Vig

Vig (Vigorish)

You bet $110 on the Lakers to cover the spread at -110. They cover. You win $100. That extra $10 you risked to win $100? That's the vig working its way through your bankroll. Every time you place a bet at a sportsbook, the vig is the cut the book takes, baked into the odds before you even click confirm. Sharp bettors obsess over it because it's the single biggest reason most casual bettors lose long-term even when they hit 50% of their picks.

What vig actually is

Vig (short for vigorish, also called "juice" or "the cut") is the commission a sportsbook charges for accepting your bet. It's not a separate fee. It's hidden inside the odds.

When both sides of a coin-flip bet pay the same amount, that's a fair game with 0% vig. Real sportsbooks never offer fair games. They shift the odds so the implied probability of all outcomes adds up to more than 100%, and the excess is their guaranteed profit.

The classic American football line: Lakers -3 (-110), Warriors +3 (-110). If you bet $110 to win $100 on either side, the book always wins $10 when an equal amount comes in on both sides. That equal-money scenario almost never happens in real life, but the vig structure is how they price for it.

How to calculate vig from odds

Here's the math. Take any two-way market (Team A vs Team B with no draw). Convert each side's odds to implied probability:

For American odds:

• Negative odds (-110): probability = 110 / (110 + 100) = 52.38%
• Positive odds (+100): probability = 100 / (100 + 100) = 50.00%

Add both implied probabilities. If they sum to more than 100%, the excess is the overround, and the vig is the overround divided by the total.

Example with standard -110/-110:

• Side A: 52.38%
• Side B: 52.38%
• Total: 104.76%
• Overround: 4.76%
• Vig: 4.76 / 104.76 = 4.54%

That 4.54% is what the book is taking out of the pool. Means even if you call coin flips perfectly (50% accuracy), you lose 4.54% of every dollar wagered over enough bets. You need to hit 52.38% to break even.

For decimal odds (1.91/1.91):

• Side A: 1 / 1.91 = 52.36%
• Side B: 1 / 1.91 = 52.36%
• Total: 104.72%
• Vig: 4.51%

If you want to skip the math, our no-vig calculator strips this out automatically. Feed it the two-sided odds and it tells you the "fair" odds with vig removed.

Vig varies hugely by sportsbook

Not all books charge the same vig. This matters more than most casual bettors realize:

Pinnacle famously runs lean vig because their model is high-volume, low-margin. They take sharp action other books refuse. DraftKings and FanDuel charge nearly double Pinnacle's vig on standard markets because they target recreational bettors who don't shop lines.

The difference is huge over a season. Bet $10,000 across a season at 4.5% vig vs 2.5% vig, and you save $200 in expected loss just by line-shopping. Most casual bettors leave that money on the table.

Vig is much higher in alternate markets

Standard sides and totals run 4-5% vig. Props and parlays explode much higher:

• Player props: 8-12% vig is common
• Same-game parlays: 15-25% effective vig (because of correlation)
• Long-shot futures (championship winner): 15-30% vig spread across all teams
• In-game live betting: 6-10% vig on standard markets

The book widens the margin where they think you have less information. You think you know if LeBron hits over 25.5 points? The book is pricing it with double the vig of a standard spread because they assume you're guessing.

How sharps fight vig

There's no way to make vig disappear, but sharp bettors minimize its impact:

Line shopping. Different books post different lines. Sometimes you can take Lakers -3 at -105 instead of -110. Saves you $5 per $100 bet. Over a year, that's hundreds of dollars.

Reduced juice promos. Some books occasionally offer -105 instead of -110. Pounce on these.

Bet the better side of off-market lines. When Pinnacle has Lakers at -2.5 and DraftKings has them at -3, the Lakers bet at -2.5 has lower implied vig.

Skip high-vig markets. SGPs and player props are usually -EV unless you have specific information edges. Most pros stick to standard sides and totals.

Use rebates. Some offshore books and exchanges (Betfair, ProphetX) refund a percentage of losses, effectively reducing vig.

Common mistakes around vig

Mistake 1: Thinking 50% win rate means break-even. At -110/-110, you need 52.4% to break even. Hitting "around half" your bets is a slow bleed.

Mistake 2: Not factoring vig into prediction accuracy claims. A tout brags about 53% win rate. Sounds good. But at standard vig, that's about +0.5 units per 100 bets after juice. Almost nothing.

Mistake 3: Ignoring vig on parlays. A 4-team parlay at standard odds compounds the vig of each leg. The book's effective edge can hit 20% even though each leg looks "only" 4.5%.

Mistake 4: Shopping odds but not lines. Getting -108 on the Lakers -3 is fine, but if another book has them at -2.5 -110, the half-point is worth more than the price difference.

Why this matters for your bankroll

Vig is the reason most bettors lose money long-term even when they win half their bets. The book doesn't need you to be wrong. The book just needs you to keep playing through their juice.

If you take nothing else from this page: when you compare bets, always think in terms of true probability after stripping vig, not the odds on the screen. The no-vig calculator does the work for you.

For the bigger picture on managing the long-term math, see our Kelly criterion calculator which factors vig into optimal bet sizing.