How to use this.

What SPOT is

SPOT is a free tool that prices every NFL game strictly by the numbers, since 1999. Ace is the guy who does the pricing. He does not care who wins; he cares whether the number the book hung is wrong. When it is wrong in your favor he says BET. When it is not, he says PASS, and a pass is a full answer, said at the same volume. Every bet he says he would make goes on a public sheet before kickoff, locks at kickoff, and is graded from the final score. That sheet is the record, and nothing on it is ever edited. It costs nothing and it stays free.

The board and the rail

The front page is the board: every game this week that has a verified line. The rail at the top is the same games in kickoff order, opened on the next kickoff, with last night's final at the left end. Tap a card to walk into the matchup.

Early Look

Later games with posted lines appear in Early Look, with the full kickoff date. This Week follows the same Tuesday-to-Monday football week as the archive; dates and times use your timezone. Games move sections as the week changes. A posted line is not itself an Ace pick. Published early picks appear separately on Ace's card and keep their original date, price and place in the record.

A matchup card

Each card shows five things. Here is one, and what each line means.

Next kickoff

The pill at the top of the page says how many games are on the board and when the next one kicks off. “NEXT · Thu 8:15 PM” means the Thursday game is the next one to lock. When a game is live it says so, with the score.

The week

The line under the rail tells you where the week is. Tuesday the lines go up. Wednesday the stories drop. Thursday and Friday the practice reports land, and who sat out changes the read. Sunday morning Ace's card is up. Monday he closes the books on yesterday. Come back on the day that matters to you.

Ace's Spots

Ace's Spots is his card for the week: the bets he would make, and only those. Most weeks it is short. Some weeks it is empty, and it says so instead of padding.

Early Picks holds published positions for later weeks. A ticket with any later leg stays whole in that section, with each leg's kickoff shown. Moving sections does not create another pick or change its stake. The original pick and a new assessment are shown separately; fresh odds do not mean every injury report or other game detail is available yet. Check the storyline's missing information.

A stand

A stand is one bet Ace says he would make: a side, a total, a moneyline, a teaser or a parlay. It goes on the sheet before kickoff with the date, the time, the number and the price. At kickoff it locks: not the side, not the number, not the price can change after that. When the game is final it is graded from the score, once, and never again.

Revised, withdrawn, pending

Units

The sheet runs a paper bankroll. It started at $10,000 and one unit is $100. Nothing real is bet by SPOT. Every straight stand is one unit flat. The parlay is half a unit, because variance costs extra. Each round robin ticket is a quarter unit. The stakes change only on a monthly review, never mid-week.

The teaser

A teaser moves the spread 6 points in your favor on two games, and you need both to win. The reason teasers exist is that football games land on 3 and 7 more than any other margins. A dog at +2.5 teased to +8.5 crosses both 3 and 7 on the way, and that leg has cashed 75.6% of the time since 1999. A favorite teased down is the weaker leg, 73.1%, and it only makes the ticket when our ratings say the favorite wins by enough.

The leans

Under the tickets, every man at the table leans on every pregame game at no stake: Nicky from the sharp number, Frankie from his own line. A lean shows his side at the board's terms, his edge, his cover probability, and the five answers behind it: my number, the board's number, why they differ, what could make me wrong, and whether the edge is enough. A lean that clears his own bar says so; one that does not is shown anyway, because a lean is an opinion, not a stake. Leans are graded against the closing line and the result the same way stands are, and that record, not anyone's say-so, decides who earns the units.

The parlay

A parlay is two or more moneylines on one ticket; every leg has to win. Ace only builds one from legs where our number beats the price, and he only publishes it when the ticket's price beats the legs' odds multiplied together. Two good legs do not automatically make a good ticket, and the card says so when there is none.

The round robin

Take three or more parlay-grade legs and make every pair, and every triple, its own small parlay, a quarter unit each. One leg losing only takes the tickets it sits on; the rest still pay. Same legs, same prices as the parlay, split up so one miss does not zero the play.

Best book

“best: DraftKings -108” names the regulated U.S. book showing the best price on that side right now. Shop it there, or anywhere better. Ten cents of juice is real money over a season.

Reading a line

The spread

KC -3.5 means Kansas City has to win by 4 or more for a bet on them to cash. HOU +3.5 means Houston can lose by 3 or fewer, or win outright, and cash. The minus side is “laying” points; the plus side is “getting” them.

The total

O/U 47.5 is the points both teams score added together. Over cashes at 48 or more. Under cashes at 47 or fewer. Who wins does not matter.

