The Betting Glossary

61 terms your league will argue about this season, defined in plain English, no sportsbook marketing, no jargon explained with more jargon. Written and maintained by the same desk behind our Betting Guides and Fantasy Strategy articles.

Odds & pricing

How the numbers on the board translate to payouts and probabilities.

American odds: The odds format used by US sportsbooks, always anchored to $100. A minus number (−110) is how much you risk to win $100; a plus number (+250) is how much you win on a $100 risk. Every price is also a probability statement in disguise.
Decimal odds: The international format: total return per $1 staked, stake included. −110 in American odds is 1.91 decimal; +250 is 3.50. Anything under 2.00 is a favorite, anything over is an underdog.
Fractional odds: The UK format, written as profit over stake, 5/2 means win $5 for every $2 risked (+250 in American). Mostly seen in horse racing and futures markets.
Implied probability: The win rate a price assumes. For minus odds: odds ÷ (odds + 100), so −110 implies 52.4%. For plus odds: 100 ÷ (odds + 100), so +250 implies 28.6%. Beating the implied probability, not just picking winners, is the entire game.
Juice / vig: The sportsbook's built-in fee, visible in the gap between the two sides of a market. A −110/−110 spread sums to more than 100% implied probability, the overage is the book's cut. It's why a spread bettor needs 52.4% just to break even.
Break-even rate: The win percentage a given price requires for the bet to be profitable long-term. −110 needs 52.4%; −200 needs 66.7%; +200 needs only 33.3%. Sharp crews debate picks against this number, not against 50%.
Favorite: The side the market expects to win, marked with minus odds (or laying points on the spread). You risk more to win less.
Underdog (dog): The side expected to lose, marked with plus odds or getting points. Underdogs pay more because they win less often, the question is always whether they win more often than the price implies.
Pick'em: A game the market sees as a true coin flip: no meaningful spread, both moneylines near −110. The rare bet where the debate really is just 'who wins?'
Line shopping: Checking multiple sportsbooks for the best price on the same bet before placing it. The only edge in betting that requires zero skill, over a season, the difference between −105 and −115 decides winning years.

Bet types

The menu, from straight bets to the tickets that get screenshotted.

Spread (against the spread, ATS): A bet on the margin of victory. A −3.5 favorite must win by 4+; a +3.5 underdog covers by winning outright or losing by 3 or fewer. Spreads exist to make both sides a near coin flip, priced around −110.
Moneyline: A bet on who wins the game, full stop. The price does the handicapping, big favorites cost a lot (−350), live dogs pay well (+280). No cushion, no margin math.
Total (over/under): A bet on the combined final score of both teams. Over 44.5 needs 45+ points; under cashes at 44 or fewer. You're betting the game's personality, pace, weather, and defenses, not the winner.
Parlay: Two or more bets chained into one ticket: every leg must win, and the odds multiply. So does the house edge, books hold roughly 30% on parlays versus about 5% on straight bets, which is why the payouts look so shiny.
Leg: One individual bet inside a parlay. A three-leg parlay has three ways to die and one way to cash.
Same-game parlay (SGP): A parlay whose legs all come from one game, a QB's yards, his receiver's catches, the total. Because the legs correlate, books price SGPs with heavy extra margin. Maximum sweat, worst prices on the menu.
Teaser: A parlay variant where you move each spread in your favor (typically 6 points) in exchange for a much smaller payout. The defensible version, 'Wong teasers', crosses both key numbers 3 and 7, e.g. teasing −7.5 down to −1.5.
Prop (proposition bet): A bet on something other than the final score: a player's rushing yards, first touchdown scorer, longest completion. Player props power most same-game parlays.
Futures: A season-long bet settled months later, division winner, championship, award markets. Fun to hold, brutal on bankroll liquidity: your money is locked up all season.
Straight bet: A single wager on a single outcome, one spread, one moneyline, one total. The lowest-juice, highest-discipline bet on the board, and what most of a healthy crew's season should be made of.
Live betting (in-play): Betting a game while it's being played, at odds that reprice continuously. Fast, fun, and priced with wider margins than pregame markets, treat it as entertainment spend.

The market & line movement

Why the number you saw Tuesday isn't the number at kickoff.

Opening line: The first price a book posts for a game, usually early in the week. Openers are the market's rough draft, the closing line is the final edit, sharpened by a week of bets.
Closing line: The price at kickoff, after all money and news have been absorbed. Widely treated as the market's most accurate estimate of the game.
Closing line value (CLV): Beating the closing number, betting a side at −2.5 that closes −3.5. Consistently getting CLV is the most reliable sign a bettor (or a league's chooser) actually has an edge, win or lose that week.
Line movement: The line changing during the week, from injury news, weather, or the weight of money. Reading why a line moved (and respecting a number that's already gone) is a core handicapping skill.
Steam: A sudden, sharp line move across many books at once, usually triggered by respected money. Chasing steam after the move means paying yesterday's information at today's price.
Sharp money: Bets from professional or winning players, which books respect enough to move lines for. Opposite of public money.
Public money: The recreational betting crowd, which reliably overloads favorites, overs, and popular teams. Fading heavy public sides in the right spots is a classic (if overrated) angle.
Key numbers: The margins football games actually land on, 3 and 7 above all (roughly one in seven NFL games ends on exactly 3). The entire spread market is architected around them; half points near key numbers are the expensive ones.
Buying points: Paying extra juice to move a spread or total in your favor, −3 to −2.5, say. Usually a losing trade except around the key numbers 3 and (sometimes) 7.
Limit: The maximum a book will accept on a bet. Books manage risk by lowering limits early in the week and raising them near kickoff as prices sharpen.
Off the board: A game or market temporarily pulled, usually because of injury uncertainty (a QB's status) or breaking news. Lines return once the book knows enough to price again.

