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What Does CLV Mean in Betting?
In betting, CLV stands for Closing Line Value and is a measure of the long term profitability of a bet when measured against the odds offered by sportsbooks just before the start of an event.
What is Closing Line Value?
Closing Line Value, as mentioned, is a measure of the long term profitability of a bet when measure against the final odds offered by sportsbooks before an event goes live.
The closing line is considered the most accurate probabilistic prediction of a betting market. (i.e. The probability of each outcome happening)
This is because just before the start of the event the most information is known such as the players on both teams, the weather conditions along with other information that odds makers and sports traders use to create their odds.
Additionally, by the start of the event all sharp bettors and anyone who has insider knowledge have placed their bets. Again sports traders at sharp sportsbooks such as Pinnacle will have factored these players betting decisions into the closing line odds.
Closing Line Value Example
Let’s say that we’re keeping a close eye on injury reports in the morning for the upcoming NFL games this evening. We get notified that a key Kansas City Chiefs player is injured before the upcoming game versus the 49’ers.
We quickly place a $100 bet on the 49’ers at -120 expecting there odds to drop. We don’t know by how much the odds will change but we expect -120 on 49’ers to be a positive EV bet.
What we can do is wait to compare the odds we placed our bet at with the closing line at a sharp sportsbook such as Pinnacle or Circa Sports.
The closing line odds on the moneyline market at Pinnacle are San Francisco 49’ers @ -148 and Kansas City Chiefs @ +130
Using a Closing Line Value Calculator we can now compare our bet at -120 with the closing line odds to calculate our expected value over the market for the bet.
The calculator works out that we beat the closing line by 3.31% and this equates to an expected long term profit (i.e. The Closing Line Value) of $6.06 (If we could repeat this bet over and over again)
Why is CLV Important in Betting?
Closing line value allows us to determine if a pre-match bet we have placed is profitable or unprofitable over the long term and helps us evaluate our decision making processes and betting strategies.
If we are consistently beating the closing line while clv betting (i.e. The odds we place our bet are larger than the odds for the same bet at the start of the game) then we will make a profit over a large number of bets due to the concept of positive expected value.
It’s also allows us to track how much expected cumulative profit we should expect from all the bet we’ve placed over a given period of time.
How to Calculate Closing Line Value
You can quickly calculate the CLV of a bet using our Closing Line Value Calculator.
However, If you want to understand the maths behind the calculation. We dive into the closing line value formula below.
In order to determine the long term profitability of a bet we need to try and infer the true probability that your bet will win.
We use the closing line odds to do this as they are generally the most accurate predictions as the most information is known.
Step 1: Convert the Closing Line Odds to Probabilities
First, we need to convert the odds for all the outcome of the market into an implied probability using the below formulas
- Negative Moneyline Odds:
- (Negative Odds Made Positive / (Negative Odds Made Positive + 100)) * 100 = implied probability
- Positive Moneyline Odds:
- 100 / (Positive Odds + 100) * 100 = implied probability
Step 2: Remove the Sportsbook Vig from the Probabilities
Next we add together the implied probabilities of both outcomes to get a total market probability which is the true market probability of 100% plus vig.
Once we have the total market probability we can calculate the no vig probability of each outcome using the formula below.
Outcome Implied Probability / Total Market Probability = No Vig Probability
Step 3: Convert the Odds of the Bet we Placed into an Implied Probability
To calculate the CLV we need to compare the Implied Probability of the bet we placed against the true probability inferred from the closing line odds.
Again we can use the odds conversion formulas below
- Negative Moneyline Odds:
- (Negative Odds Made Positive / (Negative Odds Made Positive + 100)) * 100 = implied probability
- Positive Moneyline Odds:
- 100 / (Positive Odds + 100) * 100 = implied probability
Step 4: Compare the Probabilities to Calculate the Closing Line Value
Once we have both the implied probability of our bet and the closing line probability for the same outcome. We can work out the percentage we beat the closing line by.
Finally, multiply the percentage we beat the market by our bet stake to calculate the closing line value.
Closing Line Value = (True Closing Line Probability – Our Bet Probability) * Bet Stake
How Accurate are Closing Line Odds?
Pinnacle Sports is one of the world most respected odds forecasting sportsbooks in the world. With their winners welcome policy they have been at the forefront of soccer modelling and market making for over two decades.
Betting Analyst, Joesph Buchdahl analyzed the Pinnacle closing odds of home-draw-away market from 132,645 soccer matches spanning back to 2007.
