What’s a spread?

A spread will look something like this 49ers -7 or something like this 49ers -7 at Rams or something like this Rams + 7 or something like this 49ers at Rams +7. Those all mean the same thing. You take the 49ers score at the end of the game, subtract 7, and if it’s more than the Rams score, 49ers -7 win. If it’s lower, Rams +7 win. This is Vegas’ way to actually make sports betting challenging. It’s a lot tougher to pick the 49ers to win by a touchdown than to simply pick the 49ers to win outright.

What’s a unit?

A unit is simply an amount. This amount can really be anything, but here we use $100 just to make it easier. If we bet 2 units and win, we win $200. If we bet 2 units and lose, we lost $220 dollars.

Why $220?

Most sports books take 10%. This is how they make money. They wouldn’t make any money if they didn’t. With any reasonable luck, the population could just flip a coin and win 50% of the time and Vegas’ winnings and loses would cancel out. This way, they essentially, with any luck, make 10% of the total amount bet over time and get to drive fancy rich people cars.

What does it mean to see something like +13%?

This is normally next to my earnings. An earnings amount of $1000 doesn’t mean much if you had to have bet 1000 units ($110,000 with the 10%) to make it. In that case, the $1000 is about 9% of 110,000, your total bet, so you have earnings of 9%. This way it translates. People who want to bet $1000 know that if they had followed our picks blindly, they would have won about $90 with earnings of +9%. It basically just puts our earnings into context.

Isn’t sports betting illegal?

Yes. I do not sports bet. I do this for fun, to see how much money I would make if I did sports bet and to put my picks to the test. I don’t even have the money to sports bet. This website in no way promotes or encourages illegal sports betting.