---
title: 'The Player Prop Strategy Sportsbooks Don''t Want You Using'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=7p--KOLub2k'
video_id: '7p--KOLub2k'
date: 2026-08-04
duration_sec: 848
---

# The Player Prop Strategy Sportsbooks Don't Want You Using

> Source: [The Player Prop Strategy Sportsbooks Don't Want You Using](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7p--KOLub2k)

## Summary

The video explains why most sports bettors lose money by using a bottom-up approach and advocates for a top-down strategy that exploits market inefficiencies. It introduces cross-market EV betting as the most profitable player prop strategy, demonstrated through the OddsJam sharp money tool.

### Key Points

- **Two Betting Approaches** [00:02] — There are two approaches: bottom-up (stats, watching games) used by 95-99% of bettors who are not profitable long-term, and top-down (scanning for pricing inefficiencies) which can be profitable even without sports knowledge.
- **Top-Down Approach Explained** [00:40] — Top-down betting involves reading the market to find price discrepancies. Billion-dollar sportsbooks are decent at setting lines, but when one book lags behind, opportunities arise.
- **The 'Know Ball' Fallacy** [01:05] — Many bettors think their sports knowledge gives them an edge, but even experts don't know how to set lines like billion-dollar sportsbooks. The majority of bettors lose long-term, indicating that bottom-up research is not effective.
- **Why Bottom-Up Fails** [01:44] — Only the sharpest bettors can beat the books with a bottom-up approach, and most lack the coding expertise to build models that rival Vegas. Top-down is more profitable for the average bettor.
- **Arbitrage and Positive EV** [02:10] — Arbitrage betting and positive EV betting are profitable strategies based on using sharp sportsbook data to find mispriced lines on softer books. Example: Pinnacle has Dodgers at -120, Sportsino at +110, so bet on Sportsino.
- **Avoid Bottom-Up Research Apps** [03:04] — Most betting research apps show public information that sportsbooks already use to set lines. If you find a trend, the books know it too, so you have no edge.
- **Cross-Market EV Betting** [03:45] — Cross-market EV betting is taking only the profitable side of an arbitrage bet. It's the most profitable player prop strategy because it exploits market inefficiencies.
- **Arbitrage Example** [04:14] — Example: Vucevic over 6.5 rebounds at +205 on Bovada, under at -150 on Sportsino. Betting $55 and $100 guarantees $12.75 profit regardless of outcome.
- **Cross-Market EV Example** [04:56] — Jaden McDaniels over/under 13.5 points: ProfitX (sharp) has -143, Sportsino (soft) has -120. Trust ProfitX as correct, so bet over on Sportsino for positive EV.
- **OddsJam Sharp Money Tool** [06:19] — OddsJam provides a tool to find cross-market EV bets. Promo code TAILS for free week trial and 35% off first month.
- **Using the Tool** [06:48] — The tool shows cross-market EV plays. Example: Victor Olofsson over half a goal in NHL. Sharp bettor put $9,648 on the over, indicating high confidence.
- **Why Sharp Money Matters** [08:01] — Large bets on niche player props indicate sharp bettors. Exchanges like Novig and ProfitX set sharp lines because sharp bettors trade there.
- **Finding Profitable Books** [08:45] — The tool highlights sportsbooks where the bet is profitable. If you have access to a highlighted book, you can get better odds than the sharp better wanted.
- **Player Props vs Game Lines** [09:26] — Player props are more niche, so sharp bettors can get more liquidity down without being limited. Game lines have more recreational liquidity but less sharp money.
- **Liquidity on Exchanges** [10:04] — Example: Jaden McDaniels over 13.5 points has $1,400 and $1,200 orders on exchanges. Recreational books limit sharp bettors to $25-$50 on player props.
- **Confidence in Bets** [11:10] — Large orders on player props give confidence. You are on the profitable side of an arbitrage bet between a soft book and a sharp exchange.
- **Filtering Plays** [12:02] — Hundreds of plays appear daily. Filter by the books you have access to and find the best plays for your edge.
- **Conclusion and CTA** [12:41] — Cross-market EV betting is one of the most profitable strategies. Use top-down approach and tools like OddsJam. Promo code TAILS for discount.

### Conclusion

The video concludes that most bettors lose because they use bottom-up research that Vegas already knows. Instead, adopting a top-down approach and using cross-market EV betting on player props can lead to long-term profitability.

