Among the main challenges for a pro bettor is finding places that will take your money. If you show signs of being good, or even just highly methodical, most sportsbooks will drastically limit how much you can wager. But there are ways around this. Sharps, as pros are known, often employ surrogates to place bets on their behalf in exchange for a share of the winnings. Or they “prime” their accounts by making wagers that a casual bettor, or square, typically would.
“If I open an account in New York, maybe for a few weeks I just bet the Yankees right before the game begins,” says Rufus Peabody, a pro bettor and co-host of the Bet the Process podcast. If this trick works, the book sees these normie, hometown bets as a sign that it’s safe to raise his limits. That gives Peabody a bigger purse to work with when he switches to making bets he thinks will pay out—and that the book will likely recognize as coming from a skilled player. The idea is to win as much as you can before the house catches on.