Spotting an unbalanced price
Equal prices on both sides means the book sees a coin flip at that handicap. Unequal prices mean it is carrying an opinion, or managing flow, in the price rather than the number.
The handicap sets the balance point in whole and half units; the price adjusts within those units. So a book that wants to shade a market slightly does it in the odds.
Asymmetry can also reflect a book at its exposure limit on one side, which is a statement about its book rather than about the game.
And that is the trap. The handicap is read as the opinion when frequently the prices are carrying it, which means readers miss the market's actual position.
What to do with it. Check whether the two prices are equal before drawing any conclusion from the handicap.
Work it out. The no-vig calculator takes both sides of a market and returns the margin and the fair price of each.
The archive
What the published price did in US sports
11,262 games in US sports that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between November 24, 2025 and November 6, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 7,058 | 10,936 | 64.5% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 3,373 | 7,003 | 48.2% |
| The total went over | 5,518 | 11,236 | 49.1% |
| The home side won | 6,361 | 11,262 | 56.5% |
How they ended
Over 16,021 finished games in US sports whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 1,212 | 16,021 | 7.6% |
| Settled on a shootout | 161 | 16,021 | 1.0% |
| Called before the end | 9 | 16,021 | 0.1% |
286 games landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so they are in the counts they are out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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