Glossary

What is Moneyline?

A straight bet on which team wins, with no point spread — priced via American odds where favorites are negative and underdogs are positive.

Also known as: ML

The moneyline is the simplest bet in sports: you pick the winner. Because favorites win more often than underdogs, the price reflects the imbalance. A −200 favorite means risking $200 to win $100; a +180 underdog means risking $100 to win $180. Moneylines are the cleanest market to test a model against because there is no point spread layered on top.

Example

Yankees −150 / Red Sox +130 — bet $150 on the Yankees to win $100 if they take the game.

Related terms

Point Spread

A handicap a sportsbook adds to the underdog (or subtracts from the favorite) to make a moneyline mismatch into a roughly 50/50 market.

Implied Probability

The probability of a result that a sportsbook's odds are pricing in — calculated as one divided by the decimal odds.

See moneyline applied to a real slate

NotaSportsGuru runs the math behind every published leg — Parlay of the Day, player props, match lines — with the model’s expected value and edge on every line.

See the parlay archive →