THE MARGIN CURVE · GRADE THE NUMBER

🎯 Cover Probability

What this tool is: you project the game; the market posts a spread. This DRAWS the fight — the bell of possible final margins around YOUR number, the market's line planted in it, the cover region shaded — and prices it: cover %, push %, break-even and EV.

COVER REGIONPUSH BANDMARKET LINEYOUR PROJECTION
Laying points? −3.5 means enter 3.5. Getting points? Enter it negative. Project them to lose? Negative margin.
—COVER PROBABILITY
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Push %
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Break-even
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EV / $100
⚖️ Devig the market first🎯 Size it with Kelly🎰 The Money Room

How NFL cover probability actually works

Every honest projection is the center of a cloud, not a point. Final margins in the NFL scatter around a true projection with a standard deviation near 13.45 points — a fact mined from decades of results, and the reason a 6-point favorite still loses outright three times in ten. When you project a team to win by 6 and the market asks them to cover 3.5, the question is geometric: how much of your cloud lands past their line? That's the shaded region on the curve above, and it computes to about 57% — a real edge over the 52.38% that −110 pricing demands, worth roughly +$9.50 per $100 if your projection deserves to be believed.

Push probability and whole numbers

Spreads on whole numbers (−3, −7) can land EXACTLY, refunding the bet. The calculator carves that push band out of the curve — the gold slice — and conditions the EV on it. It's why sharps pay for the half-point around 3 and 7: those are the tallest slices of the margin distribution, the famous key numbers.

The honest caveat

The math is only as good as the number you feed it — garbage in, precise-looking garbage out. Build your line first, devig the market's price to see its true opinion, run the gap through this page, and size whatever survives with Kelly. That three-step chain is the whole discipline of spread betting, and all three tools live in the Money Room.