How to read the Big Ten board: moneyline, spread, total and the hold

Open any Big Ten game on the weekly board and you get six tables: the two sides of the moneyline, the two sides of the spread and the over and the under on the total. Each one lines up the same position across every venue that quotes it. This is what the columns mean and how they are calculated.

Three ways to price one game

Moneyline. Pick the winner, nothing else. A minus number marks the favorite and tells you what you would have to put up to clear $100 in profit: at -200 that is $200. A plus number marks the underdog and tells you what $100 earns: at +170, $170.

Spread. The favorite gives points, the underdog gets them. Take a made-up line of Wisconsin -3.5 against Minnesota. Wisconsin has to win by four or more for that side to cash; Minnesota cashes by winning outright or losing by three or fewer. The price attached to the spread is the cost of taking that number. Sportsbooks usually hang it around -110. A prediction market, where the two sides are matched trader against trader, tends to sit much closer to -100.

Total. Ignore who wins and add the two scores together. If the total is 44.5, the over needs 45 combined points and the under needs 44 or fewer. Big Ten totals swing more than most fans expect: a week that includes a 17-15 game in Eugene and a 45-16 game in Columbus covers a lot of ground.

The per-$100 column

American odds and contract prices do not compare at a glance, so the board turns every quote into one figure: the profit a winning $100 position returns.

• Plus odds: the profit is the number itself. +170 returns $170.
• Minus odds: divide 100 by the odds, then multiply by 100. -160 returns $62.50; -150 returns $66.67.
• A prediction-market contract priced at p (60 cents is 0.60) with a fee rate r: profit = 100 / (p × (1 + r × (1 − p))) − 100. At 60 cents with no fee that is $66.67. At 60 cents with a 7% fee rate it falls to about $62.13, because part of the $100 goes to the fee instead of contracts.

The same team, the same side, three venues and three different answers. That spread between answers is the reason the column exists.

Best price and the gap

Every table is sorted by the per-$100 figure, highest at the top, and the leader is tagged Best. Each row underneath shows how many dollars it gives up against that leader on the same $100. On the moneyline that comparison is clean. On spreads and totals it only holds when two venues are dealing the same number; if one book has Iowa +6.5 and another +7, the row is flagged, and the half point matters as much as the price.

The hold

If you read one column, read this one. Turn both sides of a two-way market into implied probabilities and add them. A perfectly fair market adds to 100%. Anything above that is what the venue keeps.

A sportsbook dealing -110 on both sides implies 52.4% twice, or 104.8%. That extra 4.8% is the house edge, set before the ball is kicked. A prediction market has no house taking the other side, so its two sides usually add up to within a whisker of 100%; what is left is simply the distance between the best buy and the best sell on the order book.

The board prints each venue's hold beside its row, worked out from that venue's own two prices at the moment of the fetch. It says nothing about who wins. It tells you what the venue charges to take part.

How fresh the numbers are

The board refreshes roughly every ten minutes. Game-day lines in this conference can move faster than that, especially around injury news, and there has been plenty of that this season. Use the board to see which venue tends to pay more on which side, then check the live price before you act. Games drop off once they kick off, and the game page flips to the score.