A wise gentleman once told me, "You don't want to make the bet, you want to take the bet." The intelligent man was my grandfather and he provided rather a nice income for his kids and grandchildren doing just that - taking action. It didn't really make logic to me at that young age, I mean one team has just as good a opportunity to cover as the other so where's the gain? But that was before I knew about the concept of 'juice' or 'vig.' I mean, when my brother and I used to bet $5 on the Cowboys vs. the Steelers or something, that was it - loser owed $5. But the older I got, I became fully aware of how fierce the concept of vigorish was and why the bookie had such lead over the player. Because you on average have to lay $110 to win $100, you can't just win 50% of your games and break even. You now want to hit ... 52.4% of your games to break even. Over the course of a season that makes a HUGE difference. Now envision you only had to lay -105 ... every day. What would that do to your necessary winning %? Well, it lowers the break even point down to 51.2%! You've just stolen 50 percent of the benefit back from the bookie! For somebody like myself who makes a living doing this, that is incredibly critical! If you can find a sportsbook with reduced juice and they never shade their lines then you're in good shape. You can always get the 'true' number on a game, even if they're taking a huge sum of the betting action. A competitive bonus program is another huge way to take some of the advantage back from the casino. So if you still want to make the bet, here is a notable way to take the edge away from the sportsbook. Don't continue getting taken advantage of when you don't have to. All the best until next time, Rich Allen - aka Sports Betting Professor
errr, this is common sense. I would call it spamming except that I don't know which sportsbook he's spamming for. I can name a number that have reduced vigorish. It's the number one promotion that sportsbooks use, next to bonuses upon deposit and freeplays. Somehow, -110 became a standard, so anyone with -105 can claim "reduced juice". A number do just that. On the other hand, you can use a betting exchange like Matchbook or Betfair to further lower the vig, although they may be off limits to Americans.
