How to calculate closing line value

To calculate the closing line value in sports betting, divide your taken odds by no-vig closing odds and subtract by 1. A positive number shows, that you beat the line, which is one of the best indicators of successful sports betting.

How to calculate closing line value in sports betting – practice:

• Taken odds – A
• Closing odds (your bet) – B
• Closing odds (of other outcomes) – C
• Margin – D
• CLV – closing line value
• xCLV – closing line value no vig (margin excluded)
• Fair close odds – E

Formulas:

• Margin = iferror((1/B+1/C),””)
• Fair close odds (1/((1/B)/D),””)
• CLV = iferror((A/B)-1,””)
• xCLV = iferror((A/E)-1,””)

Calculate Decimal odds and US odds (convert with formulas)

• A – decimal odds
• B – US odds

Convert US odds into decimal odds:

• =IFS(B<100,(abs(100/B))+1,B>100,(B/100)+1,B=100, 2, B=-100, 2)

Convert decimal odds into US odds:

• =ifs(A>2, ((A-1)*100), A<2, (-100)/(A-1), A=2,”+100″ )

Professional sports bettors talk about closing line value

Closing line value is one of the most important topics in sports betting communities and it needs to be explained how to calculate it. There is a lot of talk about it, many try to calculate it, many understand the importance of it, but it needs to be explained further.

I’m realizing why I’m getting so much opposition on closing line value being more important than results.

Very few bettors can consistently beat the closing line so in order to support their short term winning results, they discredit CLV.

Reality dose:

No CLV means you suck

— spanky (@spanky) January 12, 2021

Why closing line value is so important?

When it comes to sports betting and sports bettors, we always ask ourselves does our betting even makes sense. Closing line value gives us a good picture of our results and it is more reliable than ROI or Yield.

The problem is that the whole betting community is focused on hype, a small sample size of bets, and profit. Sometimes yield (ROI) and that’s it.

Why Yield and ROI is not enough

Yield (or ROI) and the profit is usually not enough to make a conclusion about your betting performance. We all know that 97% of all bettors lose in the long run and only a few make a profit and what is even more important, only a few are skilled and beat the market.

Bookmakers who accept sharp bettors have a big sample size of bets

And if we check Twitter, betting portals, monitoring sites, etc… they all win. It looks like a much bigger percentage than only 3%. This is where common sense comes into play.

The only real source that has a big sample size of bets are bookmakers. One of such bookmakers is Pinnacle and they have a huge sample size of bets from real players and they openly say, that this is the most important indicator (yes, even more crucial than profit or yield or ROI).

From the article (How to solve a problem like an efficiency):

“Pinnacle’s Head of Trading Marco Blume has made it clear that a reliable indicator of whether a bettor holds long term profitable expected value – that is to say they are sharp – is whether they can beat the closing line.”

Quick Theory of CLV

• The betting market will open (Stage 1), bettors will bet (Stage 2) and it will close with the last minute odds (Stage 3)
• Bettors will bet and the price (the odds) will start to form from the time of opening till the kickoff
• The odds just before the game starts will include all the information about the market and because of this, the last price is the most efficient.
• You can not beat efficient markets once all information is already included in the current odds (price). This happens at closing time, just before the game will start.
• In other words, if you bet just before the game, you’ll lose in the long run (margins will eat you alive) and because of this, you must compare your taken odds vs closing odds.
• You should track your taken bets versus closing bets to see if you get a better price than they are at closing time

CLV and xCLV

There are two ways how to calculate the closing line value and most betting sites and bettors calculate only CLV. This is simply comparing your taken odds versus closing odds.

But not many track their taken odds versus pinnacle (or other sharp bookmakers) no-margin (no vig) odds. In very efficient markets like NFL for example you must beat the line (excluding vig).

As you will see, once you start tracking closing line value, having xCLV is much harder than CLV.

But the very first step into the next level of betting is to start tracking your closing line value.

Do you want to learn how to use simple statistics in sports betting? Start with the free betting course!