Everything You Need To Know About The Odds Screen

The Betsniper odds screen pulls in data from the most popular bookmakers in Australia and around the world, making it easy for punters to compare odds and find value. The odds screen at Betsniper is our core product. Everything else we do is built off the odds screen. At any given point, we are scraping over 1,000,000 odds.

In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about the odds screen and how you can use it to make smarter betting decisions.

Why is comparing price important?

For anyone who is serious about making money when betting, the first thing you need to be doing is taking the best price in the market. This is an easy quick win. If you are not doing this, then you are most likely leaving a lot of money on the table.

Price is everything when betting. There is no such thing as a bad bet. Any bet can be a good bet if it is at the right price. 

In reality, comparing prices across bookmakers is extremely time consuming and tedious. By the time you open up every book, the best price may have been moved or you have already spend 15 minutes and all the prices are bad. Having all the prices in one dashboard next to each other is a must for anyone who is serious about making money when betting. Not only will it save you money, it will also save you time.

When it comes to sports betting, we are playing with very small margins, so everything matters. A couple of cents here and there can make a massive difference. Achieving a 5% ROI would put you well into the top 0.1% of all punters. 

The way bookmakers make money is that they aim to calculate the true odds of an event occurring and then put the odds underneath that. The difference between the true odds and the actual odds offered is known is the bookie margin which is commonly referred to as juice or the vig.

The bookie margin varies from bookmaker to bookmaker as well as market to market. For example on some match markets it can be 3-5% and on prop markets it can vary from 6-9%. So even if you have found a model that is ~5% better than the bookies, you would only be breaking even due to the odds offered.

Bookmakers are billion dollar companies because their odds are mostly accurate. We need every percentage point we can get in order to be a long-term profitable punter. Every bookmaker sets their own prices, so as a punter we do not want to be loyal - we want to take the best price that is on offer. There is always some variation between bookmakers. Let’s take a look at some examples

E.g. head to head markets tend to have less variance between the bookmakers but even still you can see there is some variance between bookmakers

For Philadelphia, you can get odds of 1.17 with Unibet and 1.11 with Boombet. Although this may seem trivial, that 6-cent difference per dollar staked is a 5.41% improvement in value, which compounds massively across hundreds of bets.

E.g. over-under player markets have a bit more variance than head to head markets but are also limited as the bookmaker is only taking a ~6-8% on these markets

For this Maxey bet, the bookie margin is ~7.2%. On this Maxey bet, the over odds vary from 1.86 with PlayUp to 1.93 with Unibet. For the under odds, it goes from 1.80 with Unibet to 1.87 with PointsBet. Although these differences may seem trivial, that 7-cent spread in price represents a 3.76% improvement in value on the over and a 3.89% improvement on the under, which compounds massively across hundreds of bets.

E.g. over only player markets usually have a lot more variance between bookmakers as the margin on these markets for bookmakers can be unlimited as they do not provide an under price. As a result, the variance of price between bookmakers is very large.

For Haaland to take 2+ shots on target, the odds vary from 1.36 at PointsBet all the way up to 1.70 at Dabble and TAB. Tha difference is a 24.7% boost in value, which is enormous over the long run. We cannot calculate the margin on this market as we do not have an under price. In these scenarios, bookmakers can price bets at very bad value.

⚠️ Just because you get the best price in the market does not mean it is a good (or a positive EV) bet

The cost of not getting top price

Although it can seem a bit trivial that getting a couple extra cents of price is important, it will have a dramatic impact on your results (assuming you are betting at volume, which is required for any succesful betting strategy). Let’s walk through some examples to see how this would play out.

For today’s NBA matches, let’s assume you bet $100 on each favourites and they won. Let’s compare the difference in results if you were to take the average odd of the market vs the top of the market.

With the best odds our return is 42% and with the average odds it is 38.7%. Although this seems small, you have to play this out over thousands of bets and even more thousands of dollars bet. If you are averaging $1,000 bet per day (which is not that much for a positive EV betting strategy), you will be $365,000. If you take the average odds over a season you will leave over $12,000 on the table.

Although a bit of a trivial example, but it shows the point of the importance of getting top price.

Here is a more concrete example on the importance on price. Below I have shared my results from betting Positive EV singles. Getting the right price is super important. Over 1,926 bets, my ROI is 8.8% with a win rate of 50.1%. But what happens if I change the price I got?

When a price moves, even a little bit, it will have significant impact on your overall performance. Even a couple cents here and there will have long-term impacts on your results.

