What Does Juice Mean In Betting
There are many different types of juice in this world, but other than MLB-level steroids the one type of juice you want to minimize your exposure to is sports betting juice. Otherwise known as vigorish or vig in the sports betting industry, the juice is defined as the fee that the sportsbook charges every single time you make a wager.
The vigorish, often known as the vig, the take or the juice, is the Sportsbooks commission for taking your bet as a percentage profit on the bets made on an event. Without the vig there would be no advantage for the bookmaker to take your bets, because there would be no margin for them unless everyone constantly placed losing bets. Quite simply, the vig, vigorish, or juice, is the house edge. The word itself carries a bit of a negative connotation because it is also used to describe the usually high interest charged by loan sharks. The goal of every sportsbook is to set lines that draw an equal amount of action to either side of a bet.
Without the juice, sportsbooks would have a much harder time making a profit from their operation. In fact, the juice is so powerful that it sometimes allows the books to make money no matter what the outcome of the sporting event happens to be.
While it is possible to find bets that do not have any juice, a majority of the bets you make in sportsbook will be charging you a small fee. The only bets that do not charge any juice will have their odds listed as “EVEN”, which means that it is a completely fair bet.
How Does Juice/Vig Work?
Sportsbooks are companies that have the sole purpose of making money and the juice is exactly what allows them to get the job done. Let’s assume that you place a $1000 bet on the Los Angeles Lakers to win their game against the Boston Celtics at -110 odds. Meanwhile, another bettor places a $1000 bet on the Boston Celtics that is also listed at -110 odds.
If the Lakers win their game then you win your bet and the sportsbook has to pay you but they do not have to pay the other bettor who chose the Celtics. This means that the sportsbook got to collect the juice from both players but only had to give a payout to you, which guarantees them a small profit overall. The exact same thing will happen if the Celtics win the game since the odds are the same, except that the other player will get paid out instead of you while the sportsbook still collects their profit from the juice.
Just looking at this scenario should explain to you why sportsbooks like to change the amount of juice they charge from time to time. They would like to keep their investment on both sides of the game as close to even as possible since they are guaranteed a profit from the rake if they can manage to do this. If one side is getting far more betting action than the other side then they will sometimes change the juice to tempt bettors to choose the less popular side and even things out a little bit.
How Do You Calculate Juice/Vig?
Instead of guessing how much juice you are being charged on a bet you can plug some variables into a very simple equation and figure it out for yourself. The equation which will allow you to solve for how much juice you are being charged in a two-team event is shown below:
Vig/Juice = 100 x (1 – (p1 x p2/ p1 +p2))
It is a lot easier to understand what this equation is saying once you know that the variables p1 and p2 are simply the payouts for each side of the bet in decimal form. If the odds in question are listed in fraction form then you simply need to divide the denominator (or bottom number) into the numerator (or top number) and then add 1 to convert the fraction to decimal form.
The best way to learn how to calculate the juice is to practice with an example. If you look at the Houston Astros moneyline bet against the Cleveland Indians this evening you will see the odds are set at 1.66 while the Cleveland Indians moneyline bet has the odds set at 2.25. Simply plugging these numbers into the aforementioned equation will show that the juice percentage is equal to 100 x (1 – (1.66 x 2.25/1.66 + 2.25) which simplifies down to 100 x (1 – 0.9552) and gives you a final answer of 4.48% juice.
It is very important to note that most American sportsbooks tend to list their bets in moneyline format which means that you should know how to convert those numbers into a decimal format so that you can plug them into the juice equation above. If the moneyline number is higher than 0 you simply divide it by 100 and then add 1. If the moneyline number is less than 0, you will divide 100 by the moneyline amount without the negative sign and then add one.
Why Does Juice Vary So Widely?
After perusing all of the betting options at your local sportsbook you might notice that the amount of juice they charge on each bet can vary from no juice at all to quite a lot of juice. There are many reasons for why this could be the case, but a general explanation is that the juice will always be set where the sportsbook feels like they can make a profit and in different situations that number can fluctuate wildly.
One of the big advantages you get from betting on major markets such as the NFL or NBA is that your juice will be lower compared to the smaller markets. The main reason for this is because the sportsbooks take their major market lines very seriously and focus most of their attention on making sure they are correct which is why they are confident enough to charge less juice. However, this advantage is usually counteracted by the fact that smaller markets usually impose a cap on how much you can wager for each sporting event.
Another time that you will notice you are being charged a lot of juice is when you are live-betting in an online sportsbook as the event is happening. Even though these bets can give you extra entertainment during a sporting event that you are watching, you will need to wager more money in order to win the same payout amount you would have won if you had bet on the same result before the game started. The exact amount of extra juice for a live bet varies from site to site but it will generally be around 10% higher than usual.
