Positive EV Tool Tips, Tricks & Hacks: How to Make the Most of OddsJam’s Most Popular Tool

Hey everybody! I’m Ray and thanks to OddsJam, I’ve been able to profit in 11 out of my last 13 months sports betting, and have made over $30,000 using the betting tools.

I also have had a ton of success using the Fantasy Optimizer, which I wrote about recently as well. Read that here.

Today, I’m going to explain the ways I approach using the OddsJam Positive Expected Value tool.

While OddsJam has a wide variety of tools like the fantasy optimizer, arbitrage, middles, low-hold, and free bet conversion, the positive EV tool is the bread and butter of OddsJam.

In this guide, I’ll go over some tips and tricks I’ve learned from experience to help you make the most of the tool.

The recommended filters (tab shown below) are a great place to start for beginners, but I keep mine off because I’m confident in my process which I’ll go over here. If you aren’t as confident in your own identification yet, we highly recommend keeping them on. The only downside is you won’t see as many bets to choose from because you only see the foolproof ones.

Tip #1: Click on the Bet to View Odds Across the Market

This is the most important tip in this guide and will apply to every other tip listed below. I never place a bet without expanding the full odds in the market for books I care about.

I’ve blocked out a lot of books in my settings (more on that later), so that’s why I may show less books than you see on your page.

Let’s take a look at this first example of Raiders Week 1 moneyline:

Even though it’s clearly on the EV tool, this is NOT a bet I’m rushing to place. BetFred has the best odds at +180, but FanDuel is very close at +176.

When I’m looking for bets to lock in, I’m looking for true market outliers where one sportsbook is clearly isolated from the rest of them.

Conveniently, I found another example from Week 1 where this is the case.

I know betting on the Texans is gross, but you can’t argue with the value on Texans +10 here at -110 odds.

It’s clearly isolated from the rest of the market which is all at -120 or above. NFL markets are tight, so this is significant value on a point spread.

This is also a good example of our second tip, which is…

Tip #2: Pay Attention to the P (Pinny)

This tip primarily applies to main markets (moneylines, spreads, and totals) as opposed to player props.

Pinny is regarded as the sharpest book in the world, since they have low vig and are willing to take significant amounts of high-stakes action. Unfortunately for those of us in the US, they don’t operate here but they’re still incredibly useful as a data point to inform your betting decisions.

Let’s use the same example again here:

The Pinny line on the opposite end is +110, which creates a 0% hold between FanDuel and Pinny. In other words, I could put $110 on FanDuel at -110 odds and $100 on Pinny (if it was available here) at +110 odds. Either way regardless of the outcome, I would get $210 back.

If I can break even betting both sides, that means the sportsbooks have lost their edge over me. I trust Pinny to be extremely accurate, and their odds are closer to DraftKings as well, so I can be incredibly confident that my edge is found by placing that bet on FanDuel.

Tip #3: Settings (Kelly Criterion, Excluded Books & Notifications)

Before we get into the specific +EV tool filters, I wanted to go over the OddsJam account settings.

Bankroll & Kelly Criterion

There are two ways people bet using OddsJam, either with flat units (every bet is risking or to win the same amount regardless of how much expected value there is) or with the recommended Kelly Criterion method.

The Kelly Criterion will look at how profitable the bet is expected to be, and using your input bankroll, spit out a number of how much you should put on that bet.

Visit your bankroll settings to adjust these numbers. I’ve plugged in what I would do with a $5,000 bankroll. Most people recommend a Kelly Multiplier between 0.25 and 0.5 at the absolute maximum.

Remember, +EV betting has a lot of variance. You never want to have your bankroll completely wiped out by a cold streak (those are bound to happen).

I tend to lean a little aggressively and put mine at 0.4, but it’s ultimately personal preferance. Those that don’t like as much risk may put it at 0.25 or even below, and those willing to risk higher ups and downs may go up to 0.5.

Excluded Books

Under the manage filters tab, you can also exclude books. Before you see this intimidating screenshot, remember this is also very dependent on personal preference.

I also have been an OddsJam user since before advanced filtering was part of the tools, so I fell into this habit of excluding all irrelevant books and haven’t gone back.

I bet in Arizona, so I excluded all books not legal in Arizona, and even some that I’ve been extremely limited on.

I’m a person that doesn’t want my OddsJam tools cluttered. I realize that comes at a cost of less market data when going through the odds on tip #1 above, but I keep enough so that I can get a sense of the market without being overwhelmed by books I’ll never pay attention to.

You should NOT exclude books based on my screenshot because your available books will be different, and you may even enjoy the abundance of books on your screen, but I just wanted to show you what mine look like.

Notifications

One of the best new features of OddsJam in the past few months has been the introduction of push notifications through the OddsJam mobile app for users of the platinum plan.

You can program your account for the app to send notifications to your phone in real time when positive EV bets become available that meet a certain personal standard.

You can set these up by creating filters on the tools and assigning filters to include notifications.

Here’s what I have:

Now, whenever a positive EV bet with over 2% profit margin on those books shows up on the tool, I get a push notification from the OddsJam app to my phone.

Tip #4: Filters

As I mentioned in the very beginning of this guide, the simplest way for beginners to use the positive EV tool is to turn recommended filters on.

However, many experienced users like myself prefer to have more control over which bets they see.

Normally, I start my check of the EV page with 27 books filtered as on and maximum odds set at +190.

As you can see above, there are plenty of other options to customize your experience. Sometimes I really want a baseball bet to sweat out, so I filter by sport:

Other times, I only want to bet on games within the next 24 hours:

And occasionally, I don’t feel like messing with alternate markets or player props at all so I only want to see main markets:

Market width is another good one, because it shows how much juice (vig) the sportsbooks are charging. The tighter the market, the more confident the books are in their lines and the more confident you can be in your edge.

I hope you learned something new in this guide! If you want any assistance setting up you own personal EV tool experience or have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at [email protected].