How to bet player props
The whole approach in one page: what a prop actually is, why the hold matters more than the pick, how to read a hit rate, and the order to do things in.
1. A prop is a probability, not an opinion
When a book posts Receptions 4.5 at -115, it is making a claim: this man clears four and a half catches about 53% of the time. Your job is not to decide whether you like him. It is to decide whether that number is right, and whether anyone is paying you enough for the times it is wrong.
Everything on this site is built around that one idea. The tape answers how often it has actually happened. The number answers where the line should sit. The gap answers whether the price pays.
2. Strip the hold out before you do anything else
Both sides of a prop are priced so the implied probabilities add up to more than 100%. On a mainstream NFL receiving number that surplus might be 4%. On a baseball hits prop or an NBA blocks prop it can be 10% or more. That surplus is what you pay to play, and it dwarfs almost every edge people think they have.
Remove it proportionally and you get the fair price — what the market really thinks, with the fee taken out. Every row on every board here shows that number. If you learn one thing from this page, learn to look at it first. The ladder shows the hold on every market so you can see which ones are worth your attention at all.
3. Read hit rates at the posted number
A season average is close to useless for props. A back averaging 52 rushing yards might clear 49.5 in 61% of games or in 41% of them, depending entirely on whether his production is steady or spiky. Only counting at the actual line tells you which.
Sample size decides how much to trust it
Nine games is not evidence. Forty is. Every rate on this site carries its sample so you can weigh it yourself, and the thinner the sample, the better the price needs to be before the bet makes sense.
Splits, used carefully
Where the defence is clearly soft against a position, or clearly tough, that split replaces the season rate. Where it is somewhere in the middle, nothing is applied. Forcing every matchup into a bucket produces confident-looking nonsense.
4. Then, and only then, shop the price
Taking the best available number instead of the first one you see is the most reliable edge in betting and it requires no skill at all. Over a season, the difference between -105 and -115 on the same bets is larger than most people's handicapping edge. The ladder exists for exactly this.
5. Understand what parlays cost
The hold compounds. Four legs at 5% each is not 5%, it is closer to 19%. Parlays are not automatically bad — they are simply far more expensive than they look, and the expense is invisible unless someone shows it to you. The builder prices the offered payout against the de-vigged fair payout and puts the difference on screen as one number.
6. The order to work in
- Open the league board: NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL.
- Sort by the gap and look only at numbers where the best price beats fair.
- Check the rate and the sample on the tape.
- Check where the projection sits with the number.
- Shop it on the ladder, and glance at free money in case both sides are wrong.
- If you are building a slip, price it on the builder before you take it.
7. What this site will not do
It will not print a projection for a league it has not measured, it will not fill an empty arbitrage board with something that is not an arbitrage, and it will not tell you a pick is strong because the page would look bare otherwise. When there is nothing worth betting, the honest answer is that there is nothing worth betting. The free pick says exactly that on the days it applies.
The numbers, prices and game logs come from FantasyDailies. More on the method and where the data comes from.