to the next level - click here to check out the GP Picks+ plans.

Thanks for reading!

John