In Plain English: What A Price Is
An American price is not a rating of how good a bet is. It is an instruction about money, and it points in one of two directions.
A minus number tells you what you must risk to win 100. At -300 you put up 300 to win 100. At -120 you put up 120 to win 100.
A plus number tells you what you win if you risk 100. At +102 you put up 100 and win 102.
That is the entire vocabulary. Everything else on this page is arithmetic done to those two sentences.
Turning A Price Into A Target
Every price has a win rate attached to it. Hit that rate and you finish exactly level. Beat it and you are ahead. Miss it and you are behind, no matter how many individual bets you won.
For a minus price the formula is the price divided by the price plus 100. For -300 that is 300 divided by 400, which is 75 percent. For a plus price it is 100 divided by the price plus 100. For +102 that is 100 divided by 202, which is 49.50 percent.
Here is tonight's whole card run through that formula.
| Play | Price | Has to win this often |
|---|---|---|
| Braves/Phillies first 5 under 4.5 | -300 | 75.00% |
| Mariners -1 | -165 | 62.26% |
| Guardians ML, game one | -129 | 56.33% |
| Yankees/Padres under 7.5 | -120 | 54.55% |
| Red Sox ML | -114 | 53.27% |
| Rays ML | +102 | 49.50% |
That table is the most useful thing on this page. A bet at -300 and a bet at +102 are not different degrees of the same thing. They are asking for outcomes that are half a coin flip apart, and the -300 is asking for the harder one.
In Plain English: What A First Five Innings Bet Is
A first five innings bet, often written F5, settles on the score after five complete innings. Innings six through nine do not count. If the game is 2-1 after five and finishes 9-8, the F5 bet settles on 2-1.
The reason this market exists is the bullpen. A starting pitcher normally works five or six innings, then hands the ball to relievers. A full game bet is a bet on the starter and on four or five relievers. An F5 bet is close to a pure bet on the two starters.
Tonight's F5 bet is under 4.5, which means the two teams combined must score four runs or fewer in the first five innings. Five runs and it loses. Because the line is a half number, there is no push. It wins or it loses.
Why Anyone Would Pay -300 For It
The two starters are the best pair on the schedule tonight. Chris Sale has a 2.06 ERA across 24 starts and gives up an average of 1.21 runs in the first five innings of his own starts. Cristopher Sanchez has a 2.52 ERA across 28 starts and gives up 1.71. Add those together and the expected first five score is around three runs, against a line of four and a half.
That sounds comfortable. Prices are set by people who can also read those numbers, which is why the ticket costs -300 rather than -140.
The Honest Other Side
Go back to the target table. This bet has to win 75 percent of the time.
In Sale's 24 starts this season, the combined first five total came in at four or fewer 15 times. That is 62.5 percent. In Sanchez's 28 starts it happened 15 times, which is 53.6 percent. Neither of those numbers is 75.
Across every 2026 game where both starters were established rotation pitchers, the first five under 4.5 has landed about 74 percent of the time when the pair averaged a sub 2.75 ERA. That is a good rate and it is still not clearly better than 75.
So the honest description is this: it is a likely outcome sold at a likely outcome price. It is not a bargain, and one three run inning ends it. Six units of the night's 17.43 are on it, which is why it is worth a beginner understanding it before copying it.
The Cheapest Lesson On The Card
Rays moneyline, +102, risking 1 unit. Tampa Bay is 83-57. Texas is 70-71. The better team is the underdog here purely because the game is in Texas, and a plus price on the better team is the shape of bet that costs the least to be wrong about.
Notice the wording changes on this one. The other five plays are quoted as units to win. This one is quoted as units risked, because at a plus price the risk is the round number and the win is not. One unit risked returns 1.02.
The One That Is Easy To Get Wrong
Cleveland and Detroit play two games today, a doubleheader. The pick is game one, first pitch 2:10 pm Eastern. The second game starts at 7:15 and has different starting pitchers and a different price.
This is the single most common way a beginner loses a bet they were right about. The ticket says Guardians, the scoreboard says Guardians won, and it was the wrong game. Always check the start time on a doubleheader before confirming.
The Money, In Plain Numbers
Minus prices are quoted to win. Plus prices are quoted to risk.
| Play | To win | You put up |
|---|---|---|
| Braves/Phillies F5 under 4.5, -300 | 2.00 | 6.00 |
| Mariners -1, -165 | 3.00 | 4.95 |
| Yankees/Padres under 7.5, -120 | 2.00 | 2.40 |
| Guardians ML game one, -129 | 1.50 | 1.94 |
| Red Sox ML, -114 | 1.00 | 1.14 |
| Rays ML, +102 | 1.02 | 1.00 |
| Whole card | 10.52 | 17.43 |
Risking 17.43 to win 10.52 means the card needs to be right 62.36 percent of the time to come out level. Look at the risk column rather than the to win column and the night becomes easy to describe: the first five under is 34 percent of the money and the Mariners are 28 percent. Four of the six bets share the remaining 38 percent between them.
Yesterday, For Context
Yesterday's three play card went 0-3 and lost 16.50 units. A college football moneyline at -240 with five units on it lost outright, which cost twelve units by itself. The Mariners -1 lost 7-4 and the Rays moneyline lost 6-0.
There is a lesson in that for a new bettor and it is the same one as the price table. A -240 bet is not a safe bet, it is a bet that must win 70.6 percent of the time. When it loses, it takes twelve units with it, and no amount of being right about the small bets on the card can repair that. The size of the price and the size of the stake are the same decision, made twice.