betting concept
Vig
Also known as: Vigorish, Juice, Margin
Vig is the sportsbook's built-in commission on a bet, expressed as the percentage by which the combined implied probabilities of all outcomes exceed 100%. It is how books guarantee profit independent of bet outcomes.
Vig (short for vigorish, also called juice) is the fee a sportsbook bakes into its odds. Instead of charging a separate commission, the book shades both sides of a market so the implied probabilities sum to more than 100%. The excess is its margin.
Standard juice on a two-way line is -110/-110, which produces about 4.5% vig. Player props commonly run at -115/-115 or worse, pushing vig to 7-10%. Same-game parlays can carry 20-30% vig because each leg compounds the margin. Lower-juice books like Pinnacle or Circa, and offshore markets, sometimes run two-way markets at -105/-105 or tighter, giving sharp bettors a structural edge.
Worked example. A book lists a player over/under 22.5 points at -120/+100. The over’s implied probability is 54.5%; the under’s is 50.0%. Combined: 104.5%, so vig is 4.5%. To find the no-vig probability of the over, divide its implied by the total: 54.5 / 104.5 = 52.2%. The market’s fair view is that the over hits 52.2% of the time; the rest is the book’s margin.
Vig is the single biggest reason recreational bettors lose. A bettor who picks games at exactly 50% accuracy still loses 4.5% per bet to vig on a standard line. Beating vig requires either picking winners well above 52.4% on -110 lines, or finding better prices through line shopping. Elite Picks always strips vig from market lines before computing edge so the EP score reflects true probability gaps, not artifacts of book margin.
Example
A market priced -110/-110 has implied probabilities of 52.4% on each side, summing to 104.8%. The 4.8% excess is the vig.