Glossary / Books & exchanges / Square book
A ParlayAPI glossary entry

Square book

A square book is a retail-focused sportsbook - DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM are the canonical US examples - whose action comes mostly from recreational bettors and whose prices are shaped to balance entertainment, promotion, and profit rather than to lead the market.

In practice

Square books shade popular sides, push parlays and SGPs, run promotional prices, and limit accounts that consistently beat them. Their lines follow the sharp market with a lag - and that lag, plus promos, is exactly where +EV opportunities against them appear. To be fair, retail books beat sharp books at breadth: vastly more prop markets, better apps, and features like same-game parlays that sharp books don't offer.

Where it shows up in ParlayAPI

The anchor-vs-retail comparison is the core loop of the +EV scanner: devig the sharp anchor, then flag retail prices that beat fair value. Retail books' huge prop menus are a big share of ParlayAPI's 4,000+ prop market keys seen per day.

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