FAQ

What is Gambly?

Gambly is a sports betting chatbot designed to help you find and place bets, regardless of how you prefer to bet. The initial vision for Gambly was simply to remove all the struggles sports bettors face today.

If you want to find obscure bets, compare lines on every bet type, or know when specific odds are posted, you shouldn’t need to scour sportsbooks to find this information.

Wouldn’t it be much easier to just tell Gambly things like…

‍“I’d like to place a bet on Sam LaPorta to be the second tight end taken off the board at whichever sportsbook has the best odds.” (This scenario was actually the exact inspiration for Gambly.)

…and then get linked directly to that bet at your desired book.

Or how about “Please let me know when Ja’Marr Chase props are posted at FanDuel or DraftKings.”

‍…and then get a push alert letting you know when these bets are up.

Or maybe “What are the top three player prop bets on overs for Monday Night Football?”

‍…and then receive the three best bets at the best odds, according to real-time market data.

Or how about “I want to bet the Giants over, Cubs under, and White Sox first-five inning moneyline. Find the best parlay odds for me and create the bet.”

‍…and then have a betslip generated that you can easily share with friends and followers, all of whom can click to load your exact bet or entire betting card directly onto sportsbooks. The possibilities are endless.

This is Gambly: your sports betting copilot.

Who is Gambly designed for?

Gambly is designed for bettors of all skill levels with the aim of making it simpler and faster to find the right bets for you, whether you know exactly what you want to bet or need help finding the right wagers.

What sort of things can I do with Gambly and how will it make me a better sports bettor?

As a chatbot trained on historical and real-time sports betting data, Gambly’s ultimate goal is to reduce all the friction involved with getting quality bets placed on sportsbooks. Simply tell Gambly what you’d like to bet or ask Gambly for help in finding the right bets for you.

There’s a wide range of potential uses for Gambly, but some of the main reasons users love Gambly include:

Identify the best bets in real-time based on current market structure
Automatically load your entire betslip onto any sportsbook of your choice–one click from Gambly and there’s no more searching through sportsbooks to find your desired bets
Set alerts to know when bets are posted or when odds change
Find very unique bet types in a matter of seconds with natural language
Create parlays and immediately find the best cumulative odds
Share bets or your entire betslip with friends and followers

Can Gambly help me set alerts?

We literally just told you that you can set alerts. Are you even reading this?

Does Gambly tell me which bets to make?‍

Yes and no.

Gambly is sport- and team-agnostic, meaning we aren’t modeling games or creating projections. We wholeheartedly believe AI will one day be able to predict sports outcomes more accurately than man + machine, but we don’t believe that day is now.

Instead, Gambly helps you:

Identify bets that are right for you
Find the best odds in real-time
Know the expected ROI on your bets (and use these edge calculations to find bets)

So if you ask Gambly something like “What are the best MLB prop bets today?” we can answer this with a reasonable degree of certainty looking at current odds at every sportsbook (and other factors), but we don’t take a stance on bets outside of which are most “off” based on real-time market data.

The most favorable odds across the market on each side of a bet are circled in green within our widgets.

How does Gambly calculate a bet’s edge?

Gambly uses the edge calculations from Unabated–one of the most advanced odds comparison sites available–to determine a bet’s expected ROI. There are a variety of factors that go into these calculations, including:

current market structure (the odds across all sportsbooks in real-time)
historical accuracy of each sportsbook for each sport
derivatives: comparing -6.5 (-110) to -7 (+105) in NFL, for example

Basically, Gambly uses real-time odds across the entire market to establish an accurate “source of truth,” then finds which bets offered at certain sportsbooks are most off from that number. If every sportsbook has the 49ers first-quarter moneyline at -140 except DraftKings, who has it at -120, there’s a good reason to suspect DraftKings’ number is off, especially if they didn’t recently change their odds ahead of others sportsbooks.

This method of betting is called “top-down,” and it has numerous advantages when it comes to making profitable bets.

Note: We show the exact edge percentage for any bet with a positive expected ROI in the top right corner of the bet cell within our widgets.

What’s so great about top-down betting?

There are a multitude of ways to make profitable bets, all of which ultimately come down to determining the “fair price” for a bet and uncovering situations when sportsbooks are most off from that number.

