It is amazing to us how predictably bad sports bettors are at money management. Case in point, the phenomena of reduced juice betting, laying -105 or -107 instead of -110. Reduced juice betting is one. The term “Juice” is actually a slang term for Vigorish or “Vig”. In sports gambling is the amount of money or commission a sports book receives for taking your bet. Most of the time, the sports books takes a.

1. Definition Of Sports Betting
2. Juice In Sports Betting

You should try to explore every possible avenue for maximizing the potential returns on your sports
wagers. This is a good idea even if sports betting is just something you do for a bit of fun. It’s especially
important if you’re serious about making consistent and long term profits.

There are some obvious ways to maximize your returns when betting on sports. These include learning
as much strategy as possible, and working on improving your fundamental betting skills. There are other
options too, some of which a lot of bettors don’t even know about.

One such option is betting with reduced juice. This is something that every serious bettor should be
aware of, but there’s a surprising amount of confusion and misconception regarding the term reduced
juice. We say surprising because the basic concept is very simple. And yet there are plenty of people
who don’t really understand it all. There also those who think it’s only for high rollers, which is simply not true.

The purpose of this article is to explain exactly what reduced juice betting is. We also look at its pros and cons, and
compare it to using the bonuses and free bets that are available from any betting sites. For those of you who already understand
the concept, we start the article by covering where to bet if you’re looking for reduced juice. Or, for a general overview, you can
view the video we have put together below:

Where to Bet with Reduced Juice

You have two options when looking to bet online with reduced juice. These are as follows.

1. Use a specialist reduced juice site.
2. Use a “traditional” sports betting site that offers reduced juice on specific lines or at specific times.

An account with a specialist reduced juice site is almost essential if you’re anything more than the most casual of sports bettors. It’s unlikely you’ll want
to do ALL of your wagering with such a site though. In any case, there are not many high quality examples of specialist reduced juice sites.

So it’s also worth having an account with one or more of the other sites that offer SOME reduced juice lines. You’ll understand the reasons why we
recommend this approach once you’ve read the whole of this article. For now, here are top recommendations for reduced juice betting sites.

Reduced Juice: An Explanation

Let’s start with the word juice. You’re probably familiar with the term vig, or vigorish, if you’ve been betting for any length of time. This is a term used to
describe the commission that’s effectively charged by bookmakers on each and every bet that they take. Juice is simply an alternative word used to
describe the same thing.

If you’ve never heard of vig or juice at all, or really don’t understand the terms, then you should read our
article on how bookmakers make money before proceeding.

If you know what juice/vig is, then you should also know that minimizing how much of it you pay should is a good thing. It should directly help you to win
more money. Or, at the very least, it should help you to lose less.

In basic terms, this is what reduced juice betting is all about. It’s simply a way to pay less juice.

Let’s use an example to illustrate this further. We’ll use football, as it’s the most popular sport to bet on in the US. As you probably already know, a
significant percentage of football betting is done on the point spreads. The “standard” odds for a point spread are -110. So for a match between the
Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins, you might see a sports betting site offer the following line.

Can you spot the difference?

The odds are better at this site. At -105, you only have to stake $105 for the chance of winning $100. This might not seem like a big difference, but over
a large number of bets it can have a significant impact on your overall profit or loss.

Based on this fact, it should seem fairly obvious that reduced juice betting is a good thing. Don’t rush to join a reduced juice betting site just yet though.
You should first understand that things are not quite as clear cut as they seem.

Pros & Cons of Reduced Juice Betting

The above example highlights the main advantage of reduced juice betting. You have to risk less money to win the same amount. To put it another way,
you get a better return relative to your stake on all winning bets. We started this article by explaining the importance of maximizing your returns, and
betting with reduced juice clearly helps to achieve this.

There’s another big advantage of using reduced juice betting sites too. You’ll typically be able to bet more. A traditional betting site might limit you to
staking $1-2,000 on each wager.But the limits at a reduced juice betting site might be $5,000, $10,000 or possibly even higher. This is a real benefit if
you’re a winning bettor and want to stake higher amounts.

Reduced juice betting sites are not without their disadvantages though.

These sites are obviously making lower margins on each wager they accept, due to the lower commission. This has to be offset somehow. Generally
speaking, it’s via some or all of the following.

• Lower bonuses (or none at all)
• Less special offers and promotions (or none at all)
• Sharper lines
• Poor customer support

Some bettors are prepared to accept these disadvantages in exchange for paying less juice. And it may be that you are too. It’s important to be aware of
them though, and they should certainly influence your decision about where to bet.

