Professional bettors win by doing a handful of important things differently. Learn five habits that improve price, timing, information, and decision quality.
Back to VideosThere's the science of sports betting and there's the art of sports betting. And then there are the dark arts of sports betting. What are they? How do they work? And more importantly, what can you do about it? Call me Professor Jack because I'm about to teach you how to defend against the dark arts. Hi, I'm Jack from Unabated, where we provide software tools and education to help you find and place sharper bets. I've been a professional gambler for over 20 years. I learned very early on about the art and science of betting. The science is finding an edge. The art is being able to get the money down.
But sometimes all the art and science in the world can't help you if you're dealing with other bettors dabbling in the dark arts. By now you know the names. Jonte Porter, Terry Rosier, Damon Jones, and Chanty Bilips. They have all been linked to an investigation into a gambling ring that made its money allegedly using inside information from coaches and players to get ahead of injury news for big money. One night alone, where the conspirators knew Rosier was going to take himself out of the game, bettors were able to profit $200,000.
But it's not like the dark arts are just situations where the mafia is involved. Sometimes all it takes is a sharp bettor using legal but ethically ambiguous methods to create a bigger edge for themselves. Let's look at five situations sharps use to manufacture an edge and which ones potentially cross the line.
In 2021, Matt Metaf, then the director of Circus Sportsbook in Las Vegas, posted a total of 248 in the WNBA All-Star game. But what Metaf overlooked was that this wasn't your normal defense optional All-Star game. The WNBA Allstars were playing against the US women's national team, and that team was getting ready for the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. That was a bad enough mistake. However, it was about to get worse. A sharp syndicate started betting the over, taking the line up to 248 1/2 right away. Just normal sharp action? Not necessarily. It's the first dark art on our list. Head fakes.
When a better deliberately bets a line hoping to secure early line movement in one direction only to come back and bet the other side later, that's a head fake. And in that all-star game, the Sharp Syndicate hit the over to drive the total up higher at circa and more importantly at other books that would follow the respected market makers movements. When it got to 252, well, that's when the real action came rolling in. Blood was in the water and sports books couldn't drop the total fast enough. It closed at 197. By the end of it, Circa was only taking $500 a pop instead of its usual $2,000.
According to ESPN's David Perum, the game sailed under the closing line total 197 93 to 85. The way it usually works is that limits are low at openers, like overnights in college basketball. Circa might only take $500 on those games. A sharp bettor could bet the over three times and move the line a little bit each time. By midm morning, the limits increase. Then the better can play it back at all the other sports books who fell for the inflated line. He could get 50,000 down with those new limits. Is it risky for a better to bet the game the wrong way? Well, not as much as you think.
They can always hedge out of their position late in the day before the game starts, even if that guarantees a small loss. Even sharp bettors and bookmakers themselves can get caught up in trying to spot the head fake. But you've already taken the first step to defending yourself by learning how they work. You also should understand that the less liquidity there is in a market, the easier it is to steam the number. FCS football, extra games in college basketball, the WNBA. These are all markets that are easier for sharp bettors to move around. Approach quickly moving overnights in these markets with caution before limits increase, especially if you don't have a strong sense of what the number should be yourself.
And the start of the betting cycle isn't the only time sharps might want to move a number. If a baseball game is scheduled for a 710 first pitch, what's the difference between the closing line at 709 and the first flash of the live line at 7-Eleven? Usually not much. Which is why a sharp bettor uses dark art number two, manipulating closing lines. These are bettors who couldn't care less about closing line value because that's not the game they're playing anymore.
Instead, they know that the in-game betting line is simply the closing line plus everything we've seen so far in the course of the game. If that closing line is wrong, then all the in-game betting lines will be wrong as well. So, if they think the Twins should be plus 120 in Kansas City, they might bet the Royals in the last half hour before the market closes to push the Twins up to plus 125 or more. Then after the first pitch, they can make their real bets at the better number. And it works because sports books love in-game bets. The books can take even more bets in any given market. In fact, they often want you to bet live.
I have plenty of sports books where I've been limited to peanuts in pregame bets, but they'll let me bet several hundred again and again on in-game bets. Now, I doubt I'd ever be able to manipulate a closing line, especially in a major sport. However, it's been done and it can be a huge edge for those who can accomplish it. Those bettererss get a better number at larger limits than they normally could, which means they have a major incentive to set up their in-game play.
So, what can you do about it? There are some markets that are at their most efficient around 30 minutes before the game starts rather than at the market close. Start by comparing the 30 minute mark versus the closing line and see if you're dealing with a market where there's regularly unnatural movement late in the day. If you can spot moves like this, you can adjust as needed, including coming along for the in-play ride. It's a cat-and- mouse game between sharps and the books when it comes to limits. And that's one way bettors can try to skirt the issue.
But what about bettors who have given up on traditional sports books?
Because they have some moves of their own. The total in a Suns Warriors game was 234 1/2. You could get it at most books at either 110 or 115. But if you were using an odd screen, you would have seen a nice edge betting that same total at minus 103 until you actually tried to fill your order and saw that there was only $97 of liquidity at that price. Most of the available liquidity was at 108. Still good, but a much thinner edge.
