Juice

Juice is sports-betting slang for the vig — the sportsbook’s built-in commission. The terms are interchangeable. “What’s the juice?” and “What’s the vig?” mean the same thing: how much margin is the book extracting from this market.

Where the term comes from

The most common etymology: bookmakers historically charged extra “juice” — the margin between what you’d risk and what you’d win — and the term stuck. “Juice” describes the amount over fair odds; “vig” / “vigorish” describes the concept of the margin. They’re the same number expressed slightly differently.

How juice shows up in lines

The standard coin-flip price is -110/-110. The “10” past 100 is the juice — bet $11 to win $10 instead of betting $10 to win $10 at fair odds.

A “low-juice” book might post -105/-105 or +100/-110 (also called “dime line”). Pinnacle and Circa famously run lower juice than retail US apps because they target sharp players who line-shop aggressively.

A “high-juice” market — usually parlays, props, futures — can run -130/-130 or worse. The juice is the price of liquidity (less volume = wider lines = more juice).

“Off the juice” / “Reduced juice”

Promotions sometimes offer “reduced juice” — e.g., -105/-105 instead of -110/-110 on NFL spreads. Lower juice means lower vig, which directly improves your long-term ROI on every bet. A 1% reduction in juice over thousands of bets is meaningful for any sustained bettor.

How to think about juice

• Higher juice = harder to beat the book long-term. A 5% juice market needs you to win 52.4% of bets to break even (after vig).
• Lower juice = easier to clear breakeven. A 2% juice market needs ~51% to break even.
• Negative juice (rare, promo-driven) = book is paying you to bet. Almost always limited or rapidly closed once they realize.

The Vig Remover computes the exact juice on any 2-way line so you can compare books or markets at a glance.

“All juice” / “Pure juice”

When a bettor says “this is all juice” they mean the book’s margin is so steep that even hitting 55% of bets would barely break even. Common on player props, niche futures, and exotic markets where the line is wide because volume is thin.