How To Find +EV Bets – And Know Which Ones Are Worth Playing

Understanding the concepts of positive EV betting, of which you can read in our positive EV guide here, but getting comfortable placing +EV bets is a different tool required to become a successful bettor. In this guide, I’ll show how to identify what a +EV bet is, what makes a bet stronger than others and which ones are worth betting on.

How To Recognize A Positive EV Bet

There are many different philosophies when analyzing a positive EV bet. Additionally, there are plenty of different settings you can apply such as different de-vigging methods, which books do you determine sharp or weak and liquidity in peer-to-peer exchange markets.

All that said, there are some standard rules that a bettor can stick to when identifying positive EV plays. For example, if several sportsbooks are pricing the same selection around -150 and one sportsbook is still offering +100, that is a strong indication of potential +EV. After removing the vig from the broader market, if the estimated fair probability remains comfortably above the 50% break-even probability required at +100, the outlier price has positive expected value.

The reason that you can feel comfortable calling this a positive EV bet is because the implied win probability on the +100 would be 50%, while the market, or other sportsbooks that have the line at -150, are telling you this particular bet is likely to happen at a greater than 50% rate. In the long run, if you play this 1,000 times, you should expect a higher return on your investment. One Prop Professor user showed this off on their X.

Understanding Liquidity For Positive EV Bets

Using our Smart Money Tool is another way to identify +EV opportunities while also having the ability to tail sharp money which you can see with the liquidity on peer-to-peer betting exchanges like Kalshi, NoVig and Polymarket.

Using the image above for an NBA bet you can see both a positive EV opportunity and where there is an abundance of liquidity. Here, there are three different books or exchanges (NoVig, 4cx, Kalshi and ProphetX) each accepting large bets on Kevin Durant OVER 3.5 assists with -131 to -122 odds.

This type of liquidity can be a useful indicator of meaningful market interest, particularly when several independent exchanges are showing similar prices and significant depth. They could just go to DraftKings or FanDuel, for example, to place that bet, but likely they’ve been limited and are generating the line at these prediction markets to try and get two-way action.

At +125, for example where we see $524 of liquidity at NoVig, this means the person that made the line would have bet about $655 on Kevin Durant OVER 3.5 assists at -125.

We can also see in the image above that Sportzino has the line at -120 which is a far better line than all the other books and in fact with the UNDER also -120 the fair value they are offering would be +100, a 50% win probability compared to all the other offerings that have fair value odds of about -120. Over enough of a sample size you can expect a larger return on your investment when you’re this positive EV to the market and it helps when sharp bettors are also liking this line.

Line Differences Can Be +EV

Another factor to consider when evaluating a bet is looking at the line itself. Our Fantasy Comparison and Optimizer tools are great resources for identifying mismatched lines.

In this image, you can see that the selection, in this case from Underdog, has Coby White’s Points + Rebounds + Assists line set at 22.5 while DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars and Prophet X have the line at 21.5. Kalshi and Polymarket have the line juiced even higher at 24.5 but are heavily favored on the UNDER.

That extra point can make all the difference in a winning or losing bet. How often have you had a wager that lands half a point over or under the number that you needed and you end up losing. When you can find outliers from the market by a point, especially if the other sportsbooks are determining the outlier line to be favored, you know you have a good opportunity on your hands. It is especially more powerful when you’re talking lower numbers like 7.5 and the rest of the market has it at 6. For example.

What Positive EV Bets Should You Avoid

I talked about outlier lines above and how that can be a good betting opportunity but not always. Take a players passing-yardage number for example, some books might have it at 259.5 and this book has it at 260.5. At such a large number, the chance that this prop lands exactly at 260 is quite minimal so that variance isn’t as important as a discrepancy for 7.5 receptions while the rest of the market has it at 6.5 for the UNDER.

I also touched on, briefly, the fair value odds. Just because a line might be better than the rest of the market, it may not be a +EV bet. With our positive EV tool, we have a built-in, de-vigged fair value odds line to help you identify if a bet is positive EV or not.

However, you may be limited on the offerings in the market showing you a bet that could be +EV but with a lack of supporting evidence, they may not actually have tremendous value and should be avoided. In the example below, there are only three examples to choose from, one of which is a fairly soft book in OnyxOdds so I would avoid this bet even though it looks +3.1% EV but not enough data.

Lastly, in our Smart Money Tool you might get an example like the one below in which there’s a lot of liquidity on Pereira to win at +360 on Kalshi and BetMGM is offering him at +400. However, FanDuel and Caesars are offering him at a better line than Kalshi and the large liquidity on Pereira at other exchanges such as Polymarket, NoVig and Prophet X are each looking for longer odds than +400 for their value. I would avoid this bet.