Now, I'll get to why they're doing it in a second, but it's typically a common pitfall on exchanges and prediction markets, and it's dark art number three, baiting counterparties. There are other shenanigans counterparties can get up to on exchanges, like deliberately offering an egregious number in hopes that someone will misclick their bet. These moves are often based around one universal principle, manipulating the order book. Exchanges and prediction markets operate like the stock market. Orders that haven't been filled go into an order book, which is often displayed in the app. A lot of bettors tend to look at the liquidity offered in the order book as some sort of guidance as to which side is the sharp side. It's fool's gold.
Sharp bettors realize that and often will come up with big money offers to fake the market into thinking the sharp money is on one side when it might be on the other. They make sure their offers aren't the next ones to be filled at the best price. However, the momentum that these offers create can nudge the market in the direction they want. So, why are sharp bettors putting up aggressive lines with almost no liquidity? They're putting up those smaller offers as a sign of weakness. Then, they continually refresh the small offer and adjust the price based on demand. That might not seem like a trick. They're just practicing basic price discovery.
But it's funny how it parallels the way a lot of people play poker. They bet big when they're bluffing and small when they've got you trapped. Next time you think you've identified which offers in an order book are sharp, you may want to think again about why they're being offered. Now, each of those first three things might come across as a little underhanded, but they don't cross over into unethical territory. These last two do. Ever try to live bet an NFL game you are watching on a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime?
It's brutal. There's so much lag time between the odds at the book and what you're seeing on your screen, you might as well be trying to bet with newspaper box scores. For our younger viewers, box scores didn't show up until the next day after the game was over. Unless it was a major national game or on a local channel, you didn't know what happened in most games until the results were printed the next day in the newspaper. A newspaper was like a Substack, but you had to pick it up off your porch, and it would turn your hands black as you read it.
Let's get back to the streaming. If you weren't on a delay, you'd be much more competitive in in-play markets. Some people take that to its logical extreme in dark art number four: courtsiding. Setting aside the massive delays in streaming, even the TV broadcast on old-fashioned cable is usually 30 seconds behind real time. The fastest sportsbooks typically take two to three seconds to update. So, the temptation to try and beat those markets creeps in. That's where courtsiding comes into play. It means betting with information you get by being well, courtside. It's more powerful in high leverage spots where one action influences the line heavily. In tennis, where courtsiding first flourished, these would be break points.
The winner of the game heavily swings set or match lines. In general, the more scoring in a game, the less influential a single score might be. One basket isn't usually the difference in the NBA. Less scoring creates more influence. Courtsiding works because the data companies that feed sports books their real-time game state information have a team there courtsiding every game themselves. They key in data to the provider as it happens. The official source relies on people at the game pushing buttons. If you're faster to react than the data providers in sports books in that 2 to 3 second window, you can bet essentially from the future. All you got to do is bet on the winner and you'll never lose.
And sports books hate it. If they catch you courtsiding, you can kiss your accounts goodbye. Though, do keep in mind that's the extent of what they can do to you. Courtsighting isn't illegal, just unethical. But it's also becoming a hot topic as a lot of people discover sports betting through the prediction market space. In prediction markets, the markets are always on, even during gameplay. Trading in and out of positions is part of the game. And that makes courtsiding even more potent a weapon. Whatever bet the courtsider is offering to sell you for 30 cents, 50 cents, or just 10 cents is worth 0 in reality.
The easiest way to avoid being courtsided is to wait for breaks in play before you make an in-game bet. Natural pauses in the action break the advantage for the courtsider. If you're not following along on a broadcast, watch an odd screen. Notice which books offer tighter spreads on in-game lines, like minus 110 per side during breaks instead of the usual minus 115 orus 120 during play. That's your cue that the action is paused and it's safe to bet. Courtsighting is just a thin sliver of inside information. There's plenty more where that came from.
What Terry Rosier is accused of doing is egregious and well over the line. It shows you just how bad things can get when inside info is put to use. The benefits of inside information are so tangible, it should be the thing that keeps league commissioners up at night. But there doesn't seem to be any urgency to fix the processes the leagues have in place and then require more transparency in injury reporting. On October 29th, the Cavs played the Celtics and Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell was listed as questionable. Then he tweeted the Cavaliers hashtag let him know. Our NBA projections team immediately upgraded his chance of playing.
In a pregame interview, a sideline reporter asked Mitchell if he was going to suit up that night. He acted like it was never in doubt. Katie, he said yes. He said he's going to play. What our NBA team realized was that when Mitchell tweets let him know, there's a 96% chance he makes it into the lineup. There's a lot teams can do to spread disinformation on injury reports, but anyone inside the building who has access to that kind of information can obviously do a lot of damage at the betting window, whether they're tied to anything as nefarious as the mafia or not. People have risked careers for this kind of thing.
Just look at Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannan, who lost his job because he tipped off a friend with inside information about the team's pitchers. The truth is, as long as there are big dollar incentives, people are going to be tempted. But the best way to defend against it is to think critically about line moves and why they're happening. In some cases, we saw lines move on the screen in a big way. In others, it might be more hidden. The bottom line is be very cautious with your money. One thing I've advised you to be careful of is asymmetric information, but this is the ultimate asymmetry. And if the phrase asymmetric information is new to you, don't worry.
It's actually not that complicated.