The moneyline

KC -190 / HOU +160 is just who wins. No points given or taken. The favorite costs more; the dog pays more.

The price: -110 and +150

The price is the number after the line, in American odds. A minus number is what you lay to win $100. A plus number is what $100 wins.

The last column is the whole game. At -110 you have to win 52.4% of the time just to stay even, and that extra 2.4% is the book's cut: the juice. A bet is only worth making when it wins more often than that column says it has to.

Favorites and dogs

The favorite is the side laying points, or the minus moneyline. The dog is getting points, or the plus moneyline. Neither is the better bet by itself. The only question is whether the number is wrong.

The half point, 3 and 7

A game cannot land on 3.5, so a spread of 3.5 always wins or loses. A spread of 3 can push: if the favorite wins by exactly 3, the money comes back. That is why a half point matters, and why it matters most around 3 and 7. Since 1999, a game lands on exactly 3 about three times as often as its neighbors, and on 7 about twice as often. Getting +3.5 instead of +3 is not a small thing; it is the difference between cashing and pushing on the most common margin in football.

Inside a matchup

Tap a card and you are in the game's world. Top to bottom, here is what you see.

The faceoff, conditions and the ladder

The two helmets, the kickoff, the bell for “ALERTS ABOUT THIS GAME”, the conditions, and the line. Under it, Where to bet it: the ladder, which is every regulated book's price on each side with the best one named. A one-book feed says so instead of dressing up as a ladder. Exchanges and books outside the US are polled for the sharp anchor but never listed here; the best price is always one you can take.

The storyline and the receipts

The storyline is the story of the game: the quarterbacks, the last meeting, the practice report, the weather. It is built from a fact sheet, and every paragraph carries a receipt. Tap RECEIPT under a paragraph and you see the exact facts it rests on, each with the informant who brought it; tap a fact and it opens in its place on the whole sheet. What we don't know yet lists the gaps out loud, so a missing fact is never a guess. HEAR THE STORY has Ace read it in his own voice. The story never tells you what to bet. The call comes from the number, below.

The wager form

Enter the bet you're looking at, exactly as your book shows it, and Ace prices that, not some other bet. Four taps, one at a time.

On DraftKings, FanDuel or any regulated app, the line and the price sit together on the button you would tap to bet: “HOU +3.5 (-108)”. The first number is the line, the one in parentheses is the price.

The verdict

Hit PRICE IT and you get the call: BET or PASS. Under it, in order: how often we make it win against how often the price needs it to win; why, in points of margin; the fair price; and, on a pass, the number at which it becomes a bet.

One unit

A unit is 1 percent of the money you have set aside for the season. On $1,000 that is $10. Ace never bets more than one unit on anything, and a pass is a full answer. Every BET says so under the call; it tells you how much a unit is, never to bet more.

Type your season money into the small field on THE RECORD and every unit on the site reads in your dollars: the call, the receipts, the pick log, You vs Ace. That number stays on your device and is never sent anywhere. Leave it empty and you get the $1,000 example instead.

The fair price

The fair price is the juice at which this exact bet, at this exact line, breaks even for you. It is always named with its line: “HOU +3.5 at -128”, never just “-128”. Better than the fair price is value; worse is a pass.

Sometimes the fair juice runs past -130, and no book posts a spread at that price; the book moves the number instead. So when you see “no book posts that juice; the number moves”, the sentence goes on to say where: “lay it out to KC -5.5, where our fair price is about -112.” That is the number you can actually shop for.

What moved the model

Each input is in points of final margin for your side. A plus hands your side points; a minus takes them away. Together they add up to our number before the price. Every angle we looked at lists every claim with its numbers: COUNTED moved our number, CONTEXT is what a sharp friend tells you anyway and moved nothing.

Our line vs the board

Points in your favor mean the board gives this side more than our number says it needs. Points against you mean the board asks more of this side than our number gives it. The edge above turns that gap into wins per 100 at the posted price.

Gun to my head

When your side is a pass, I'M ON TILT — JUST GIVE ME THE PICK prices the other side too. If the other side is a real stand, the box says so and hands you that side. If neither clears the bar, it names the least-bad side as exactly that, with the reason it is not a stand. It is never a bet dressed up as one.

Your decision

FOLLOWED MODEL, MY OWN PICK or NO BET. Freeze it and it cannot be rewritten after the result. Your own pick takes its side, line and price, and one reason. Once the game is final it is graded next to Ace's, on the record, under Your picks.

