Ultimate Guide to Line Movement in Sports Betting

Many betting strategies are based on a careful selection of sporting events and their rigorous analysis. A number of bettors with experience for a successful game in BS chose a different strategy, which is based on the movement of lines of bookmakers. What it is, with what tools this movement can be tracked, and how to apply the information received in a real game, we will analyze in detail in the article.

Why do odds change?

There are two reasons for changing odds.

Players’ bets. When bettors begin to bet large amounts on one of the events: the victory of the team, total, handicap, etc., the odds on it begin to decrease. This decrease is a kind of safety net for bookmakers.

In the 38th round of the championship of Spain of the season 2018-2019, players greatly loaded the victory of Real Madrid. Bookmakers were forced to lower the numbers by Home and increase them by Away.

The main goal of the shop is to earn money for any result of the meeting, for which a margin is laid.

Consider an imaginary situation: almost all bettors bet on the victory of Real Madrid, units play on the side of Betis. If the royal club wins, the bookmaker receives big losses, because they will have to pay all these user wins. To avoid this, the shop analyst begins to greatly reduce the odds by Home, thereby increasing by Away. At some point with too low odds at the hosts’ win betting on this option is no longer interesting and many begin to play in the counter — betting on Betis’s victory on which the quotes have greatly increased. If bettors start powerfully loading Betis win, then the changes in the line will go in the opposite direction. All this allows shops in any situation to be in the black.

The changes are made by the bookmakers themselves. Everyone knows how important Messi is to Barcelona. As soon as official information has arrived that the Argentine will not be able to play for his team, the bookmakers immediately increase the odds for Barca win. But if before the match itself information appears that Messi will enter the field, the bookmakers will immediately lower the quotes for the victory of the Catalans. The insider information plays a big role in such changes.

How to analyze line movement

To study the situation around the selected match, bettors use the services of monitoring the movement of odds in shops, paying attention to several important points.

1. The last pre-load before the match. A match is selected where active movement is observed — the bet is placed on the last change before the very start of the meeting.
2. Strong outsider loading in a weakly popular championship. Not all users have time to conduct an in-depth analysis of matches of weakly popular championships. In this case, they trust the choice of other bettors, paying attention to a significant reduction in quotes for an explicit outsider. Most often, favorites are loaded without justification, this is rare in the case of an outsider, where there must be good reasons for users to start betting on their victory or a positive handicap.
3. Draw load. When users are counting on a draw, assuming the stubborn nature of the struggle: betting on “X” is not necessary, you should pay attention to “total under”.

When the odds in matches of weakly popular championships drop dramatically, low performance is often observed. It’s risky to bet on a draw; one goal can lead to a loss of the bet.

What events are better not to bet on?

There are two situations when it is strongly recommended not to bet.

1. Strong loading on an obvious option. When BS analysts understand that many users will bet large sums on the obvious outcome, they will greatly lower the odds in advance. This does not bother young bettors, and they still bet large amounts, which become a cause of heavy loading. It makes no sense to bet on such a greatly underestimated and subsequently overloaded outcome; at a distance this will lead to a rapid loss of the entire bank.
2. Strong fluctuation of the odds in different directions. When quotes fall, rise and do not “depart” much from their initial value, this says that such a duel is difficult to predict, it is difficult to predict its outcome.

How do loads appear?

Every year betting is gaining more and more popularity and this in its own way affects the odds at which you place your bets day after day. We will analyze the reasons why the odds can vary greatly from their original value.

Let’s look at an example in which you were interested in the Premier League match between the teams of Manchester United and Aston Villa. A few days before the game, the bookmaker accepted Manchester United bets on odds of 1.75, but by the beginning of the match the odds fell to 1.62 before your eyes, this phenomenon is called line movement and it occurs for several reasons.

To begin with, we will divide all the players making bets on the Internet into two groups. The first group includes the so-called amateurs, for whom sports betting is entertainment. Such players, as a rule, have a superficial approach to forecasting an event and often prefer to bet on favorites. The second group includes players who differ from fans in a professional approach to sports betting, as well as cappers who sell sports predictions and people who buy these predictions.

Both groups can significantly affect the change in the odds in a particular event, forming with their bets the so-called “loads”. Let’s go back to the match between Manchester United-Aston Villa and suppose that the bookmaker initially set the following odds: victory for Manchester United — 1.75, draw — 4.45 and victory for Aston Villa — 3.85. It’s already been said that bookmakers set their odds in such a way that they make a profit at any outcome of the event.

But let’s suppose that in this situation, the players began to bet on Manchester United victory much more than the bookmaker expected. This is called “loading”.