## Transcript

literally hundreds of different player props and 99% of them are complete scams. In sports betting, there's two approaches you can take. There's what we call a top-down and a
bottom-up approach. A bottom-up approach is what the majority of sports bettors use. Bottom-up means you look at the stats, you watch games, and you think sports bettors operate this way and it's
not a coincidence that 95 to 99% bettors are not profitable long-term. Now, a top-down sports betting approach means that you're scanning the market for pricing inefficiencies and are using those inefficiencies to make your picks.
With a top-down approach, you could theoretically know nothing about sports but read the market to find where price discrepancies lie. In a top-down billion-dollar sports books are decent
at setting their lines and when one book significantly lags behind the rest, you watching this video, you may be thinking, "I want to do my own research. I watch my favorite team. I know the ins and outs of them. I want to be able to
use my own knowledge to make my bets." And one of the biggest problems that so many sports bettors run into is thinking they know ball. You may be a major basketball fan. You may have even played in college or the NBA and understand the
ins and outs of the game, but that still doesn't mean that you know how to set billion-dollar sports books. If the majority of sports bettors bet off of studying the stats and watching games, and the majority of sports bettors are
also long-term losers, what does that tell us? Now, I'm not saying that a sports betting. There are indeed people who win long-term using a bottom-up approach. However, these people that do
sharpest sports bettors in the world and can actually beat the books. For the vast majority of us, we simply don't have the coding experience and expertise to build a model that can truly rival
the Vegas models that set the odds. And that's why a top-down approach is more profitable long-term. You may be familiar with strategies like arbitrage betting and positive EV betting, which are two of the most profitable long-term
these strategies are built off the premise that you can use data from sharp sportsbooks to find mispriced lines on softer books. Say Pinnacle, the sharpest sportsbook in the world, has the Dodgers favored at -120 odds, but Sportsino, an
extremely soft and beatable sweepstakes, has the Dodgers at +110. With that data and information, we can make a very educated guess that Sportsino is the book that set this line incorrectly and therefore, we have a profitable bet on
Sportsino to take the Dodgers at +110 when Pinnacle and the rest of the market has them valued at -120. Now, I opened up this video talking about the most profitable player prop strategy that you can use. So, how does everything that
I've said so far correlate with that? First off, understanding that a bottom-up betting approach is very unlikely to make you a profitable better understand that, you can save yourself not only a ton of time, but a ton of
money by not subscribing to the numerous bottom-up betting research apps that are out there. On the App Store, there are tons of sports betting research apps profitable. In reality, all these apps do is show you information that sports
books use to set their lines. If you think you have an edge because you found a trend where a player went over his points total in 15 of his last 20 road games, you need to ask yourself, do we think that the billion-dollar sports
books don't also know this information? Every bit of public information that's lines. And that's why the most profitable way to bet on sports is through a top-down approach where we're just taking sports books against each
lines and the biggest mistakes that sports books have set. And that's why is through a top-down approach where we find market inefficiencies. Now, let's the most profitable strategy when it comes to betting on player props. It's
called cross-market EV betting. Now, cross-market EV betting is when you only take the profitable side of an arbitrage bet. Now, arbitrage betting is a way to sports. We can take a look at an arbitrage bet right here. We can see
Nikola Vucevic to go over 6 and 1/2 rebounds is valued at +205 on Bovada. If you were to put $55 down on that and $100 down on Vucevic to go under 6 and 1/2 rebounds at -150 odds over on Sportsino, you are guaranteed to make
to $12.75 and it does not matter if Vucevic goes over or under this line. He is guaranteed to have either more or less than 6 and 1/2 rebounds in his game. It
is quite literally impossible for him to not have one of those two outcomes. Now, It's a way for you to make a risk-free profit while betting on sports. What cross-market EV betting is is only taking one side of an arbitrage bet and
that would be the side that has greater positive expected value with it. Now, betting, you want to pair a sharp sportsbook with a soft sportsbook. So, here's a great example of Jaden McDaniels over and under 13 and 1/2
points. Now, the two books in this arbitrage bet are ProfitX, a very sharp peer-to-peer betting exchange, and Sportsino, an extremely soft sweepstakes casino. We know in this that we're going to trust the ProfitX line to be the
correct line of this arbitrage bet and we're going to know, based off of very beatable sweepstake and we know that their line is likely the incorrect line in this arbitrage bet, which would mean there's more positive expected
value over on Sportsino because that's the inefficient line. So, that would lead us to only bet Jaden McDaniels to go over 13 and 1/2 total points over on Sportsino. Now, that doesn't guarantee us risk-free profit, whereas you can see
in this arbitrage opportunity, if we took both of these props on ProfitX and on Sportsino, we would make $7.25 to $8.33. arbitrage, you're not guaranteed profit, but if you stack up positive EV bets
over time using the cross-market EV betting approach, you'll make money in imagine, if you wanted to find these cross-market EV bets by simply looking at arbitrage opportunities between soft and sharp sports books, it would take
you forever to find these plays. Well, luckily for us, OddsJam made a tool where we're going to see a ton of cross-market EV bets and have all the steps laid out nicely. Now, here we are over on the OddsJam sharp money tool and
to get the tool yourself as I teach you how to use it, get on OddsJam today, use promo code TAILS for a free week trial and 35% off your first month. It's a great way to get in with this tool at a low price entry on a free trial on a 35%
make your money back and use your profits from using this tool to pay for we can see on this tool is a bunch of cross-market EV plays and what sports see on this top play highlighted right here, we see Victor Olofsson over half a
goal in the Kings-Calgary Flames game in the NHL. Now, this number on the left, 9,648, is showing how much money has been put over on the right, we can see a breakdown of the price that a sharp
