Learn · Glossary
Words we use.
The words on our cards, our tools and a sportsbook ticket, one or two plain sentences each. New here? Start here walks you through the site in a few minutes.
Cards and picks
- Card
- A ready-made set of picks for one game, saved before kickoff and graded after it on the official box score.
- Anchors
- The picks a card needs. Every Anchor pick has to hit (or be voided under injury void coverage) for the card to be correct.
- Pick One
- Two picks shown together. On the card it counts if either one hits; on your ticket you choose one.
- Strong Add
- An optional extra pick. Each one you add raises the price and makes the ticket harder to hit.
- Flier
- An optional pick with a bigger payout and a lower chance. Graded on its own.
- Top Chance card
- The card’s version with the highest probability in the game based on our engine.
- Full card
- The card with every tier on it: the Anchors and Pick One picks plus Strong Adds and Fliers.
- Correct
- A card is correct when every Anchor pick hits and every Pick One has a pick that hits. A pick on a player who leaves the game hurt is void, not a miss.
- Medal
- After grading, a correct card gets Eureka!, Gold, Silver or Bronze by how many of its Anchors lineups cashed.
- Lineup
- One combination of picks from a card: the kind of ticket you could take to a sportsbook as a parlay.
- Anchor of the Week
- One game’s Anchor picks each week, free with an account. It’s the card every free member can open.
- Golden Ticket
- One ticket per game, built from that game’s Top Chance card. The tickets are part of Pro; the Golden Ticket page shows how it works and its record, misses included. A ticket can be pulled until the cards seal, 60 minutes before kickoff, if the data changes and the ticket no longer clears our bar; a pulled ticket never counts.
Reads on every game
- Desk call
- Our desk’s grade for how predictable a game is: Prime, Steady, Fair or Wild.
- Engine call
- Our numbers’ read on the same question as the Desk call: how predictable a game is. The Desk call is our desk’s call and the Engine call is our engine’s output. Both are reads on the game, not picks.
- Prime, Steady, Fair, Wild
- The scale both reads use. Prime: the most predictable. Steady: predictable. Fair: mixed. Wild: hardest to predict, play with caution. It’s a read, not a promise.
Our tools and pages
- Locker Room
- Your home on the site once you sign in. A free account’s Locker Room starts with the free card and the free tools; a Pro member’s holds every card and every Pro tool.
- The Desk
- Our free daily page on every game: news, injuries, weather and each game’s Desk call. You can ask the Desk a question there too.
- Easy mode
- The Parlay Builder one pick at a time: we show a pick from the game’s card and you say yes or no. Your ticket builds as you go.
- The full builder
- The Parlay Builder with every pick on the card at once: you keep, swap or drop each one. In the members’ area it sits next to Easy mode.
- Price Check
- Each pick on a card beside its best price at the licensed sportsbooks we follow.
- Best Price Today
- The bets where another licensed sportsbook had a better price than FanDuel at our last price check, biggest difference first. Free with an account.
- Line shop
- The same bet at several licensed US sportsbooks, side by side, so you can see which one has the better price.
- Range Rider™
- Each player’s low, typical and high game for a stat on our numbers, with FanDuel’s line marked. Part of Pro.
- What Changed
- Every line and player-status move since the last update, newest first. Part of Pro.
- WR Double Coverage
- Two receivers on the same team, side by side: you pick the one you like. The record since Week 7 is on its page.
- Usage trends
- How much each player is on the field and gets the ball, week by week, and how each defense does against each position. Free research.
Betting words
- American odds (the price)
- How a bet pays. A minus number is what you bet to win $100 (-110: bet $110 to win $100). A plus number is what a $100 bet wins (+150: a $100 bet wins $150). Prices on our pages are FanDuel’s.
- Parlay
- One ticket with several picks. A bigger price than a single bet, and every pick on it has to hit.
- Leg
- One pick inside a parlay.
- Prop
- A bet on one player or one part of the game (like a receiver’s catches) instead of the final score.
- Line
- The number a pick is about, like 4.5 catches. Over means more than the line; under means fewer.
- Over / under (total)
- A bet on whether a number, a player’s yards or the game’s total points, lands over or under the line.
- Spread
- A head start in points. A team at -3.5 has to win by 4 or more; a team at +3.5 can lose by 3 or fewer, or win, and still cover.
- Moneyline
- A bet on who wins the game, with no points added or taken away.
- Boost
- An odds boost from your sportsbook: it raises the ticket's price.
- Inactives
- The players each team rules out about 90 minutes before kickoff. We check every card again after they post.
- Injury void coverage
- If a player leaves the game hurt, FanDuel’s Bet Protect+ can void his pick instead of counting it as a miss. Bet Protect+ is FanDuel’s feature, not ours.
- Bet Protect+
- FanDuel’s own add-on that can void a pick when the player leaves the game hurt. It’s FanDuel’s feature, not ours; on our record the same rule is called injury void coverage.
- DFS (daily fantasy)
- Fantasy for one slate of games: you pick players under a salary cap, and the slate ends when the games do.
We don’t set odds or take bets. No pick is guaranteed. 21+ | Gambling problem? Call 1-800-MY-RESET or Ohio's 1-800-589-9966.