Move in betting circles for long enough and you will hear the word “vig” used with increasing frequency. Which will lead you to the question “What is vig?”; a question we will answer in this feature.
Bettors aren’t big fans of vig, naturally, but in the course of this article we hope to shine a light on why it exists and why it is important to have a decent understanding of it, if you are to hope to make a success of your betting. We’re here to help with that, and we will begin with the most basic question of all: What does vig actually mean?
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What is vig?
To begin, “Vig” is a shortening of the word “vigorish”, which is a Yiddish word (via Russian, where the word “vyigris” means “gain)”. Its meaning in a betting sense is more specifically “profit”; the “vig” is the amount that a bookmaker builds into the
odds explained
on a bet so that they always make a profit. After all, a bookmaker has the choice to refuse your bets, and it is by building in a profit for themselves that they feel able to accept those bets. What’s in it for them? The vig, or to translate it once more for clarity, the profit.
Pros and Cons of Vig in Betting
- Ensure Bookmaker Viability
- Promote Competitive Odds
- Market Stability
Why does vig exist?
So we don’t need to ask “what is vig” anymore, but now there’s as big a question coming around the corner. Why is vig necessary? The simple answer is this: bookmakers are businesses. A business needs to make a profit to be viable. In order that bookmakers can pay out to winners and still have an edge – or profit – for themselves, they need to include in the odds a consideration that makes it possible for them to profit, whatever the result. If it sounds like they’re fixing the odds in their favor, that’s because they are. They need to, in order to ensure that they can continue to offer the service they are offering.
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How does vig work in betting?
So we understand what is vig in principle. Now we need to know what it means for you as a bettor. For this to be as simple as possible, let’s take something that genuinely has a 50/50 probability: the toss of a coin. If you toss a coin 100 times, then if probability asserts itself absolutely, you will get Tails 50 times and Heads 50 times too.
(Spoiler alert: If you toss a coin 100 times now, chances are that you won’t get 50 Heads and 50 Tails. Probability is applied over time and across every eventuality, so it’s entirely normal if it doesn’t work to the letter in one place, at one time, for one person. But that’s by the by.)
The correct odds for a coin toss should be:
- Heads
(+100 Moneyline, 2.00 Decimal, Evens or 1/1 Fractional)
- Tails
(+100 Moneyline, 2.00 Decimal, Evens or 1/1 Fractional)
Those are, however, not the odds that a bookmaker would offer if someone were to ask them – and, indeed, there are occasions where odds are offered on a coin toss, such as prop bets for the Super Bowl. On such occasions, the odds are more likely to look like this:
- Heads
(-110 Moneyline, 1.9091 Decimal, 10/11 Fractional)
- Tails
(-110 Moneyline, 1.9091 Decimal, 10/11 Fractional)
In other words, you would need to place $110 to win $100 if your bet was successful. If you place $110 on Heads, and the coin lands on Heads, you’ll win $100. Your winnings will, in effect, be paid by someone’s losing bet on Tails. This is how odds and betting at a sportsbook work. The money lost by unsuccessful bettors is used to pay the winnings of successful bettors. The betting vig – that extra $10 that isn’t part of your winnings – goes to the bookmaker as their payment for allowing the bets to be accepted.
Bear in mind that this is as simplified as the calculation can be. Sportsbook odds setters, as you’ll know if you’ve had
spread betting explained
to you, will use more complex formulae to decide what is the vig on any bet that is at longer or shorter odds than the above, but the calculation will always build in some advantage for the bookmaker. This may seem unfair to the bettor, but let’s bear in mind that it’s designed to ensure the old saying: The house always has an edge. If bookmakers were to operate without vig, then over the course of time they wouldn’t make profits that make them sustainable, and then you wouldn’t be able to bet at all.
| Type of Bet | Probability (Fair Odds) | Bookmaker Odds | Vig Percentage |
| Coin Toss | 50% (2.00 Decimal) | 1.91 Decimal | 4.76% |
| Even-Money Bet | 50% (2.00 Decimal) | 1.90 Decimal | 5.26% |
| 3-Way Moneyline | 33.33% (3.00 Decimal) | 2.90 Decimal | 3.45% |
| Spread Bet (-110) | 50% (2.00 Decimal) | 1.91 Decimal | 4.76% |
How can you turn vig in your favor?
