What is a steam move?

A steam move is the same price moving in the same direction across multiple books at once — usually respected money hitting the market. On the flow endpoint these come back as kind=steam with the size of the move in American odds attached.

How is a shift different from steam?

A shift is one book moving its number; steam is the market moving together. A shift play is useful when a single venue keeps leading the rest of the board.

What does whale mean if a book has no trade feed?

Whale plays need trade-level data, so they only fire on venues that expose it. Where a book reports no tape, whale simply does not appear — the play list stays honest rather than fabricating size.

Hobby ($29/mo) and up, on every line book in the registry — bet365, Pinnacle, Betway, Kalshi, Polymarket and the rest.

Steam moves and line shifts: the esports flow API

Every price on a board tells you where the market is. The interesting question is where it just came from — and who moved it first. GET /v7/{sport}/flow answers that: four kinds of movement plays across the whole line-book set, each carrying the thresholds it had to clear.

Four kinds of movement

volume is real trade volume behind a move. shift is a single book moving its number. steam is the market moving together — the classic steam chase. whale flags large-size plays where a venue exposes trade-level data. kind=all is the default; filter with kind=steam and friends.

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  "https://kashrock.up.railway.app/v7/cs2/flow?kind=steam"

What a play looks like

{
  "play_id": "kr_flow_048788019ee10016",
  "kind": "steam",
  "kr_match_id": "kr_cs2_aurora-gaming-vs-betboom-team-05-10-2026",
  "market": "Map 3 Winner",
  "selection": "Aurora Gaming",
  "best_american": -1000,
  "best_source": "betway",
  "steam_american_delta": 1000
}

This play says the Map 3 price on Aurora Gaming moved 1000 points of American odds, and the best remaining price sits at Betway. Every play carries the kr_match_id it belongs to and a stable kr_flow_* id — so you can join it back to the match, log it, and replay why it fired.

Auditable, not a bare alert

Most movement feeds hand you a signal and a vibe. Flow hands you the movement delta that tripped the threshold alongside the play — if a steam flag says the market ran 1000 points, the number is right there to check against the tape on /v7/{sport}/history.

Full contract on the flow endpoint docs and the odds movement API page.

KashRock is an independent data provider, not a sportsbook. Data is for informational and analytical use.