The adequacy of any decision should never be assessed purely on its outcome, but instead on how well it reflected the information available at the time. In wagering, that means profitability is often a poor reflection of the ability of the wagerer, although it becomes a fairer measure the longer the time span of wagers we are reviewing.

But there’s another, perhaps better, metric that we can use, and that is the frequency with which the wagerer creates what called Closing Line Value (CLV). Put simply, a bet has positive CLV if, at the line or price at which the market closes, the bet has a positive expected return assuming that the bookmaker’s final line or price provides an accurate estimate of the team’s true outcome probabilities.