Betting on Live Lines can be a challenge, this is a guide to getting started with live betting:

First I recommend you read the getting started by book guide to get a feel for how each book reacts to different kinds of bets and how they engage in limiting you.

Live betting is the most lucrative betting landscape that we know of, we know of a few who have made in the million $/year range on live arbitrage betting. There are many things to be aware of when you are getting started.

Which Lines to Bet?

We usually stick to main lines on major market sports, which include the moneyline, spread and total, for MLB, NHL, NFL, CFB, NBA, and NCAAB. We also will often bet on first half lines and we are also okay with alternative spread and total lines. The main lines on major sports are the prime bets because they get the most volume, and so your bets will sneak in (usually) without much hesitation from the books because of betting something very few other people bet.

How to Set Up?

One of the most important parts of arbitrage betting is the speed at which you place bets. Usually, you will have on the order of 15-20 seconds to place an arb bet before the odds change betting live, usually because the dynamics of the game change (a player got a strike thrown against them, team scored a basket, etc). Because of this, the ideal times to place bets are during natural stoppages. Being able to identify immediately when a team calls a timeout, a pitcher change happens, an inning is over, etc is critical, and that is the time that is usually safest to place bets. The best way to idnetify these points that we know of is comparing all books and seeing what they say is happening in the game. Usually someone will be first to report that an out happened or a timeout was called. That is our favorite time (although we usually take them whenever we can find them).

In order to be able to place these bets with speed, you want to be on the live section of the book you are working with and be able to see each of the live lines.

Example:

You also will want (most likely) The American odds format turned on.

You are going to want a large amount of screen monitor real estate, so you can have open all of the sportsbooks at the same time (They usually require at least a half screen to be functional) and another screen for the odds pulse live odds/arbs feed. I operate with five monitors and I usually do not feel like I have enough. If you have a book open in a separate tab it will make the betting experience much slower in most cases.

If you are just getting started, I recommend you place $10 wagers on the + line for lines that are less than +400, and hedge the appropriate amount. This will get you accustomed to the books you are using and how much time it takes to get the arb bet locked in. It is very normal to fail to execute on arbs when you are getting started, usually people get the hang of tools and books within 5-10 bets executed successfully. Once you are comfortable and successful, you can progress at your discretion but a next step of $100 bets on the + side is my recommendation. It is usually more risky that a bet will not get approved at $ amounts greater than $1500, in our experience, although Caesars and Circa appear to be very comfortable with $5000 live bets.

Identifying the wrong book

We usually take live arbs that are 1% or higher because usually a single odds change will not be impactful enough for us to lose money. Although be weary of bases loaded/2 outs situations or other highly likely for large odds change behavior moments.

Usually you will want to place the bet for the side you believe to be incorrect first. The way of figuring this out is a combination of the following factors

Common Sense: This is least likely but most valuable. There are sometimes situations where one book will have the wrong score in their calculator or wrong number of baserunners factored into their oddsmaking and can make them 10%+ arbs with all other books, in these cases, take the obviously incorrect book first (Usually will be BetFred/MGM/Pointsbet in our observation) Occasionally there are times where there are systemic problems with a site, such as a time where Caesars accidentally doubled the scores of all of their games and severely affected their odds. Usually we will notify of these situations in the discord and they will be easier to determine. Another common sense situation is if the inning just changed and one book is last to update their odds, the team that got out of the jam will have much better odds on the site that did not get that updated information yet.

Comparing to other books: This is much more difficult, but roughly, our ranking of who we trust to get the odds correct most frequently live is

Circa – most trust

Caesars – most trust

Fanduel – high trust except on player props

DraftKings – high trust but seem to be off on consistent things, spreads/totals for mlb

BetRivers – neutral

Barstool – neutral

BetFred/Superbook – Low trust, sometimes fred will make mistakes superbook hides

Pointsbet – Low trust

Bet365 – low trust

Bet MGM – low trust

For example if there is a Caesars vs MGM arb, 9/10 times I will take the MGM side first. Unlisted books are mostly trust unknown. Feel free to fill us in if you are more experienced in other books.

Obviously it is ideal to be able to compare the lines you are considering betting to all other books but there is very often not much time to do that or there could be situations where there is an arb but most other books are locked. In most situations I follow the above trust tier list.

Other Strategy

We recommend hedging a failed arb as quick as possible, to avoid thinking about that failed execution. Our recommendation is to hedge the loser before it becomes a much larger loser, identify what went wrong, learn from it, and move on.

We also recommend not betting near the very end of a game, because many books will stop accepting bets in the last 2-3 minutes of a game.