How to read the ACC board: moneyline, spread, total and the hold

Open any ACC game on the board and you get six price tables: each side of the moneyline, each side of the spread, and the over and the under. This is a guide to what each column is telling you.

Three questions, three markets

Moneyline asks only who wins. The favorite carries a minus sign: at -180 you put up $180 to make $100. The underdog carries a plus: at +150 a $100 position makes $150.

Spread asks by how much. If Miami is -7.5 against Florida State, Miami has to win by eight or more for that side to cash; Florida State +7.5 cashes on any Seminoles win or any loss by seven or fewer. The price beside the number is what that position costs. At a sportsbook it usually sits around -110. On a prediction market such as Novig it tends to sit closer to even money, around -100.

Total asks how many points both teams score together. If a Louisville game has a total of 52.5, the over needs 53 or more and the under needs 52 or fewer.

One column to compare them all

Sportsbooks speak in American odds. Prediction markets speak in cents per contract. The board translates both into a single figure: the profit $100 returns if the position wins.

• Plus odds: the profit is the number. +150 makes $150.
• Minus odds: divide 100 by the odds and multiply by 100. -125 makes $80.00. -180 makes $55.56.
• A contract at price p with a fee rate r: your $100 has to buy the contracts and cover the fee, so the profit is 100 / (p × (1 + r × (1 − p))) − 100. A 60-cent contract with no fee makes $66.67. The same contract with a 7% fee rate makes $62.13.

That last line is why the board never shows an exchange's raw price alone. The fee is real money, so it comes off before the comparison.

Best price and the gap

Each table is sorted by what $100 returns, highest first, and the top payout is marked Best. Every other row shows how far it trails on the same $100. On a moneyline that is a straight comparison. On a spread or a total it only holds when the venues are quoting the same number: Duke -3 at one book and Duke -3.5 at another are different positions, so a row at a different line is flagged and the line needs reading alongside the price.

The hold

If one column deserves your attention, it is the hold. Take both sides of a two-way market, turn each price into the probability it implies, and add them. In a perfectly fair market the two add up to exactly 100%.

They rarely do at a sportsbook. A standard -110 on both sides implies 52.4% twice, or 104.8% in total. The extra 4.8% is the book's cut, built into the price before kickoff. Lines like -125 and +105 on the same game come to about 104.3%.

Prediction markets usually land much closer to 100%, because no house is shading either side. Whatever overshoot remains is the gap between the best price to buy and the best price to sell on the order book, and on a busy game it is small. The board prints the hold beside every venue, calculated from that venue's own two sides when the prices were pulled. It is the cost of the venue itself, before anyone has an opinion about the game.

When the board is out of date

Prices refresh about every ten minutes. On game day lines can move faster than that, so read the board as a guide to which venue tends to pay more on which side, and check the live price before you trade. Once a game kicks off it leaves the board and its page switches over to the score.