Chat with Ace

Under the wager form. Ace answers from the frozen case for this one game and nothing else. Ask him why he likes it, why he does not, or what would change his mind. How Ace got there under a reply lists the steps he took.

Anything you tell him about the world, an injury, a rumor, a screenshot, is a tip. He thanks you, it goes to the desk to verify, and nothing is re-priced on it. If it checks out, the stand changes with the reason and the sources written down. He does not do “if this is true, then…”. Not his chair.

The record

THE RECORD in the nav. Every stand, when it was published, when it locked, what changed, and how it went. Read it before you trust anything on this site.

The scoreboard

Bankroll by day

The paper balance at the end of each day, as a line. Built from the settled stands and nothing else. Down money on well-priced bets is variance; down money on badly priced bets is a broken model. The bucket table under it tells you which one you are looking at.

The bucket table

One row per kind of bet, because they win at different rates and mean different things.

Won-lost-tied counts settled bets; a tie is a push. How often it wins is wins out of decided bets. What it needs is how often the price has to win just to break even: above that line we are making money, below it we are not, and a row short of its number is marked. In the example the sides are above their number and the teaser legs are below theirs; both are shown, at the same volume. Legs are tracked for accuracy but carry no stake. Seven settled is a week, not a record; the sample is always printed next to the rate.

Why each row needs the number it needs

Every price is the same arithmetic. Take what you risk, divide by what comes back on a win (your risk plus the profit), and that is how often the bet has to win to come out even. The (i) beside each percentage does this sum for that row with the live prices.

The pick log

The closing line

Sharp bettors trust this more than win rate, because it shows up long before wins and losses do, and it does not depend on luck. A bettor who beats the closing line steadily is doing something right even in a losing week.

Ungraded

Waiting on a person lists games that are over but whose score cannot honestly grade the stand: a suspended game, a score feed that disagrees with itself. Nothing there is guessed, and nothing there counts in the numbers above until a person settles it. Bets on games that have not started are never in this list.

You vs Ace

Tap YOU VS ACE in the top bar. Your graded picks sit beside Ace's settled stands, on the same terms: won-lost-tied and units, one unit each at the price taken. Before your first pick goes final it tells you how many are waiting; after that the scoreboard runs all season. Your picks are listed underneath. A pass is a full answer, but it does not score.

Your picks

What you froze, when, what Ace said at the time, and the grade once the game went final. It lives on this device unless you sign in, in which case it follows you.

Tell me when

Tell me when at the top of the board sends an email when a stand publishes, when a stand is pulled, or when the record settles Sunday night. Pick any of the three. Inside a matchup, the bell does the same for that one game only. Every one of them has a STOP next to it. Texts are coming; email for now.

Sharing

Under Ace's straight bets, every stand has Copy, Post to X and, on a phone, Share. What leaves the app is the pick, whose stand it is, when it locks, the record and the link. Nothing else travels with it: no hype, no “lock”.

Report a bug, suggest a feature

Report a bug · Suggest a feature in the footer. A title, what happened or what you want, a screenshot if you have one, and the page you were on. You get a number back; the tracker shows what happens to it. Not every feature gets built, and the assessment says why either way.

Ace's crew: how each man thinks

Every number on the card was priced by one of the crew, and the card says which one. Each man has one method and sticks to it. None of these paragraphs says how good anyone is; the record does that, and it is graded the same way for all of them: did the number beat the closing line, and did it win.

Tips from the crew

Heard something — a quarterback who did not travel, a line that moved? Tell Ace: the game, what changed, what you heard, a screenshot if you have one, and a name for the credit or no name at all. Ace never moves on a rumor. A tip puts the game on watch and sends his informants to check now; only what they confirm can withdraw or revise a stand. When it does, the earliest tip on that game gets the credit, appended to the stand's record for good: “first reported by Tony R., 42 minutes before the wire.” Minutes before the wire is how long before Ace's own feed carried the fact your tip came in. The record lists every tip that moved Ace and each name's count for the season. A tip that never confirms stays between you and the desk; a signed-in tipster gets an email either way.

Signing in

You never have to. Without an account your picks live on this device. Sign in with one link in your email, no password, and your picks follow you from phone to laptop, You vs the crew runs all season, and Tell me when knows your address. Nothing sold, nothing shared.

Responsible play

Bet what you can afford to lose. Everything on this site is priced for the long run; a single Sunday is noise, and a bet that was priced right can still lose. Ace runs on a paper bankroll; your money is real. You have to be 21 or older to bet in the U.S. If it stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER. The number will still be there tomorrow.

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