Top-down betting is the optimal path for almost all bettors, though, because it allows one to leverage the cumulative knowledge of other smart bettors. When Pinnacle–a sharp sportsbook that takes action from the best gamblers–moves a line to -115 and FanDuel is still at even money, it signals that Pinnacle has information (likely from a sharp bettor) that signals even money at FanDuel is probably now a good bet.

The benefits of top-down betting include:

Timeless–no need to continually update a model and worry if it’s still beating the market
Ability to leverage the work of sharp bettors
Far larger pool of available bets (albeit at a smaller edge)
More bets, less bankroll variance
A higher degree of confidence in being on the right side
Can be used in combination with a bottom-up handicapping approach

The reality is that almost all bettors are better off starting with a top-down approach and then searching for the bets which are most intriguing to them based on personal factors, which is exactly what Gambly is built to help you do.

What’s Gambly’s betslip integration?

Our betslip integration allows you to load any bet you want directly on the sportsbook of your choosing. Whether it’s a single bet, a parlay, or your entire betslip, one simple click gets you from Gambly to any sportsbook with every requested bet already loaded and ready to go.

No more searching endlessly on a sportsbook or clicking through a plethora of tabs to find the bet you want. Using Gambly, you can get to bets faster than you can on the sportsbooks themselves.

On top of this, our shareable widgets allow your friends and followers to automatically load any of your bets (or your entire betslip) with the same single click. Want to bet together with friends? Gambly makes it fast and easy.

Can I create parlays with Gambly?

Yes. You can create parlays using natural language, i.e. “Give me the best three-leg parlay on DraftKings using the Chiefs over as one of the bets and two player props as the others.”

What are derivatives?

Derivatives are betting markets that are related to the three main markets. This includes a wide range of potential bets, including things like first-half and first-quarter bets, alternative spreads and totals, and so on. Sportsbooks typically derive these numbers using historical models and the current numbers on the main markets.

Pricing these markets can be quite difficult…

Should you bet an NFL favorite at -1 (-115) against the spread or at -125 on the moneyline? How does the answer change if the total is 38.5 versus 51.5?

When looking at alt markets, how do you know which of the many different spreads and totals is mathematically the best option?

Leveraging data from Unabated, Gambly provides you with the expected ROI on these derivatives, letting you compare lines across different markets.

This process is also important for comparing spreads and totals, which are often different across sportsbooks. How often do you see the exact same spread or total across every sportsbook? It’s pretty rare. It’s absolutely pivotal to know if you should be betting over 46.5 (-110) or over 47 (+100).

Building these models to compare apples-to-oranges bets is extremely difficult but absolutely necessary to get the best odds. Gambly does the hard part for you.

What’s synthetic hold and why is it so important?

Hold percentage is the amount of money a sportsbook takes for every dollar wagered. You can calculate it by adding up the implied probability on both sides of a bet. The amount by which it surpasses 100% is the hold.

Synthetic hold is an implied number calculated by looking at every sportsbook and comparing the best possible odds on each side of a bet.

The reason synthetic hold is so important is because low synthetic hold increases the chances of a bettor being profitable by blindly picking one side of a bet. If a market that’s properly priced has -110 on both sides, a bettor must overcome a 4.76% house advantage to win. Compare that to a 2.44% if the best odds on each side are reduced to -105. That’s a giant difference.

Occasionally, synthetic hold can turn negative, meaning it’s long-term profitable to wager on both sides of a bet. If DraftKings has a team at +102 to win and FanDuel has their opponent with the same odds, for example, a bettor can lock in a 1% profit by betting on both teams at their best odds.

When it doubt, you should place bets in markets with low synthetic hold. Not only does synthetic hold tend to be lower in smaller markets (where you should be looking to bet anyway), but it also increases your odds of being right (and paid favorably) just by chance.

Can I exclude sportsbooks from my results?

Yes. While we recommend using every possible sportsbook that’s available in your area, you can choose which sportsbooks you want to see in your settings.

Which sports do you support?

Gambly currently supports NFL, NBA, PGA, MLB, NHL, NCAAF, NCAAB, and WNBA.

Do you have an app?

Yes, we currently have an iOS app in the app store.

Is Gambly free?

Yes. Gambly is currently free for all users. That might not always be the case, but our goal is to keep Gambly completely free as long as possible.

Why should I give you my email?‍

You can use Gambly without giving us your email, but it’s recommended you do for the best experience. In addition to gaining access to more features, such as the ability to set alerts, Gambly can better customize its answers to your specific queries when it has access to your chat logs, which are saved for all free users who provide their email.

Gambly Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