Our goal at VSiN isn’t just to tell you what to bet, but to help you learn how to bet based on the different perspectives and different strategies of our hosts, writers and guests.
Betting splits are one tool that you can use to consider potential line movement and also to see where the “sharp,” respected money is on a game. Whether or not you use the betting splits in your handicapping is up to you, but I wanted to take some time to explain them while we’ve been getting some question and as users are digging into more of the resources and tools we have here at the site.
(click for updated betting splits)
As you can see, our splits are from our friends at DraftKings Sportsbook, so these apply to their sportsbook only. Other sources you look at will have different percentages and that is because they pull from different sources or multiple sources. The data is updated every 10 minutes.
Reading left to right:
Teams – Pretty obvious, but as you can see, we either have city abbreviations or the colleges and universities listed so there’s no confusion as to which “Tigers” are which, since so many teams use that mascot.
Spread – Self-explanatory, but the most important number of any.
% Handle – “Handle” is an industry term for the total amount of dollars wagered on that bet. The % Handle next to the spread is the percentage of money bet on the spread for each team, so 57% of spread bets have been on the Bengals and 43% on the Rams.
% Bets – This is a percentage of the overall ticket count on the spread. So, 65% of betting tickets on the spread are on the Bengals and 35% are on the Rams.
The same is true moving further along with the Total and then the Moneyline.
How do we interpret this data? Let’s use the total as an example. The total moved down from 49.5 or 50 to 48.5. As you can see, the % Handle is higher on the over and so is the % Bets. That means that more bets and more money are on the over, but the line moved down early and has not moved back up.
This would be an indicator that there is sharp money on the under. While there are fewer bets and fewer dollars on the under, there are more respected bets.
If the % Handle and % Bets were to stay looking like they are, but the spread moved back up to -4.5 or went even higher to -5, that would be an indicator of sharp money on the Rams.
Those familiar with Josh Appelbaum’s work will know that he looks at the betting splits and the market moves a lot, so he would be a good person to read and listen to if you want to see more application of how this all works.