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Juice, Vig, Margin, Overound - the bettor's enemy

If you're into betting or are looking to start you need to be aware of the terms above. These refer to how much profit margin a bookie makes on any given market they price up.

Taking a football game as an example, Man Untied v Tottenham - in terms of probability, the chances of Man United winning, the match being a draw or Tottenham winning is 1 (or 100%), i.e. one of these outcomes MUST happen.

Bookies draw up their odds by allotting each of these events a probability of happening, as an example lets say they're all equally likely to happen, so each outcome is allotted a third, our book on this market looks like:

Man U - 33.3%
Draw - 33.3%
Tottenham - 33.3%

Our book now adds up to 100% (near enough). A bookie will add in a percentage so that they make a theoretical profit when the event is over, all things being equal. This is typically 10-20% depending on the bookie. When our amended probabilities are added together to take this into account our book now comes to 115%.

This is the Juice, Vig, Margin or Overound.

The higher the margin that is included, the worst (shorter/lower) the odds will be on one side of the bet, this is fine if you're betting on the other side as you'll get better (longer/higher) odds for the outcome you favour, but what if your backing the shorter side?

By shopping around you can usually get better (longer) odds on the outcome that you favour.

This is why it pays to have an account with more than one book and why there isn't just one bookie that everyone uses.

NB: Juice and Vig are American terms whilst Margin and Overound are used in the UK and Europe.

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