How do you know if a price is good?

This is the secret sauce to becoming a long-term, consistent winner. There are many different ways that people can try and determine if a price is good. Below is a non-exhaustive list of how it is done:

• Identifying prices that are significantly out from the market: this is what our Positive EV tool does. Check out this video where we explain everything you need to use this strategy to beat the books

• Using historical data to help determine a true price: this is what our Implied EV tool does. Check out this video where we explain everything you need to use this strategy to beat the books

• Building your own model: there are people who can do this but it is extremely difficult to be successful in the long-run

• Utilising promotions to get a better price: when bookmakers give you odds boost or run promotional markets, if you are able to compare the price they offer to a fair price then you can determine if you are actually getting a good price. Sometimes these will be traps but other times you are actually getting good value.

If you just look at a bet and go off instinct or because you follow the sport, I am sorry to the bearer of bad news but you will not win in the long rung run. You may win a bet here and there and may even be succesful for a little while. But over a long enough time horizon there is NO WAY you will be profitable.

A price can be considered “good” if the price is larger than the actual price (or probability) of the event happening. This is the only thing that matters. But, just because a price is good does not mean the bet will win. Just because you take the top price in a market does not mean the bet is “good”.

How to use the odds screen?

We have built the odds screen to make it easy for punters to do market research and quickly find the bets they want to place.

The odds screen will display all the odds for a given market (for a given sport/league). 

First you need to select the sport/league you want to see odds for. Then you can select the market. Depending on the market, there may be some additional options you can select to specify the type of market.

For head to head, line and total points markets there will be a option to define the time period

For player prop markets, there will be options for “ov/un” markets as well as the different one-sided lines offered by bookmakers

By default, for a given market we show all the odds from all the matches. If you would prefer you are also able to filter the odds screen by matches. You are also able to filter the bookmakers showing on the page.

If you want to go deeper on a specific player, you can click on their name and this opens up a player-specific odds screen that contains all bets for that individual player in one spot.

For all markets that have alternate lines, you can compare them all from one place. This is available for player markets but also handicap and total points markets.

There is also an option to filter for matches that are starting soon. This can be useful if you want to reduce the amount of odds on the screen and only see odds for matches that are upcoming. 

Lastly, we have search function that is free text. Type in a team or player name on a given screen and the page will only show odds for this player for the given market. 

Who is the odds screen useful for?

The odds screen should be used by any punter. Even if you are a casual punter, it would be silly for you not to take the best price in the market or the best price you can get in the market. You are literally throwing away money if you do not do this.

But the main beneficiaries of the odds screen are sharp punters who want to make sure they are getting the best price. Further, it is the easiest tool to quickly see when markets are released and identify if there is any value. We actually have some free channels in our Discord, organised by sport, that alert users as soon as markets are released. This can be a great time to snipe some value.

You could also use the odds screen for value betting i.e. identify positive EV betting, arbitrage or middle betting opportunities. Although this does take a lot of time and you would be better off subscribing to the Betsniper Advanced or Pro tools that find these opportunities for you. At any given time, we are scraping 1,000,000+ odds, cleaning them, comparing them and finding value betting opportunities.

Which bookmakers are included in the odds screen?

We are always adding more bookmakers to the odds screen. Currently we are showing:

• Australian bookmakers

  • Betdeluxe

  • Betr

  • Betright

  • Dabble

  • Dabble Pick’Em

  • Ladbrokes

  • Playup

  • Pointsbet

  • Sportsbet

  • TAB

  • Unibet

• Exchanges

  • Betfair

  • More to come soon

• International bookmakers (or reference bookmakers)

  • Pinnacle

  • More to come soon

If you have any bookmakers you would like to see, we would love to hear. Please send us an email at support@bet-sniper.com.

We do our best to keep our scrapers up 100% of the time. But bookmakers are constantly changing their data structures which requires re-writing of our scrapers. As soon as anything goes down, we do our best to restore it ASAP.

A note on Australian bookmakers

Although there are a lot of bookmakers in Australia, there are lots that are owned by the same company and therefore offer the same odds. We have focussed on scraping the corporate bookmakers that offer fairer odds and more markets. 

For your reference, these are the corporate books that share the same odds:

• Ladbrokes and Neds

• Unibet and Tabtouch

Some other things to note

• Betr, Betright and Playup often have very similar odds but do have enough variation that makes it worthwhile scraping both of them

• Betdeluxe largely copies Sportsbet for player prop markets

There are a lot of books in Australia we currently are not showing (100+ bookmakers in Australia). However, most of these are duplicates of each other. Further, these smaller, non-corporate bookmakers offer worse odds (bigger margin) and less markets. They would rarely provide any good betting opportunities - over time our intention is to add these books though.