Results & grading

What happens to the money after the final whistle, including the weird endings.

Cover: Winning against the spread. A +3.5 dog that loses 20-17 covered; a −7 favorite that wins 21-17 did not. 'They won but didn't cover' is the saddest sentence in group chats.
Push: Landing exactly on the number, a −3 favorite winning by exactly 3, or a 23-17 game against a total of 40. The stake is returned; no win, no loss. Half-point lines exist specifically to make pushes impossible.
Void / no action: A bet cancelled entirely with the stake returned, postponed game, scratched player, ungradeable leg. In a parlay, most books drop the voided leg and reprice the ticket from the remaining legs.
Bad beat: Losing a bet that was effectively won until a late, low-probability disaster, the meaningless touchdown, the backdoor cover. Every league has a hall of fame of these.
Backdoor cover: A late score by the losing team that flips the spread result without threatening the win. The favorite's crowd goes quiet; the +7.5 crowd erupts.
Grading: The book's settlement of a bet after the result is official. In a LeagueLocks league, the treasurer settles the week's bet and uploads the slip, results wear an 'Unverified' badge until the proof is attached.
Hedge: Betting the other side of an existing position to lock in profit or cap loss, most common on futures or the last leg of a big parlay. You pay some expected value for certainty.
Middle: Holding both sides of a game at different numbers (e.g. −2.5 and +3.5) so that a middle result (favorite wins by 3) wins BOTH bets. Rare, sought-after, and the reason sharp bettors care about line movement.

Bankroll & strategy

The discipline layer, how crews survive variance and stay friends.

Bankroll: The money set aside for betting, fully separate from money that matters. For a league, it's the season betting budget carved out of collected dues, sized so the worst case is survivable by design.
Unit: A bettor's standard stake, usually 1-2% of bankroll, the common language for bet sizing ('two units on the under'). A league's unit is its fixed weekly wager.
Flat betting: Staking the same amount every bet regardless of confidence or recent results. Boring, and the single best variance-management tool a crew can adopt.
Chasing: Increasing stakes after losses to 'get it back', the classic bankroll killer. The math never supports it; the tilt always suggests it.
Kelly criterion: A formula for bet sizing proportional to your edge. Full Kelly is aggressive; pros bet fractions of it. Its practical lesson for leagues: when your true edge is unknown, bet smaller than you want to.
Expected value (EV): The long-run average result of a bet: (win probability × payout) − (loss probability × stake). +EV bets make money over time even when individual tickets lose. The phrase '+EV' is doing a lot of work in every betting podcast you've ever heard.
Variance: The gap between long-run expectation and short-run results. A true 55% crew still hits a three-game losing streak most seasons, that's variance, not a broken process. Leagues that pre-commit to fixed stakes ride it out.
ROI (return on investment): Profit divided by total amount staked. A 5% ROI over a full season of NFL bets is genuinely excellent, anyone advertising 30% is selling something.
Handicapping: The actual work of betting: weighing injuries, matchups, weather, and prices to find bets whose real probability beats the implied one. What your league's chooser is doing, whether they call it that or not.
Fade: To bet against, a team, a trend, or that one league member whose picks have gone 2-9. 'Fade the public' is the oldest angle in the book.
Tilt: Emotionally compromised decision-making after losses, imported from poker. The house edge on a tilted bettor is unmeasurable but large. Flat stakes and a group vote are the anti-tilt technology.

League & pool play

The vocabulary of crews that bet together, the way LeagueLocks leagues run.

Prize pool: The shared pot a league plays for all season: everyone's dues in, the weekly bet's wins and losses tracked against it, and a payout to the winners at the end. In LeagueLocks the pool is computed from an append-only ledger, so the app and the money can never disagree.
Dues / buy-in: Each member's contribution to the season pool, collected however the crew already handles money. LeagueLocks tracks who has paid without ever holding a dollar.
Betting budget: The fixed slice of the pool reserved for the season's weekly bets (weekly wager × number of weeks). It caps the worst case on day one, lose every week and the rest of the pool is untouched.
On the clock: Being the week's designated pick proposer. The role rotates through the league; the chooser submits up to three picks with live lines, and the league votes.
The ballot: The week's slate of proposed picks that members vote on. Top vote-getter becomes the league's bet; ties go to the earliest-proposed pick.
Treasurer: The trusted member who places the league's locked pick at a licensed sportsbook, records the odds and book, and uploads the slip as proof. The human bridge between the app's ledger and the real money.
The slip: The bet ticket, physical or screenshot, proving the wager was placed as recorded. LeagueLocks marks results 'Unverified' until the slip is attached. Proof over trust.
Rollover: A league rule sending a share of each win into next week's stake instead of straight back to the pool, letting hot streaks compound. Winnings riding is fine; fresh money chasing is not, the distinction is the whole rule.
Sweat: The collective agony/ecstasy of watching a game your money is on. The product a betting league actually manufactures; the pool is just how it's stored.
Degen: Affectionate group-chat shorthand for degenerate, the member proposing a six-leg parlay at 1 a.m. Every league has one. A well-run league gives them exactly one vote.

Missing a term your crew argues about? Email us and we'll add it. And if the vocabulary has you ready to put it to use, start a league free , one crew, one pool, one bet a week.

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