👑 The Biggest Rip Off In Sports Betting Right Now

Back with another Probly email and this week I’ve got some heat for you in the intro.

With Probly, a lot of what we sell — and what you’re paying for — is the “picks”, aka the mathematically profitable bets we see. We hear it from you guys, we get the email when you’re crushing live bets after just signing up, I get it. It can sometimes be like getting water after dying in a desert of thirst with how sports betting can be.

But the thing you should be just as enthusiastic for in our product — and in general in betting — is just knowing the best odds right now.

As I’ve mentioned many times in here and in content, the best thing you can do for yourself is have money in multiple sportsbooks. For example, Fanatics often has the softest HR odds. Caesars often has the softest odds on derivatives, AKA different over/under or spreads rather than the primary market line. Hard Rock is generally softer on everything because their pricing algorithm is iffy, though obviously they’re only available in Florida. But an ESPN Bet is not dissimilar in their pricing.

That said, I’m also aware most people don’t want to deposit money on a bunch of different books. I myself play entirely off of my bankroll that’s on DraftKings since that’s where I typically play most of my daily fantasy sports action.

So, in order to align myself the most with the “average customer experience,” I place all our daily bets we put in content for Probly on DraftKings. If I can be profitable there using our data, I assume it’ll only get better if someone does the “optimal” thing of using every sportsbook they can.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to be very profitable with our data on DraftKings — even funded my entire $1,500 entry fees for their Millionaire Maker best ball tournament with winnings on there last year off the earliest version of our model — despite regularly recognizing that DK’s odds are the most penalizing in the business.

This week, for the first time ever, I’ve started to notice DraftKings is regularly putting 50/50 bets at -115 odds on each side. With sportsbooks typically going -110/-110 on a 50/50 bet (ensuring a 10% cut for them), this represents another 5% of vig REGULARLY going away from customers.

There are corporate reasons, supposedly, related to income tax raises in states like Illinois. But those haven’t even hit yet and have no impact on me in Pennsylvania. Yet here were are, with me seeing multiple bets this week priced at -115/-115.

The point? Going from -110 to -115 is a 5% flip in not just your individual bet’s ROI but also potentially one over your entire portfolio. If that became the norm for every 50/50 bet, you’d have to win around 60% of the time to be a barely profitable bettor.

Meanwhile, you will find bets with a -115 on DraftKings that ALSO are still priced at +110 on another book. That represents a 25% FLIP IN POTENTIAL PROFITS just for not going with the most ubiquitous, greediest sportsbook around.

This obviously goes hand in hand with our sportsbook filtering on Probly, where you can find +EV bets just from sportsbooks you have money in. There you’ll still find the best bets, even accounting for DraftKings’ massive juice. But even if you use the free version of the product just to see one book has a plus-money line compared to one you might have taken at minus-money, it’s the BEST THING you can do for yourself.

Treat sports betting like you would a flight. Treat sports betting like you would selling your car. Get the best prices. It’s more crucial now than ever when the biggest books in the US are trying harder than ever to screw you.

Check out Probly! Get 50% off your first month or year now — under $10 for a first month or under $100 for A YEAR — with promo code FIRST.

Or get a seven-day free trial on the App Store version (though both you and we save less money with that one)!

With the sportsbook filtering and the success of our underlying API — which has a 12-20% ROI per sport — you will win more in sports betting if you use Probly intelligently.

Today, we’ll take another run through the day’s MLB bets, some bonus EMAIL EXCLUSIVE ones for the WNBA after we hit at a 4-1 clip with them last Friday, and our usual run through product and company updates! It’s your Probly Email for June 7th, 2024! - @ChrisSpags

• 🏀 MLB And WNBA Best Bets

• 🔓 Probly Updates: Presentations And Such

Last week was a clean 4-1 for our WNBA debut in the email so we’re back with the ladies once more. We don’t do prop markets for WNBA because, at this time, our most trusted top performing books around the world do not price props for WNBA. But the primary markets and derivatives have been softer than any other primary sport — something I speculated would be the case a few weeks back.

