What the best price is worth on an MLB board

Across 1,168 MLB games priced at close, the best of six mainstream US retail books beat a typical one by about 1.5% of stake per moneyline bet, and a better-than-typical price existed on 95.9% of sides. This is a price comparison rather than a graded record: no outcome is scored, only how far apart the books' numbers sat on the same bet.

Written by Jesse, NegativeEV. Last updated 2 August 2026.

• Sample: 1,168 MLB games over 90 slates
• Window: 2026-04-19 to 2026-07-31
• Priced at: every book's quote at close, a median of about five minutes before first pitch
• Measured: 2026-08-02

How much did the best price beat a typical one?

About 1.5% of stake per moneyline bet, and about 3.1% against the worst of the six.

Moneyline, six mainstream retail books	Figure
Best against a typical book	+1.5% of stake per bet
Best against the worst book	+3.1% of stake per bet
Two-sided hold, typical book	4.53%
Two-sided hold, best price each side	2.93%
Sides with a better-than-typical price	95.9%

Shopping both sides of the moneyline to their best number cut the two-sided hold from 4.53% to 2.93%. A better-than-typical price existed on 95.9% of sides, so this is not a rare windfall.

Does the gap grow with more books?

Yes, and the wider number is harder to use. Widening to all 11 books quoted in the same window raises the moneyline figure to about 2.1% of stake and drops the hold from 3.90% to 1.86%. That wider number leans on reduced-juice and offshore books most accounts do not have, so the retail figure is the one a normal account can realize.

Do totals and run lines shop as well as the moneyline?

Close to it, on the same all-books basis.

All 11 books quoted, same window	Best against a typical book	Two-sided hold, typical to best each side
Moneyline	+2.1% of stake per bet	3.90% to 1.86%
Totals	+2.0% of stake per bet	4.66% to 2.56%
Run lines	+1.8% of stake per bet	4.11% to 2.17%

Is one book reliably the cheapest?

No. No single mainstream retail book supplied even four in ten of the best prices. The rest were spread across the others, and the best number moved game by game and market by market. Shopping is a habit rather than a choice of book.

Is the hold the same as what a bet costs?

No. Hold is the book's margin across both sides of a market, so both sides are needed to compute it. What a bet returns is a separate quantity, and it is measured by grading outcomes. No outcome is graded on this page.

Method

For every game and side, the best, median, mean and worst decimal price across the books quoting it are computed from archived odds, and the gap is converted into a percentage of stake using the two-sided de-vigged fair probability. No outcome is graded, so the figures carry almost no sampling noise - they are a fact about prices, not a record of bets. Totals and run lines are compared only at the most-quoted total and the standard 1.5-run line, so both sides are the same bet at both books. Two-sided hold is reported for a typical book and for the best price on each side; hold is the book's margin, and it is a separate quantity from any bet's realized expected value.

What does this page not establish?

Whether any price on the board is a fair one. Nothing here is graded against a result, so the page says what the numbers were worth against each other and not what a bet returned. The prices are quotes at close, so the figures describe how far apart the books sat at that moment rather than a strategy of pricing in the morning and betting later. The window also starts on 19 April, where the archived odds start, so the opening weeks of the season sit outside it.

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