An honest answer from a site that sells nothing but has an obvious interest in the question.
Every day, hundreds of people post free picks in the r/sportsbook daily threads. The Pick of the Day thread alone runs to around two hundred comments, and the MLB props thread has topped seven hundred in season. All of it is free, none of it is filtered, and the obvious question is whether any of it is worth following.
The short answer is that the picks are close to worthless and the reasoning is often genuinely valuable. Those are two different things, and conflating them is where people go wrong.
Why the picks themselves cannot help you
Nobody has to post their losers. This is the whole problem in one sentence. A thread is not a record. It is a collection of bets people chose to make public, and the selection is not random. Somebody who went two from nine last week and posts today’s play is under no obligation to mention the seven.
The good posts and the confident posts are not the same posts. A comment saying “hammering this, easy money” reads more persuasively than one saying “small play, I think the number is half a point off”. The second is more likely to be from somebody who knows what they are doing.
By the time you read it, the price has moved. A pick posted at nine in the morning with a number attached is often unavailable by evening. Following a pick without checking the current price is following something that no longer exists.
Volume creates winners automatically. With hundreds of picks posted daily, somebody hits a long shot every single day. That person will be visible. The mathematics of that is the same reason selling picks is banned outright across every major betting community, which we go into in why you cannot sell picks on Reddit.
Why the threads are still worth reading
Take the pick out and a lot is left.
Information you did not have. Late scratches, weather, a starter on a pitch count, a coach resting people. The threads pick this up quickly, often faster than news alerts.
Prices you did not know existed. Somebody posts a number better than yours and mentions where they got it. This is the most concretely useful thing in any betting thread, and it is the reason experienced posters hold accounts at several books. Our sportsbook rankings cover which ones are worth having open.
Arguments you have not considered. Reading somebody make a case against your own position is worth more than reading somebody agree with it.
A sense of where the public is. If a thread is unanimously on one side, that is information, and it is not always information in favour of joining them.
How to read a thread properly
- Look for the price, not the pick. A comment with no number in it cannot be evaluated afterwards.
- Prefer the posts that give one clear reason over the ones that give six. Six reasons usually means somebody talking themselves into it.
- Check the account. Somebody who posts every day and acknowledges losses is worth more attention than somebody who appears only after a win.
- Treat unanimity as a warning rather than a confirmation.
- Never follow a pick without checking the current price yourself.
Where we stand on this
We publish game previews and predictions on this site, so we are not neutral, and it would be strange to pretend otherwise.
What we would say is that the useful part of anybody’s analysis, ours included, is the reasoning and the number, not the selection. If a preview tells you a total looks two points high and explains why, you can disagree with it and still be better off for reading it. If it just tells you what to bet, it is worth about as much as a comment in a thread, which is to say not much.
You can judge ours for yourself. Our previews and predictions run across NFL, NBA, MLB and college basketball, and our editorial policy sets out how we do them.
Questions people ask
Are free picks on Reddit worth following?
The picks themselves are not reliable, because nobody is required to post their losing bets and the threads are therefore a filtered sample rather than a record. The reasoning, the injury information and the prices people mention are frequently useful.
Do people on Reddit actually win betting?
Some do, and you cannot identify them from a thread. Without a verified record showing the number of bets, the price taken on each and the period covered, a run of posted winners is not evidence of skill.
Where are free picks posted on Reddit?
Mainly the r/sportsbook daily threads, particularly Pick of the Day, Parlay of the Day and the sport-specific props threads. r/BettingPicks with 40,210 members is the largest moderated dedicated picks community.
Are paid picks better than free ones?
Paying for a pick does not make it more accurate, and the business model of selling picks rewards marketing rather than results. Any record you cannot verify from outside the seller’s own platform should be treated as advertising.
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