better has put liquidity up to get this over half a goal prop and we can see that there is an order available at -381 odds on Novig for Olofsson to not score exchange, they have to post liquidity. So, say he wants over half a goal, this
money now needs to be matched on the under half a goal. The reason being is exchanges, so it's not a user versus house platform. It's a user versus user platform where if I wanted to bet $100
on something, I need somebody else or a group of people to match the $100 on the opposite side of that bet for my order to get filled. Now, why is this so important for us? Well, we know if somebody's putting down 9.1K on
an NHL goal prop, they have very high confidence that this player is going to using a bottom-up approach who actually I say that is your average sports better isn't going to throw down almost $10,000
on an NHL goal prop. That's a completely unique market to put $10,000 down. And unless you have uber high confidence in this play, you're not going to be how we can infer that this is a sharp better and data has shown us that Novig
and ProfitX set extremely sharp lines because that's where sharp bettors and on the sports books. Now, we know what an extremely sharp better is on this play and we also know that this would be a cross-market EV bet on ProfitX and
LottoLand. Now, you may not have LottoLand, but you can take a look at all the sports books and the odds that they have on this. And if your sports book is highlighted here like these ones are, that means it would be a profitable
arbitrage bet if you use this sports book and Novig or ProfitX. So, maybe you have Bet365 and you can get this at +390. Well, that means that you're getting this play at +390 when a sharp better wanted to get it at +381. So,
you're going to get either an equal or better price than what a sharp better wanted on this exact play while knowing this is the positive expected value side of an arbitrage bet. And as you scroll through the tool, you'll see there are
both player props and game lines. We have an MLB runs total here. Now, the video that this is one of the best player prop strategies to use is because game lines, bettors can get a lot more liquidity down on game lines on the
recreational sports books like DraftKings and FanDuel even after you've been hit with some limits. However, if you're a very sharp better, you can't get liquidity down on player props without being drastically limited to
dollars and cents on the recreational books. So, we can take a look at this Jaden McDaniels prop. Here we have it. We saw this on the arbitrage tool, over 13 and 1/2 points. Now, we can see here that a better one to get this matched at
that a better one to get this matched at minus 143 odds for $1.4,000. Another better one in minus 141 for 1.2k. Now, it is extremely unlikely that if you're any better, let alone a very profitable better, that you can get
almost $1,500 down on Jaden McDaniels to go over 13 and 1/2 points on a DraftKings or FanDuel. If you've had any form of success on these books, they will limit you so that you can't put down more than 25, $50 on a player prop.
So, what we're seeing right here is that there's been $3,100 total on the exchanges looking to get matched so that betters can take Jaden McDaniels to go over 13 and 1/2 points. Now, what Odds Jam is going to tell us is that the
profitable books here are these ones highlighted. So, maybe you have Sports Zeno, as I mentioned, a very beatable sportsbook, and actually the same exact one we used in the arbitrage example, you can get this at minus 120. And
that's great value because we know that sharp betters are valuing this in the minus 140s. Majority of this liquidity here is at minus 141 and minus 143. So, these betters are trying to get people to match the under at plus 143 and plus
141 so that their order on the opposite side can go through. And the thing I love personally about the sharp money tool is that we are getting immense confidence in these bets. We know that somebody's putting down 1.2k and 1.4k on
this, which is not an insignificant amount of money. That is a ton of money to be putting down on NBA player prop. And then we also know that we are on the profitable side of an arbitrage bet between a soft sportsbook like Sports
Zeno, which you could use in this example, and the betting exchanges No trying to get their bets placed. Now, there will be tons of plays that pop up refresh this constantly throughout the
day, and you will see new sharp bets get posted every single day. Now, there will be hundreds of plays that can pop up on the sharp money tool. What you can do is books you have access to, and you'll find the very best plays on your
edge. And as I mentioned, you'll see game lines in this as well, but personally, I love using it for player props because they're more of a niche market, and when somebody puts $5,000 down on a player prop versus $5,000 down
on a game line, the player prop liquidity is much more significant. We can see average recreational betters who have a lot of money put a lot down on a game line. You typically will not see your average better put $5,000 or
$10,000 on a player prop in a niche market. So, when we do see player props signifies that there is a very sharp better on the side of this bet, and Odds Jam is going to show us where a crossed market EV opportunity lies where we can
lock in profitable bets in the player prop department every single day. Now, that right there is your rundown of the Odds Jam sharp money tool and the cross market EV betting strategy that I believe is one of the most profitable
mentioned in the beginning of this video, there are a ton of research apps out there that charge you monthly for information that Vegas has already baked into the line. Instead of looking at stats like the last five games or a home
and away split that Vegas already knows and begs you to look at to make your picks, start using a top-down approach where you can find inefficiencies in the market to profit long-term. And again, if you want to use the tools that I
showed in this video, make sure you get on Odds Jam today, use promo code takes for a free week trial and 35% off your first month. And just remember, as yourself, does Vegas already know the information that I'm using to do my
research? The answer to that question almost 100% of the time is going to be yes. Vegas has access to more data than we can imagine, and there's no research app out there that's going to show you data that Vegas doesn't already know.
betters in the entire world take a top-down approach where they find mispriced lines on sports books and take advantage of them and make tons of money learned something about the sports betting market in general, and
definitely about how you can use cross market EV betting to crush the player market EV betting to crush the player props market.