Knowing what is vig and how it works is beneficial for any bettor, but there is another question to be asked: Can you use vig to your advantage? If there were a way to use the existence of this feature to turn bets in your favor, that would be good news, right? Well, the inconvenient truth is that you can’t exploit the bookmakers’ use of vig to give yourself an advantage. It is there specifically to give the sportsbooks an advantage, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Bookmakers aren’t stupid or careless; when they play things through, they always make sure it works in their favor. When two teams or players face off against one another, the only guaranteed winner is the sportsbook.
That’s not to say that you cannot look for weaknesses in the vig. If you look at a range of bookmakers when trying to
hedge a bet, you’ll find that the odds can vary significantly. That means that in calculating the odds, some sportsbooks will not have been as forceful in asserting the betting vig as others. That is where the advantage may lie for you: you’re not turning the vig in your favor, per se, but you are taking advantage of the bookmaker being more generous than some of their rivals. This means you’ll need to do a bit of work yourself, but it can be advantageous if you know what you’re doing.
Let’s get one fact out of the way before getting on with the meat of the argument: There is nothing you can do to guarantee success in betting. You are backing your expectations on a sporting event which is, by its very nature, open to unexpected events. You don’t know how an event is going to turn out. Nobody does, and if they did, playing the game would be pointless. What you can do is use mathematical probability to make bets with a better chance of coming off and of paying more than other bets. If the bet doesn’t come off, it’s not because the system failed; it’s because sometimes things don’t happen the way you expect. You can use your judgement of the probability of an outcome and test it against the implied probability according to the odds. The system for doing this is called the Kelly criterion; there are calculators to assess it online, and if you think there is a greater probability than the bookmaker is judging, then it can highlight value bets.
The best bets in the world exist in that space between “sure thing” and “ambitious punt”. These are the bets which offer a decent potential return if they come off, with a decent (but not overwhelming) possibility of actually coming off. There is an inherent risk to making these bets because, of course, you can’t guarantee the outcome. They may even be underdog bets. Naturally, it’s debatable whether these bets will come off, but you can manage your risk if you use bonus bets offered by the sportsbook to make them. If you’re not placing your own money on the outcome, then the harm from an unsuccessful bet is mitigated. Obviously, you can’t only make bonus bets, but you can make them when they’re available and when the odds are tempting enough.
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Conclusion
Understanding vig is a big part of making more successful bets. If you can see when the odds on offer have been submitted to a realistic level for what is vig, then you can begin to understand when the odds on your potential bet are more or less favorable. It’s also important to realize that vig is just a part of betting – you can’t avoid it and you can’t eliminate it – but you can calculate when the bookmaker’s application of it has left gaps for you to make a better value bet. When you want to minimize the impact of vig on your sports betting, it is important to remember that there are multiple sportsbooks you can check for favorable odds, and to make sure that you are finding the bets where the vig is not impacting your potential wins as much as others.
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FAQ
❓ What is vig in betting?
Vig is short for vigorish, and it simply means the edge that a bookmaker gives themselves to ensure that they always make a profit on a betting market. If you win your bet, your winnings will effectively come from the losing bets that other people have made. The bookmaker calculates vig to ensure that whatever they have to pay out, they always win something themselves.
💡 How can I minimize the impact of vig on my bets?
There are a few ways that you can reduce the impact of vig; the first is to compare different sportsbooks and see who is offering the best prices. Even if they have calculated a profit for themselves, some bookmakers will definitively be paying out bigger winnings should your bet come off. At that point, who cares if they’ve sliced off a little for themselves? Additionally, using bonus bets whenever and wherever you find them means that you will not be risking your own funds to make a bet, so the impact of vig on you will be less, even if it is still in effect on your bets.
🚫 Is it possible to bet without vig?
No. You can never bet without vig; it’s not an optional thing, it’s not a trade-off. The bookmaker will always need to calculate a profit for themselves, otherwise there is no point to the business existing. Your hopes of betting successfully long-term rest in making bets that exploit lower levels of vig and, more importantly, better winnings for you.
