I ended 2022 with a round-up of my sports betting results exclusively using the Unabated Odds Screen. To recap – I won a lot of units without a lot of volume. With 114 bets and an average bet size of $167, I made just shy of $3,000.
In that same department, 2023 hasn’t gone as well.
During February and March I used the Odds Screen to identify 154 straight bets showing an edge of 1.5 percent or higher. Overall I lost more than 30 units. A bet size of $100 would cancel out everything I made in December.
Unlike my last update, I’ve included my spreadsheet at the end of this article. You can see what I bet, and why it was a disaster. (Moneylines. It was moneylines.)
Why Didn’t I Make More Bets?
I did! Most of my time sports betting this year has been spent on teasers. One of the reasons I started collaborating with Unabated was to learn how to use their tools to find more edges. The Teaser Tool led me to new opportunities worth on average three to five times more than what I could identify by simply browsing the Odds Screen.
Like so many Unabated users, I hadn’t bet teasers before I had access to the Teaser Tool. Once I discovered plus-EV opportunities, I gave teasers almost all of my attention. My return over 533 teaser bets this year is 13.01 percent.
If you spend time in the premium Unabated Discord channels, you will come across several users who had similar results – and you’ll find a chorus of tears when those teaser opportunities lessened.
Because profitable teasers still exist for Unabated users I’m not going to go into the specific methodology in this article, but you can see how the tool works here or jump into the discussion in the Discord.
The Teaser Tool is not the only feature on Unabated that offers the user an opportunity to find bigger edges than reading the Odds Screen. Unabated’s John Manes just made a video on how he tripled his bankroll using the Unabated Props Simulator.
Even though there are more user-intensive tools on Unabated that return bigger edges, betting with the Odds Screen is still the easiest approach and single digit edges are listed every day. I’m not turning my back on straight bets but I am adjusting my process.
Why Did I Lose?
I started the year betting off of the Odds Screen without restraint. I bet any moneyline over 2 percent and totals and spreads over 1.5 percent. I bet overnight and same day. It didn’t take me long to see I was getting crushed.
Even though my sample was small, I started to question my method early. Were the overnight edges correct? Could I blame my moneyline losses on variance? Was I betting too early? Too late?
Between Discord and conversations with Captain Jack I got answers and learned some lessons.
Lessons Learned
There were a few takeaways here. Which is good, because these sports betting results aren’t going to get better on their own.
Level one thinking
The Unabated Line on the Odds Screen is a consensus line of market-making books. Unabated hasn’t made public what blend of sports books make up the Unabated Line (I don’t know either) but it’s common knowledge that Huddle, Circa and Bookmaker offer market-making lines.
If the Unabated Line is a consensus of any combination of those prices and only one of those sportsbooks have their lines posted, it’s not giving Unabated much to work with. It’s possible the edge listed on the odds screen isn’t an edge at all because the Unabated Line doesn’t have enough information to make a consensus line.
I stopped using the Unabated Line to gauge if I had an edge when market-making books didn’t have their lines posted.
Head fakes!
If someone – or a group of someones – want to move a line, it’s going to cost them a lot less overnight than the next day when limits are higher. Some max bets at low limits will automatically move a college basketball line in the overnight or early morning market. However, to move those same lines on the day of the game could cost five figures or more.
In theory, a sharp bettor could move the odds on a moneyline overnight and then get down 10 times that the next day on the opposite side.
I didn’t consider this and I definitely got caught in the middle of market manipulation. I wasn’t skilled enough to identify when this was happening and how I should react. I’m just a girl sitting in front of an odds screen asking it to love her.
More than that, sometimes sportsbooks want to lower their liability. A line move might simply be out of necessity. Again I didn’t take that into consideration.
Not reacting to my results
It was clear early on that I was getting destroyed on moneyline bets. With almost all of the bets being underdogs, I chalked it up to variance.
I realize that one can’t be too results-oriented with a small sample but in the end, 87 percent of my losses were on moneylines. It was a steady decline. I saw it happening and I didn’t adjust. I didn’t ask questions.
Likewise, I wasn’t beating the closing line. The times I did beat it were about equal to the times I didn’t. Since joining Unabated and speaking to Rufus I’ve learned that it’s not how often you beat the closing line – it’s how much you beat the closing line for.
If I’m beating the closing line 80 percent of the time by 1 percent and not beating it 20 percent of the time by 20 percent, then I’m not really beating it. Any way you slice it, I haven’t beat the closing line this year. It beat me.
Some of these errors will be incredibly obvious to knowledgeable bettors who have made it this far, but they are what they are. I made several mistakes and I did the work to understand why.
The Data
My spreadsheet includes a key to indicate when each bet was made.
154 bets consisted of:
- 51 moneylines
- 41 spreads
- 62 totals
Assuming a $100 unit, there was $16,754 of action and a total loss of $3,070.
Again, a whopping 87 percent of that loss was on moneylines.
You guys, it was a catastrophe.
Hot Girl Summer
More than a few bettors have told me to take the summer off. Betting baseball is grueling, with games all day every day. But I have a family and a very expensive skin-care regimen. Taking the summer off is not an option.
I plan to continue to use the Odds Screen for MLB to find edges both pre-game and live using the in-game betting tool. I’ve done really well in the past betting baseball live so I have a feeling that will be where my focus is.
I have no doubt that the Odds Screen is an easy way to find consistent single digit edges; and I also have no doubt I didn’t do the work. I approached it too loosely this year.
I’m going to put a lot more effort in understanding when to bet, and may consider that my 2 percent threshold might be too low, not leaving enough room for error. Honestly, I don’t know but I need to think about it.
I’m also going to dive into the upcoming Unabated MLB props tool. If it’s even half as powerful as the Teaser Tool, it could be a good summer.
Again, if you want more details on how Unabated users are winning with the more advanced tools offered, I highly recommend you join the Discord.
Whatever I do, I’ll be sharing my happenings more frequently on the Unabated YouTube channel. If not sports betting, I can fill the time doing skin-care product reviews.