The closing line odds correlated with a 99.7% accuracy against the final results of the games. i.e. If the outcome were grouped by odds, outcomes with a 50% chance of winning (+100) won 50% of the times, odds of 30% won 30% of the time etc.
Soccer is one of Pinnacles specialties and some sports make be less efficient than others. However, closing line are incredibly accurate.
Oddsjam Bet Tracker with built in CLV Betting Tracking
Oddsjam is a company that provides betting tools for bettors longing to profit from sportsbooks.
They have a range of tools from Arbitrage Betting Software to Positive Ev Betting software but one of their best tools is Completely Free!
The Oddsjam Bet Tracker
The Bet Tracker allows you to add a bet you’ve just placed to your tracking dashboard.
Oddsjam will update the bet as won or lost and calculate the profit or loss automatically. Additionally, Oddsjam will calculate the CLV automatically when the event goes in play.
The Bet Tracker Dashboard will display a summary all the bets we’ve placed through Oddsjam along with a breakdown of our total profit and CLV in a nice user-friendly interface.
You can set your dashboard to public for anyone to view. Check out this public Bet Tracker Dashboard from Matt Modi.
The Oddsjam Dashboard allows you to analyze and track your betting in a much more detailed way such as viewing the CLv generated by sportsbook.
You can create your own Bet Tracking Dashboard by creating a free odds jam account.
Beating the Closing Line
Now that we understand closing line value and it’s importance in profitable betting,
How do we beat the closing line?
There are a number of different strategies we can use to beat the closing line odds.
Positive EV Betting Software
The easiest method for beating the closing line is to use positive ev betting software.
These software tools track the odds movement between all sportsbook and calculates when a sportsbooks odds have not updated against movements at other sportsbooks and is likely a profitable bet.
There are a number of tools available which can do this for you. The best option for North American bettors is Oddsjam.
If you’re in Europe or Australia the best option for postive ev software is RebelBetting.
Informational Advantage
Another way that sharp bettors can beat the closing line is by finding a way to get information about a sports game before the sportsbooks have been able to receive it and adjust their odds.
Some people do this by betting at the physical location of a sports event. By taking advantage of the slight delay in an event happening on the pitch or court and that information being relayed to the sportsbooks. This is know as betting courtside or courtsiding.
However, courtsiding isn’t the only way to gain an advantage. Gaining acccess to information such as training attendance and player schedules can give a sharp bettor an early indication of players who are likely to be absent from upcoming games.
Betting Exchange Market Making
All of the methods we’ve looked at so far have been taking bets from sportsbook when we think the odds are going to move.
This next technique allows us to gain an advantage when the odds are stationary and the betting market is efficient.
For this technique we are going to be using a sports betting platform called a betting exchange.
A Betting Exchange is like a stock market for odds. Rather than betting against a sportsbook we are betting against thousands of other sports bettors. The Betting Exchange matches two or more bettor wanting to bet on different outcomes and takes a small commission for matching users bets.
There are many differences between a sportsbook and a betting exchange but for this technique we’re focusing on the ability to offer a bet into the betting exchange market at the odds of our choice.
Rather than a sportsbook where we only have the option to take the odds on offer at a betting exchange we can offer a bet into the market for other sports bettors to take. Just like a sportsbook we can offer odds into the market that should make us a profit in the long term.
However, the further our odds are from the true odds the less chance another bettor will want to take our odds. For popular league such as NFL and NBA we can get match 2-3% out from the true odds.
However, If we’re offering bets for smaller leagues such as college sports or more exotic betting markets we can achieve much higher margins such as 9-12% over the true no vig odds.
Synthetic Hold Betting
Rather than focusing on trying to beat the closing line. One strategy is to focus on simply not letting the closing line beat us.
We can do this by creating what’s called a Synthetic Hold or Synthetic Vig between multiple sportsbooks. A sportsbook makes money because they offer us lower odds than their prediction of the true odds for that outcome.
By comparing odds between multiple sportsbooks we can find odds for each outcome of a betting market where the implied probabilities total 100% meaning there is no vig.
If we placed bets at random on these Zero Vig Lines the worst cases scenario is that we breakeven over a large number of bets.
Now we only need a slight hypothesis as to why one outcome maybe a value line to move the needle in the direction of beating the closing line.
For Example, maybe a team or player has been in the news in a negative light and we believe the odds have been influenced due to this.
Remember, when creating a Synthetic Hold we only need to be slightly better at choosing outcomes than betting at random to generate closing line value.
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