However, these things are constantly changing. So we always keep an eye on this and will be quick to add any bookmaker as soon as they start to show they are providing value.

A note on Dabble Pick'Em

Dabble Pick’Em is a new product from Dabble that is their fixed-odds payout game. You essentially pick a bunch of selections and then get a fixed payout that scales with the number of selections you include. For more information how it works you can check out this blog.

We have included Dabble Pick’Em as a seperate category on the odds screen as the data can be very useful to compare lines to. These odds are seperate to the Dabble bookmaker odds.

Check out this blog where we explore how you can find value comparing odds to Dabble Pick'Em lines

Because the Dabble Pick’Em lines are a fixed payout, there are actually no odds associated with the bet. However, we can infer what those odds are using some basic maths. The complexity comes from the fact the inferred odds actually change depending on the number of legs you include as well as if you go All-in or Hedge. To better understand this, you can check out our blog where we explain the Maths behind beating Dabble Pick'Em.

But for most Pick’Em bets, they are giving you the same inferred odds for over and under. For simplicity, we are using the inferred odds for a 3-leg All-in Pick’Em which is ~1.87. For some Pick’Ems, they won’t offer the under price and will apply a multiplier on the over. In these instances, we just apply the same multiplier on the inferred price.

We also have a tool called Pick’Em EV which shows you how to find value with the Dabble Pick’Em product itself. This is the best way to construct Pick'Ems and quantify how big your edge is.

A note on Betfair exchange

Betfair is actually not a bookmaker but an exchange where you are betting against other people. Because of this, it is actually a very efficient market (as long as there is enough betting liquidity). Comparing to Betfair prices can be a great way to find edges. 

When you bet on Betfair, each market has an associated fee. So the odds you see on Betfair do not include that fee. The odds we show on Betsniper actually include that fee, hence the difference in price between Betsniper and Betfair. We do this so that you can better compare the price from Betfair to other bookmaker prices. So please note that if you compare the actual Betfair site to Betsniper, there is always going to be a discrepancy as we show our prices with the fee included. 

A note on international/reference bookmakers

You may be asking the question why include these international bookmakers if there is no way to bet them from Australia? That is a very valid question. We include these bookmakers because we want more reference prices. The more data we have, the smarter betting decisions we can make.

Further, we are not just scraping any bookmakers. We are only scraping international bookmakers that are considered sharp. These are bookmakers that have lower limits, accept bigger stakes and move odds the quickest. This is useful information and information we can use to make money off the soft books.

To better understand the difference between soft and sharp picks we have put together this artcile

These reference bookmakers are particularly helpful for improving the positive EV tool. In order to identify positive EV betting opportunities, we need more over/under markets. For lots of bookmakers in Australia, there are only a handful of bookmakers that offer over/under prices. By going international, we can get more data and references to be able to construct a fair market price. Information is king for a top-down betting strategy.

Which sports and markets are included in the odds screen?

We are currently scraping the following sports:

• AFL

• BBL

• EPL, English Championship, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Champions League

• MLB

• NBA

• NBL

• NCAA Football

• NFL

• NHL

• NRL

• Tennis (ATP and WTA competitions)

• UFC

• WAFL

• WNBA

We have identified these sports as the best sports to find value betting opportunities. But, if you would like to see a sport or league added, please feel free to contact us at support@bet-sniper.com. We are always looking to add more sports and leagues and help punters find value.

In terms of markets, we scrape all the core markets. This includes match markets as well as extensive coverage of player props. Every bookmaker has their own way of creating markets. We try and only scrape markets where at least two bookmakers are offering the market. This is so you can easily compare these markets.

If we are missing any markets for a given sport or league, please feel free to contact us at support@bet-sniper.com.

Want to speak to a betting expert?

We have been beating the bookies for 10+ years. Since incepting of Betsniper in 2023 we have netted $200,000+ in profit over this period. We are offering free consulting call (normally valued at $299) for customers who sign up to our free 7-day trial.

• Answer all your questions about positive EV betting

• Share our insights and strategies that we use to make money from positive EV betting today

• Formulate a personalised plan that fits around your risk appetite, bankroll and lifestyle

If you would like to learn how to implement a market EV betting strategy, please book in a call here.