Finally, a good way to avoid paying higher vig is to pay attention to the type of sports bet you are making. For example, parlay bets might seem enticing at first because of the insanely high payouts that are available if you include a ton of teams in your bet. Unfortunately, it turns out that the more teams you pick the higher juice you are paying since you are not going to get paid anywhere close to the true odds for your wagers. In fact, sportsbooks in Nevada recently reported that they are holding around 30% of all parlay bets that have been made since 1984 which is around 10 times higher than what they keep from straight bets in any single sport.
Why is Juice Important?
We have already mentioned the importance of juice when it comes to the sportsbooks’ side of things, but how does it apply to you as a sports bettor? How can the act of focusing on the amount of money that someone else is charging you to make your bets help you in any way?
The fact of the matter is that juice is something that all serious sports bettors should be paying close attention to. For starters, if you know how high the juice is then you can calculate how often you need to win your bets to make a profit, which is critical information to know.
Another reason why juice is important is that you can use it to figure out when the best time to make your wager will be. If the juice is higher than you are comfortable with then you can simply wait for it to lower before you make any bets.
It is also occasionally true that a change in the juice for a certain bet signifies a possible line change coming for that wager in the near future. This is extremely advantageous for a sports bettor to be aware of because if you perceive a line change will happen that favors the team you were going to bet on then you can simply wait for the change to happen and then get better odds on your bet. Conversely, if the possible line change does not favor the team you were going to bet on then you can quickly place your bet before your odds become worse.
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If you are just starting out in your sports betting adventure, you might have heard the terms “juice” or “vig” many times, but likely don't know what it means. Here we will explain what is juice (or what is vig) and how it all works in the sports betting world.
What is Juice? Juice Explained
Juice or “vig” is simply the percentage a sportsbook “charges” for offering odds on sports betting events.
As we all know, there are no membership fees to join and bet at a sportsbook and contrary to the popular belief, the sportsbooks don't make money from the people that lost their bets. Well, we should probably say that their goal is not to have losers betting, but have equal amounts on each side of the bet. Naturally, this is nearly impossible to achieve, so the sportsbooks do sometimes make money from people losing their bets and other times can get obliterated by winning bettors. But that's a topic of a different conversation.
Getting back on track to the “juice” and “vig”, which are two sports betting terms describing the exact same thing. The sportsbooks have built-in profit maker in the odds, which many bettors refer to as “juice” or vig, which is short for vigorish. The most simple way of explaining and understanding juice in betting is to think of it as a percentage of each bet the book charges the bettor, or if you are a poker player – look at it as a rake.
How Juice works? / How vig works?
With most betting lines, the juice is not really apparent, but you can spot it and understand it completely if you look at one popular betting option -the over/under bet. If you pick a sport and look at the over/under lines, let's say and NBA game, you will see something like:
Total 201.5 points
Over: -110
Under: -110
You know how the total bet works – the sportsbook selects the most likely total of the scores of each team and then offers odds on whether the actual score will be over or under that total. If the sportsbook's odds makers did their job, both over and under will have 50% chance of occurring. Yet if you look at the odds, you will see that they are not “even”, as one would expect, but -110, i.e. you have to bet $110 to win $100. Where did the extra $10 come from? Well, my friend, that's exactly what the juice is and how the vig works. The sportsbook tries to get even amount of money on each side of the bet, in this example case the over/under on the NBA game, and juices up the odds to make profit from both sides of the bet. If ten people bet to win $100 each on over (i.e. $110 wagered per bettor) and ten people bet to win $100 on under, in the end, the money will simply travel from one side to the other. But the sportsbook, thanks to the juice, will make cool $200 ($10 vig on every bet) fee for offering the odds. While it's not as easy to see the juice on most betting lines, know that it's always there.
Low Juice Sportsbooks
While every sportsbook will charge vig, or have juice in the odds, otherwise it would be one very risky and most likely, unprofitable operation, not all sportsbooks have the same juice in the odds. The industry standard among the top sportsbooks is the so-called dime line. You can read more about it in our betting glossary. And there are betting sites with extremely high juice, praying on unsuspecting recreational bettors, those should be avoided at all costs, no matter how little you may bet. There is no need to throw away your money and we will never have a high vig sportsbook listed among the sportsbooks we recommend.
What Does Mean In Betting 110
On the other side, there are low juice sportsbooks, although not many of them, to be perfectly honest. One of the most popular and reputable low-juice sportsbook is 5Dimes, which has always offered low juice lines on all their betting markets and is The Low Juice Sportsbook for US players. Another trusted low juice sportsbook is Pinnacle, which unfortunately does not allow players from the USA to join and bet with them. Those two sportsbooks are a perfect example of low juice sportsbooks and you can visit them to compare odds with other betting sites to see examples of the vig we explained earlier.
What Does Juice Mean In Betting
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