Every bet comes with a bar it has to clear. The bar is the break-even chance: how often the bet must win just to leave you where you started. Once you can work it out, you can size up a pick from any source in about ten seconds.

The break-even chance does not say a bet is good or bad. It says how good the bet has to be.

Break-even chance = what you risk ÷ what you get back if you win, with your own stake counted in the money back.

The more a bet pays, the less often it has to win. The less it pays, the more often it must.

For odds with a minus sign, like -130, break-even is 130 ÷ (130 + 100) = 56.5%. For odds with a plus sign, like +130, it is 100 ÷ (130 + 100) = 43.5%. For decimal odds, divide 1 by the odds: 1.91 gives 52.4%, and 2.50 gives 40.0%.

A tout can call a pick a "lock", five stars, or the play of the day. Those labels describe how excited they are. They are not a chance of winning. The only hard fact in a pick is the price, and the price sets the bar.

So the useful question is not "is this a good pick?" It is "does this win more often than the price needs?" Nobody can answer that from one bet. But once you know the bar, you know what the answer has to be.

Break-even is what the price needs. It is not the chance the bet wins. Those are two different numbers, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in betting math. KYT estimates the real chance from the pros' price, with the sportsbook's cut taken out, and puts it next to the bar. If the chance clears the bar by more than a point, the result bar is green. Within a point either way, it is yellow. Below that, red.

For entertainment and education. Nothing here predicts results or recommends a bet.