Comparing Reduced Juice to Bonuses

One of the disadvantages of using a reduced juice betting site that we mentioned above is the lack of bonuses. This is perceived by many to be the biggest
disadvantage of all, in fact.

But is that much of an issue to miss out on some bonuses when you’re paying less big?

Let’s find out.

We’ll now compare the net results of wagering with reduced juice with the net results of wagering with a bonus.

Many sports betting bonuses are issued as free play credits, not as cash. When you wager with free play
credits, only your winnings are returned and not your stake. For example, when using cash, a successful
$110 wager at odds of -110 would return a total of $210. This is the $100 in winnings plus the original $110
stake. When using a bonus, you’d be using $110 of your free play credits. The return is just the $100 in
winnings.

For the purposes of this hypothetical comparison, we’re going to assume we’ve just been issued a bonus of $400 worth free play credits. We’ve then
decided to make ten equal wagers of $40 using those credits. Each wager is at -110 odds.

Let’s say we managed a 60% win rate with those wagers. So we’ve won six, and lost four. Each winning wagers has returned $36.37. Our total return is
therefore $218.22 (6 x $36.37).

So far so good. We’re $218.22 up. But free play bonuses tend to come with rollover requirements. These require us to wager a certain amount before
we’re allowed to withdraw any proceeds of our free play credits.

Typical rollover requirements are six times the amount of the bonus. This would leave us with a total of $2,400 to wager before we’ve “cleared” the
bonus (6 x $400). We decide to increase our stakes to $60 per wager, in order to meet these requirements more quickly.

To wager the full $2,400, we’d need to make 40 wagers at $60 stakes (40 x $60 = $2,400). Let’s say we make these wagers all at odds of -110 again, and
we achieve a 55% win rate. As we’re betting with cash rather than free play credits, the total return on a $60 wager at -110 will be $114.55.

• We’ve wagered a total of $2,400
• With a 55% win rate, we’ve won 22 of our 40 wagers.
• Our total return in is $2,5210.10 (22 winning wagers at $114.55 each).
• Our overall profit is $120.10 ($2520.10 in returns less the $2,400 wagered).

If we add the profit here to the money made from our free play credits, we’ve got a total profit of $338.32. We’ve met the rollover requirements, so that is
now “our” money.

Now let’s see what would have happened if we’d have made the exact same sequence of bets using a reduced juice betting site. We’ve got no bonus, but
the odds are all at -105.

First we do the ten wagers at $40 each, winning six of them.

• Ten wagers of $40 each = $400 risked
• Profit per winning wager at -105 = $38.10
• Return from six winning wagers = $468.60
• Profit = $68.60

Our profit at this stage is less than the $218.22 we made when using free play credits in the earlier example. But what happens when we do the next set
of wagers?

• 40 wagers of $60 each = $2,400 risked
• Profit per winning wager at -105 = $57.15
• Total return per winning wager at -105 = $117.15
• Return from 22 winning wagers = $2,577.30
• Profit = $177.30

The profit of $177.30 here is greater than the $120.10 profit we made from the same wagers in the earlier example. But our total profit across all wagers
using a reduced juice site is $245.90. Compared to the total of $338.32 we made when using free play credits and then meeting the rollover requirements.

So what does this tell us?

The obvious answer is that playing with a bonus is better than using a reduced juice betting site. But it’s actually not that simple. This is just one
hypothetical example. A different set of wagers, with a different set of results, could easily make a similar comparison favor reduced juice betting.

And we’re actually not trying to convince you either way. You don’t need to choose reduced juice betting over betting with a bonus, or vice versa. There’s
nothing wrong with doing both. As with betting in general, it’s all about trying to do the right thing in the right situation. There are no definitive rules
regarding the best overall approach.

The purpose of this article was to provide some insight into what reduced juice betting is, and how it
compares to betting using bonuses. This is useful information for any bettor.
We also wanted to make the point that reduced juice betting has both advantages and disadvantages.
We do recommend betting with reduced juice in the right circumstances, but we don’t advise using
a reduced juice site for ALL of your betting. You should also make the most of the bonuses and other
benefits that traditional betting sites offer.
Remember that there’s one big advantage in using a range of online betting sites. It makes it easier to
compare odds and shop for the best lines. In the long run, this can make a much bigger different
to your overall profit than reduced juice betting or bonuses.

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.

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.

Definition Of Sports Betting

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.

Juice In Sports Betting