Thus, if Manchester United wins, the bookmaker will incur large losses, and in order to avoid this, they proceed as follows. Having determined the “load” for Manchester United victory, the bookmaker reduces the odds for this outcome and accordingly increases the odds for the opposite, thereby encouraging players to bet on a tie or win of Aston Villa.

In such a situation, if it is not possible for the bookmaker to bring the players’ bets into profit, then at least it is possible to reduce losses. By these actions, the bookmaker tries to distribute the bets made by the players as evenly as possible between all possible outcomes of the event, which, in turn, eliminates possible losses if the team, for which “loading” appeared, wins.

Types of loads

Loads are usually divided into unorganized and organized.

Unorganized — occur on their own, as evidenced by their name. Often, such an event, without suspecting it, is facilitated by the first group of players — amateurs for whom the outcome odds of the event, for example the victory of Manchester United (an obvious favorite of the match) for 1.75, seemed rather high.

Professional bets can also be the reason for such loads, in the case when the bookmaker underestimated the strength of Manchester United and set the odds too high for such a match to win. These odds are called “value”. A characteristic feature of unorganized “loading” is a slow drop in the odds by a certain outcome from the moment this event appears in the line until the start of the match.

More unpleasant for bookmakers are organized loads, under certain circumstances, which can bring big losses. Suppose a well-known capper, having analyzed the upcoming match of Manchester United-Aston Villa, came to the conclusion that they would end in a victory for the hosts and sent out a list to their many subscribers. Having received this forecast, subscribers are in a hurry to bet large amounts on Manchester United victory and form an organized load of this outcome. Such a movement among players is called smart money.

In addition to mailing of cappers, the reasons for this may be the opinions of reputable analysts or information about match-fixing. In the case of organized loading, the odds for this outcome rapidly decreases and changes more significantly than with unorganized loading. This is due to the fact that bookmakers, having determined this, promptly lower the odds to a safe level.

There are special services for monitoring betting lines, with which you can find out which direction and with what intensity the line you need moved, for example, oddsportal.com or hot-odds.com. According to the information of such services, one can draw certain conclusions for deciding on a bet, but in order not to lose a certain part of the profit, it is recommended to set in advance, at a time when the odds are close to their initial values.

Do not forget also that odds may change due to information about the injury of a key player, changes in weather conditions, an interview with a coach who decided to watch this game for substitutes and many other facts. Do not lose sight of this in your forecast.

Odds Movement Services

Modern technologies make it possible to regularly monitor changes in betting lines, both in pre-match mode and in live mode. Many online resources created for betting offer odds movement services as the main service. Here are the most popular ones.

1. Livescore.com is an international service offering information on football, hockey, basketball, tennis and cricket. The resource previously suggested monitoring odds, but rejected this option later. A distinctive feature of Livescore is the presence of a tracker for tracking what is happening on the football field.
2. Btfodds.com is one of the most advanced services for tracking any kind of information on odds. Most sections of the website are accessible only to subscribers or are paid. The portal provides a huge amount of diverse information and enjoys great prestige among players. Significant disadvantage: in most sports (except football), only major competitions are covered.
3. Hot-odds.com is another well-known sports betting resource in the world. Right from the start page, the player immediately sees the most interesting changes in the betting lines, and the colors and design are selected so as to attract attention. A feature of the website is the coverage of a large number of sports, including such as golf and dog racing.

Quotation changes on websites are usually shown with up and down arrows. Many resources show a specific value by how much the odds has been changed, that is, compared with the original numbers. Some websites even offer information on the amounts of bets made on a particular outcome in a match.

The Internet space is rich in a variety of programs that allow you to monitor the movement of the lines of bookmakers on an ongoing basis. The program called the “parser” is designed to search for the necessary information on all available Internet resources. Such a “parser” is convenient in that players themselves set the limits of the changes that interest them and receive notifications if the odds have a serious adjustment. This significantly saves time and effort. True, in most cases, “parsers” on betting lines are paid.

The Internet has become the main assistant for the player in betting. If before there was a problem to find the necessary information, now, in connection with new volumes of data, it is important to get rid of excess.

Conclusion

The ability to determine where “smart money” was put on the line is not enough to be a successful player. As a result of loading, the line collapses rather quickly, and while you calculate the movement of the line, its valuability will most likely be lost. If you consider yourself a professional player, then do not be afraid of mailings that have a direct impact on the movement of lines.

If you become a syndicate player, then you will automatically get an advantage over those who track the movement of lines in the BS. While the trackers will wait for the “loading line”, you will already participate in this process. However, it is important that a capper accompanies each bet with analysis, as you must clearly understand the reasons for the movement of the line and to what level the line remains valuable.