🧪Lab Notes #8 — How the Market Thinks: Top-Down EV

“The smartest bettor in the room isn’t the one with the hottest take. It’s the one who knows what things should cost.”

Most bettors think they’re playing a prediction game.

Who wins?
Who covers?
Who goes over?

That’s not the game.

The real game is price.

And once you understand how the market sets prices — and who it listens to — everything about betting starts to look different.

This Lab is about learning how to listen to the market before you ever decide whether you agree with it.

Welcome to Top-Down EV.

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📈 Top-Down EV — Trust the Market, Exploit the Gaps

Top-down EV is the simplest way to beat sports betting — and the most misunderstood.

It feels lazy at first.
Like you’re cheating.
Like, “Wait… I don’t even get to have my own opinion?”

Relax. You do.
You’re just borrowing the best information available before you form it.

Think of it like grocery shopping with flyers.

You’re not trying to predict which tomato tastes better.
You just want the same tomato for cheaper.

That’s top-down EV.

You’re not predicting outcomes.
You’re price-checking reality.

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🧠 How Top-Down EV Actually Works

The betting market already contains everything:
injuries, weather, matchups, sharp opinion, bad public takes, real money, dumb money — all of it.

But here’s the part most bettors miss:

Not every sportsbook is equally good at turning that chaos into a clean price.

Just like in real life, there are companies that are really good at what they do — and companies that are… trying their best.

Sharp books are the pros.
Soft books are the tourists.

One prices things like a trader on Wall Street.
The other prices things like a mall kiosk selling phone cases.

So top-down EV starts with the places that actually know what things should cost.

The process is simple:

1. Look at sharp books (Pinnacle, Circa)

2. Remove the vig (strip out the sportsbook’s tax)

3. Compare those true odds to soft books (FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM)

If a soft book is selling the same outcome for cheaper than the sharp market says it’s worth, you buy it.

You’re not betting.
You’re bargain hunting.

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🧠 What Makes a Book “Sharp”?

Calling a sportsbook “sharp” doesn’t mean it’s magical.
It means it’s hard to lie to.

Think of sportsbooks like stores.

Some are malls:
bright lights, promos everywhere, salespeople whispering “this is a lock.”

Others are warehouse suppliers:
no coupons, no music, no mercy.

Sharp books are the warehouse.

They don’t exist to entertain you.
They exist to take large orders from professionals and adjust prices instantly when those orders hit.

When sharp money shows up, these books don’t argue.
They don’t offer boosts.
They don’t run commercials.

They just move the price.

That movement is the signal you’re borrowing.

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🧰 Why Their Prices Matter More

Sharp books allow:
higher limits, faster movement, bettors who win long-term.

Which means every number they post gets stress-tested.

It’s the difference between:
a Yelp review
and a Michelin kitchen.

Soft books care how many people walk in.
Sharp books care whether the recipe survives when ten pros order it at once.

That’s why we start there.

Not because they’re perfect —
but because they’re honest.

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📊 Tools Like OddsJam Do the Boring Part

You don’t need to open fifteen tabs and manually hunt for prices like it’s 2009.

Tools like OddsJam, Outlier, and similar screens show:
multiple books, side-by-side, with price differences highlighted.

Think of them as barcode scanners at the grocery store.

You’re not guessing what’s cheaper.
You’re seeing it instantly.

The edge isn’t clicking faster.
The edge is knowing what “cheap” actually means.

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🧮 Example: Removing the Vig

Pinnacle is offering:

• Over 5.5 Ks = -135

• Under 5.5 Ks = +115

Convert to implied probability:

• -135 → 57.4%

• +115 → 46.5%

Total: 103.9%
That extra 3.9% is the vig.

Strip it out:

• Over → 55.3%

• Under → 44.7%

That means the fair price for the Over is about -124.

That’s what the market actually thinks — before fees.

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🧨 Now Check the Soft Book

FanDuel is offering:

• Over 5.5 Ks = +110

FanDuel is paying you like the Over wins 47.6% of the time.
Pinnacle says it’s closer to 55%.

Same bet.
Wildly different price.

That’s Air Jordans at Goodwill.

And if you make that bet over and over, you’ll win — even if this one loses tonight.

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🎲 Why Top-Down EV Still Loses (Short-Term)

This is where people quit.

You can do everything right
and still lose.

That’s not failure.
That’s variance.

Variance is the space between good decisions and good results.

Top-down EV doesn’t remove losing.
It just moves it around.

Like bulk shopping:
you don’t save money today,
you save it over months of identical decisions.

Judge EV by one bet and you’ll quit right before it starts working.

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🧠 The Real Advantage of Top-Down

Top-down EV removes ego.

You’re not saying,
“I’m smarter than everyone.”

You’re saying,
“I trust the cleanest signal — and I shop better than most.”

You don’t need to predict better.

You need to pay better.

L.S. signing off ⚗️

Jared
Lead Scientist — The Prop Laboratory

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Coming Up Next

Top-down EV teaches you how to listen to the market.

Next, we’ll teach you how to disagree with it intelligently.

📊 Up Next: Lab Notes #9 — Bottom-Up EV: When You Build Your Own Reality

That’s where models, game environments, usage windows, and the Human Layer step in.

Same math.
Different angle.
Much more dangerous — if you don’t respect it.

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🧪 Lab Glossary: Key Terms from This Lesson

Sharp Book
A sportsbook that takes large, professional bets and moves its lines quickly in response to informed money. Its prices are the closest thing we have to the market’s true opinion.

Soft Book
A sportsbook built for volume and entertainment — promos, boosts, parlays, and public action — where lines move slower and pricing mistakes last longer.

Vig-Stripped Probability (Fair Odds)
The true percentage chance of an outcome after removing the sportsbook’s built-in tax. This is what sharp markets actually believe before the house takes its cut.

Variance
The natural swing between correct decisions and short-term results. Even perfectly priced bets will lose sometimes — that randomness is the entry fee for long-term profit.

Phone-Case Pricing
When the same outcome is sold at wildly different prices across books, like identical phone cases at three mall kiosks — the product didn’t change, only how hard someone’s trying to rip you off.

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📘 View the Full Master Glossary
💡 Click here to open The Prop Laboratory Master Glossary
(An evolving index of every term, example, and concept across all Lab Notes & Field Studies — updated as the series grows.)

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⚗️ Foundational Labs (1–7)

Lab Notes #1 — Favourites, Underdogs & The Secret Life of Odds

Lab Notes #2 — Implied Probability: The Hidden Math Behind Odds

Lab Notes #3 — The Vig: The Tax You Didn’t Know You Were Paying

Lab Notes #4 — Line Movement: When the Numbers Start Talking

Lab Notes #5 — The Big 3 Betting Markets: Easy to Understand, Brutal to Beat

Lab Notes #6 — Prop Markets: The Side Door To The Sportsbook

Lab Notes #7 — Expected Value: It Isn’t Predicting. It’s Pricing

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