MLB has been fun this week with us hitting HRs at a good clip, including another +1000 HR on Wednesday. Tweets like this bring joy to see, crude though it may be:

So let’s see what we’ve got in the card for today with our MLB Top 10 bets:

As always, I try to find a few bonus email exclusive ones too. It was a nice week for our email exclusive WNBA bets, even though my undefeated streak came to an end. Let’s see what we get from the Caitlin Clark-abusing gals this week:

Of course our best bets, probabilities, and PROBLY Scores are always updated all night and day so get more for yourself at Probly.com or on the App Store. Find the best bets on YOUR preferred sportsbook and win more in sports betting now!

^Here’s our video tutorial on optimal settings. Read our previous post on optimal settings before you dive in to betting with Probly’s data.

Productwise, we’re making a few tweaks which are not live yet. In particular, after removing the vote/comment buttons, we’re going to add a Register/Upgrade button onto the Markets page. The goal is to try to coax people into signing up more. We don’t want to fully force registration on first load of Probly but this will hopefully highlight an action more.

If you’re registered but not a paying customer, you’ll then see an Upgrade button in that spot. For app conversions, your goal is to make people hit a paywall to get them to become a subscriber. So we’ll try to highlight that more since our downloads have been coming up but these transactions aren’t rising at the same rate.

We’re also working on a revision to the Sportsbook filter menu to show ALL the available sportsbooks on one menu. Right now, some people may be confused by the UX not showing every book so we want to address that.

Companywise, we were a part of a pitch presentation put on by PACT (the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies) at the very cool Comcast Technology Center here in Philadelphia . I got to present the new presentation deck we’ve been being working on as we’ve been coached by a local venture group affiliated with Temple as part of presenting at one of their events next Friday.

I knew we were out of our depth almost immediately as we presented amidst companies earning, no exaggeration, millions of dollars in revenue with very specific B2B utilities in healthcare. The company that won uses AI to help prevent burnout in healthcare providers, which is apparently a big thing that leads to employee churn in that industry.

It’s tough because, in startups, you’re really encouraged not to compare yourself to others. We started our company later, launched later, and we’re a B2C company (aka business-to-consumer) so there are a LOT less of us out there credibly seeking funding.

But when you’re in a room, presenting for the same prize of getting to present again at some major conference in October, it’s tough to not want to keep up with the joneses.

The good news? Despite getting curbstomped at our 1/1000th level of revenue compared to the million dollar companies, we made some nice connections and received positive feedback, even if it doesn’t directly result in a check. All I can do is sharpen our pitch — as well as my own delivery to provide it — and that’s the main thing to work on right now.

If nothing else, it was great to commisserate with our founders while getting an opportunity to present what Probly can mean to them and the world writ large.

Next week is a big one so we’ll see how that goes. I feel ready and like our presentation deck is as good as it’s been, particularly as it relates to conveying what I want while also giving investors what they want to see. I’m starting to understand investor mindsets better, even though I struggle with my humble/centered/gambling-informed views on things when you almost need to be more of a cult leader type to get people to buy in. They need to see the fully realized dream.

Nevertheless, we persist! If you read this email and want to help us make subscriber/revenue look better, it’s a great time to sign up. Your support matters!

If you guys encounter any issues not covered here or want to provide feedback, you can email me [email protected].

As always, thanks to all of you who read all the way down here. We’ve covered a lot today but hopefully it’s a worthwhile read and we can continue the positive run for bets we feature on Probly Email Friday!

But if you do want to be turned into a subscriber!: It’s a great time to get your free seven-day trial of Probly+ on the App Store or use promo code FIRST to get 50% off at Probly.com/subscribe (under $100 for a first year or under $10 for a first month). Stop researching, start winning! I’ll see you guys next week!