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

Open any Nuggets 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 table lines up the same position across every venue that quotes it. This is what the columns mean and how each number is worked out, using one real line: DraftKings' price on tonight's game against Toronto at Ball Arena, as ESPN listed it at about 2:30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

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. A plus number marks the underdog and tells you what $100 earns. DraftKings had Denver at -191 and the Raptors at +160: $191 on the Nuggets to make $100, or $100 on Toronto to make $160. The same listing shows where the line opened, at -217 and +180, so the price has drifted toward the Raptors since.

Spread. The favorite gives points and the underdog gets them. DraftKings had Denver -4.5, down from -5.5 at the open. The Nuggets have to win by five or more for that side to cash; Toronto cashes by winning outright or losing by four or fewer. The price attached to the spread is the cost of taking that number: -112 on Denver and -108 on Toronto, so laying the points cost slightly more than taking them. Sportsbooks usually hang spreads somewhere near -110. A prediction market, where the two sides are matched trader against trader, tends to sit closer to even.

Total. Ignore who wins and add the two scores together. DraftKings had tonight's total at 231.5, with the over at -107 and the under at -113. The over needs 232 combined points; the under needs 231 or fewer. Denver's first six games have produced 180, 276 (with overtime), 248, 195, 247 and 228 points, a reminder of how far one game can land from the number.

These are examples of how the board reads, not a recommendation, and the prices will have moved by the time you see them.

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. +160 returns $160.
• Minus odds: divide 100 by the odds and multiply by 100. -191 returns $52.36; -112 returns $89.29; -108 returns $92.59.
• A prediction-market contract priced at p (65 cents is 0.65) with a fee rate r: profit = 100 / (p × (1 + r × (1 − p))) − 100.

Take a Nuggets contract at 65 cents, the equivalent of about -186. With no fee, $100 buys 153.85 contracts and a win pays $53.85 in profit. At Kalshi's 7% fee rate, part of the $100 goes to the fee instead of contracts, and the profit falls to $50.17. The same formula gives the standard check figure: a 60-cent contract returns $66.67 with no fee and $62.13 at a 7% rate.

How Novig's fee fits in

Novig's fee depends on when and how you trade, per its published fee schedule as of November 2026:

• Pre-game straight trades on the app or website carry no fee, so a 65-cent Nuggets contract bought before tip-off returns the full $53.85 per $100.
• Live (in-game) trades that take a resting order pay a taker fee that scales with price; the schedule's fee table sets it at 0.06 × price × (1 − price) per contract. At that rate the same 65-cent contract returns $50.68.
• Makers, traders whose resting order is the one that gets filled, pay nothing at any time.

The board prices games before tip-off, which is why Novig's rows there carry no fee.

Best price and the gap

Every table is sorted by the per-$100 figure, highest at the top, and the leader is tagged Best. Novig is pinned to the first row so you always see it, and each row underneath shows how many dollars it gives up against the leader on the same $100. On the moneyline that comparison is clean. On spreads and totals it holds only when two venues deal the same number; if one book has the Nuggets -4.5 and another -5, the row is flagged. In a sport where late free throws settle a lot of spreads, the half point can matter as much as the price.

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 up to 100%. Anything above that is what the venue keeps.

DraftKings' moneyline above implies 65.64% for Denver (-191) and 38.46% for Toronto (+160). Together that is 104.10%, a hold of 4.10%. The spread, at -112 and -108, comes to 104.75%, a 4.75% hold, and the total, at -107 and -113, to 104.74%. All three are set before the opening tip.

A prediction market has no house taking the other side, so its two sides usually add up to within a point or so of 100%. A market with the Nuggets at 65 cents and the Raptors at 36 adds to 101 cents, a hold of about 1%. What is left is simply 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 move fastest in the last few hours before tip, when injury reports firm up; Denver listed Cameron Johnson as day-to-day going into tonight. Use the board to see which venue tends to pay more on which side, then check the live price before you act. Tonight's game page carries the full comparison until tip-off, then turns into the score and, after the final, the recap. The Nuggets' full schedule is on the team page.

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