How SmartStake works
SmartStake reads odds from 70+ sportsbooks, exchanges, and DFS sites in real time, strips the vig to recover a fair price, and surfaces bets where a book is offering more than that fair price implies.
The data engine in plain English
Every few seconds SmartStake polls odds from 70+ sportsbooks, exchanges, and DFS sites. That breadth is the whole point. No single source has the sharpest line on every market — the best price on any given bet might live at a book you would never have thought to check. Reading them all at once and comparing every number is what makes the rest of the toolkit possible.
Removing the vig
Every book buries a margin — the vig, hold, or juice — in its odds. A coin-flip market priced fairly at -100 / -100 (even money each side) might instead be listed at -110 / -110: both sides of the market cost more than they pay out, and the gap between implied probability and true probability is the book's profit.
SmartStake strips that margin away using one of five devig methods — power (default), multiplicative, additive, probit, or worst — to recover the no-vig fair odds. The fair odds are a best estimate of what the market would price the bet at with no house cut. The full explanation of each method is in Devigging and fair value.
Blending the sharpest books
Devigging one book in isolation gives one estimate. A single sharp book can still misprice a line, especially early in a market or on a prop with thin volume. SmartStake blends the devigged prices from the sharpest available books — a set of nine benchmarks including Pinnacle, FanDuel, Bookmaker, DraftKings, Circa, and others — into a single fair probability. When several sharp books agree, that consensus price is more reliable than any one of them alone.
Why sharp books anchor the math
Sharp books accept larger bets, attract professional bettors, and adjust lines quickly when they are wrong. Their consensus is a better proxy for true probability than recreational-book odds, which move more on public betting patterns than on information.
Line shopping as the core mechanism
Once SmartStake has a fair price for a market, it checks every book in its feed and asks a simple question: does this book's offered price beat fair value? When the answer is yes, the difference is positive expected value — a modelled long-run edge. That is the bet that surfaces in the Positive EV tool.
This is line shopping at scale. You could do the same thing by opening a dozen tabs and comparing numbers by hand, but you would never check 70+ books simultaneously or strip the vig from each one before comparing. SmartStake does both in the background continuously, so you see the bets where the expected value is already positive.
The same math powers every tool
The fair-value calculation is not specific to Positive EV. Every SmartStake tool is built on top of the same live feed and the same devig engine:
- Arbitrage Finder uses it to find markets where two books together price all outcomes at less than 100% total implied probability — a profit on either outcome when the prices are available at the same time; odds can move before all legs are placed.
- Fantasy re-runs the same devig source to price DFS slips against payout-tier tables.
- Smart Money tracks how the sharp-book prices are moving, not just where they land.
Changing your devig method or your book selection in settings propagates through every tool at once because the computation lives in one place.
What SmartStake does not do
SmartStake calculates and surfaces opportunities. It does not place bets on your behalf and is not affiliated with any sportsbook. Once you find a bet worth taking, you open the book, place the bet yourself, and record the wager in the Bet Tracker so your results are graded to settlement.
For a hands-on walkthrough of the tools, see Finding positive EV bets or the sportsbooks, exchanges, and leagues reference for the full coverage list.
- Odds, prices, expected value, conversion rates, and profit figures shown are estimates based on the last data we retrieved. They can change at any time — confirm the current price at the book before you bet, as odds may move and entry errors can occur.
- Arbitrage and matched betting carry execution risk: a price can move or a leg can be rejected before you place both sides, and sportsbooks may limit or void bets. A favorable outcome is not guaranteed.
- Using a “sharp” book as a fair-value reference is a modeling choice, not a statement of accuracy. Review a book’s record yourself and anchor on the books you trust.