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

Open any Knicks game on the 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 worked out, using tonight's game in Chicago as the example.

On Wednesday morning, ESPN's odds panel showed DraftKings with the Knicks at -278 to win, the Bulls at +225, the Knicks -7.5 on the spread and a total of 233.5. Those are one book's prices at one moment; the game page has every venue's current quote.

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 -278, that is $278. A plus number marks the underdog and tells you what $100 earns: at +225, $225.

Spread. The favorite gives points and the underdog gets them. At Knicks -7.5, New York has to win by eight or more for that side to cash; Chicago cashes by winning outright or losing by seven or fewer. The price attached to the spread is the cost of taking that number. DraftKings had the Knicks side at -105 and the Bulls side at -115, so taking Chicago's side cost a little more. Sportsbooks usually hang NBA spreads somewhere 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. At 233.5, the over needs 234 combined points and the under needs 233 or fewer. For scale, none of the Knicks' first four games got there: they finished with 206, 210, 213 and 208 combined points. A total is a number for one game, not a season average, and it moves with injury news and pace.

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. +225 returns $225.
• Minus odds: divide 100 by the odds, then multiply by 100. -278 returns $35.97; -105 returns $95.24; -115 returns $86.96.
• 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.

Fees differ by venue and by when you trade. Kalshi's taker fee is built on a 7% rate. On Novig, a straight position taken before tip-off on the app or web carries no fee, so a 60-cent contract returns the full $66.67. Once the game is live, a taker on Novig pays a fee, at the rate on Novig's fee schedule. Makers, the traders whose resting orders get filled, pay nothing on Novig.

The same side, three venues and three different answers. That gap 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 the comparison is clean. On spreads and totals it holds only when two venues are dealing the same number. If one book has the Knicks -7.5 and another -7, the row is flagged, because in the NBA the half point can matter as much as the price: a seven-point Knicks win cashes -7 as a push and loses -7.5.

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.

Take the DraftKings prices above. On the moneyline, -278 implies 73.5% and +225 implies 30.8%, which adds to 104.3%: a hold of about 4.3%. On the spread, -105 implies 51.2% and -115 implies 53.5%, for 104.7%. A book dealing -110 on both sides implies 52.4% twice, or 104.8%. That margin is set before anyone touches the ball.

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 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. NBA lines can move faster than that, most of all when a starter is ruled in or out in the hours before tip-off. Use the board to see which venue tends to pay more on which side, then check the live price before you act. Games leave the board once they tip off, and the game page flips to the score. The Knicks schedule lists every game coming up.

The board is for readers 21 and older.