betting concept
Juice
Also known as: Vig, Vigorish
Juice is the bettor-side term for the commission a sportsbook charges, baked into the odds rather than billed separately. Standard juice on a two-way market is -110, meaning a bettor risks $110 to win $100 on either side.
Juice is the everyday word bettors use for what books call vig or hold. It refers to the price markup on a bet. A line at -110 means you risk 110 units to win 100, even though a coin-flip outcome would only fairly require risking 100 to win 100. The 10 units of “extra” risk is the juice.
Juice varies by market type. Sides and totals on NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL typically run -110 on both sides. Player props run -115 to -120. Same-game parlays compound juice across legs. Futures often have hidden juice exceeding 20%.
Worked example. Two bettors both pick games at exactly 50% accuracy. One bets at -110 (standard juice), the other at -105 (reduced juice, available at low-vig books like Pinnacle or Circa). Across 1,000 bets at $100 each: the -110 bettor loses about $4,545; the -105 bettor loses about $2,439. Same skill, half the loss, purely because of juice.
Reduced-juice books exist precisely because professional bettors will move action there. Most recreational books run -110 or worse because their customer base doesn’t price-shop. Elite Picks always reports the no-juice implied probability on every prop and flags the best available price across the books we track, since the price you take is often more important than which side you take.
The professional move is to never bet at standard juice without confirming nothing better is offered elsewhere. A two-cent difference (e.g., -108 instead of -110) compounds dramatically across volume.
Example
A point spread priced at -110 on both sides has 4.5% juice. To break even, a bettor must hit 52.4% of bets at that price.