What is Vigorish?

Vigorish — universally shortened to 'vig', and also called 'juice' or 'the cut' — is the commission a bookmaker embeds into its odds, the mechanism that guarantees long-run profitability on balanced betting. It is not billed separately; it lives inside every price as a margin, which is why the implied probabilities across a market always exceed 100%. Understanding the vig is essential because it sets the true break-even bar a bettor must beat. Worked example: at standard American odds of −110 on each side of a market, you must risk £110 to win £100. That extra £10 you stake but do not win back is the vig in action. Converted to decimal, −110 is 1.91, and 1 ÷ 1.91 ≈ 52.4%; the two sides sum to roughly 104.8%, so the margin is about 4.55%. A fair, vig-free coin flip would be priced 2.00/2.00 (50%/50%, summing to 100%); the bookmaker's 1.91/1.91 is the same flip with the cut taken. To merely break even at −110 you therefore need to win 52.4% of your bets, not half. Why it matters: lower vig is strictly better for the bettor. Some books, notably Pinnacle, deliberately run thin margins to attract sharp, high-volume customers, while recreational-focused books carry fatter ones. The common mistake is shopping a single side in isolation. A book may post an attractive number on the side you fancy while quietly inflating the margin on the opposite side, so the overall vig is worse than it looks. Always read the full two-way price, and line-shop across books to take the lowest effective margin. Compare with the vig entry, implied probability and true odds.