Value betting
Value betting means backing a price that is higher than a fair price for the same outcome, where the fair price comes from a reference the tool chooses.
Everything hangs on the fair price. It is a price with the bookmaker's margin taken out, and it has to come from somewhere: a model, or a market a tool treats as its reference, such as a busy exchange or several bookmakers' prices averaged together. A price above it is a value bet by that reference, and a different reference can disagree.
Removing a margin takes two steps. Take a two-way market a reference bookmaker prices at 1.90 on each side. Each price implies 52.63%, 105.26% in all, and scaling both back to 100% gives 50% each, a fair price of 2.00. Another bookmaker offering 2.20 on the same side is 10% above that fair price. Scaling in proportion is the simplest method, and others spread the margin unevenly across the outcomes.
Each value bet is still one bet. It wins or loses in full, and the case for backing it rests on the average over many bets, which is what expected value measures. That average is only as good as the fair price behind it.
In the OddsRelay feed
OddsRelay's feed carries the prices a tool compares, never a fair price or a value field. On GET /v2/odds/raw each bookmaker's entry in bookmakers[] holds its own prices per market, which is what removing one bookmaker's margin needs, and each exchange quotes back_price and lay_price with no commission applied. exchangesOnly=true returns the exchanges alone.
On the matched feeds each outcome's back[] lists every bookmaker's price, best first, so a tool sets back[0].price against its own fair price for that selection. The feed keeps no price history, so a tool that tracks closing line value (CLV) records the last prices it read before the off itself.
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