In-Season · The Line

The Line

Every game on this week’s slate, read against the number the market has posted on it. The spread, the total, the price where a book has quoted one, the player props that reached this feed — and beside them the one figure Iron Tuna has that the book does not, its own expected points for the same fixture. Where the two disagree by enough to be worth saying, Iron Tuna says so and puts a hypothetical stake behind it. Where they do not, it says that instead, which is most weeks and most games.

How Iron Tuna sizes a wager

The whole method is one comparison, run twice per game. The book posts a total and a spread. Iron Tuna carries its own expected points for both clubs in the same fixture, fitted from club ratings off the games that do carry a line, which gives it its own total and its own margin. The difference between the two, in points, is the edge. Everything below follows from that number and nothing else.

1. One stake per game at most. Where the total and the spread both clear the threshold, the larger edge is the one that gets the money and the other is stated and left alone.
2. An anytime-touchdown prop is staked separately and smaller — $50 at ten percentage points of disagreement, $25 at six — and only where a book actually quoted the player. One player’s touchdown is a coin landing once; a game total is sixty minutes of arithmetic, and the money says so. Where the model rates a player below his quoted price the row reads Price short and takes no wager, because only the yes side of an anytime touchdown is reliably posted.
3. Confidence is printed on every game, including the passes. It is a conviction score on Iron Tuna’s own scale, where a five-point edge reads 100. It is not a probability of winning, and no reading of it should be treated as one.
4. Under 2.0 points, there is no bet. That is the same threshold the rest of the site uses to call the model and the book in agreement, and most of the slate sits inside it every week. A week with no wager on it is a normal week, not a broken page.
5. A game that has kicked off is closed. Iron Tuna does not price a game it can already see, and no in-play number appears here.
6. A missing number prints as missing. Where a book has posted no line, or the model has no rating for a club, the row says so rather than showing a zero.

The arrows

Under each game is a row of the fantasy players in it, each with an arrow. The arrow is not a prediction of a stat line and it is not tied to a wager. It says which way the betting market has that player relative to what the fantasy consensus projects for him this week: up where the market prices him for more than the consensus expects, down where it prices him for less, and level where the two are close enough that the site does not flag the gap. A player’s quoted anytime-touchdown price is shown beside his name where a book has posted one.

The rest of the section

Iron Tuna is a fantasy football site. It takes no wagers, holds no funds, is not a sportsbook and is not affiliated with one. Odds and props shown here are whatever reached this site’s market feed and may be stale, incomplete, or different from anything a book will actually quote you. Nothing on this page is an offer, an inducement or a recommendation to gamble. Void where prohibited; not available in Washington State.