What is Reduced Juice?

Would you like a guaranteed way to save money in sports betting every single year? Many people talk about bonuses and contests and other loyalty programs that give away free stuff, and while those are great, they don’t always save you money in sports betting. It is different with reduced juice, as you are 100% guaranteed to save money when you get better prices. If you are serious about making money, and who isn’t, then you need to find online sportsbooks that offer reduced juice. Let’s take a look at exactly what reduced juice is, how important it can be, and give you specific examples of how it works.

Reduced Juice

Before we get into an explanation of reduced juice we need to start with a definition of the word juice. If you have bet for any length of time then you have probably heard of the term vig or vigorish. This is simply the commission charged by the sportsbook for each bet that they take. Juice is just another word for vig or vigorish. Reduced juice is simply reducing the amount of commission that you pay for each bet that you make.

Let’s take a very basic example to get started. Let’s say you are betting an NFL game and the standard juice is -110. If the Patriots are playing the Bills and Buffalo is listed as a 4-point favorite then you take the Patriots +4 or the Bills -4 and lay -110 on either side. You would wager $110 to win $100 or the 11-10 equivalent. Let’s lay it out like this:

New England Patriots +4 (-110)

Buffalo Bills -4 (-110)

This is easy enough to understand for a basic NFL betting line. Where reduced juice comes into play is on the price. Let’s say you found a sportsbook where instead of laying -110 you only had to lay -105. The previous game would then look like this:

New England Patriots +4 (-105)

Buffalo Bills -4 (-105)

Do you see the difference? Instead of laying $110 to win $100 or the 11-10 equivalent you are now laying $105 to win $100 or the 10.5-10 equivalent. This might not seem like a big difference but what if you were wagering hundreds or thousands of dollars every week or every year. You save $5 on every $100 that you lose and that money adds up over time.

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Winning Percentage

Another important factor to consider is that when you are wagering at reduced juice you have a lower percentage to overcome. We know that the sportsbook has an edge of 4.55% with the traditional $110 to win $100 odds. That means a bettor will need to pick 52.38% winners just to break even. That doesn’t sound like much but many professional bettors will tell you that they win only about 55% of their wagers. If you are wagering $105 to win $100 then the house edge drops to 2.38% and you need to win just 51.22% of your wagers to break even.

Saving Money

Let’s get into a concrete example to illustrate just how much money you can save with reduced juice. Let’s say you bet $55 on four games each week for a total of $220. In an 18-week season you would make 72 bets for a total of $3960. Let’s say you win 36 bets and lose 36 bets. At -110 odds you would win 36 bets at $50 per for a total of $1,800 and you would lose 36 bets for a total of $1,980. You would have lost $180 for the season. If you would have had -105 instead of -110 for your juice, your loss would have been just $90. You would have saved almost two full bets for the season.

Reduced Juice Promos

You won’t find that many sportsbooks that offer reduced juice on all of their games because they don’t have to. Sportsbooks are in business to make money and reducing the juice cuts into their bottom line. What you will find is sportsbooks offering reduced juice promotions. There will be reduced juice promotions during the year on certain games or you might even see no juice offered on a limited number of games. These promotions are used to get bettors to sign up and introduce them to the sportsbook.

Reduced Juice Summary

It really is surprising that more sports bettors, even some of the so-called wise guys, don’t take advantage of reduced juice. Whenever you can lay a small price, you are saving money. Reduced juice betting is one of the best ways for any sports bettor to save money and far too many people don’t take advantage of it. If you are not playing at a sportsbook that offers reduced juice betting then you are simply giving away money. And who wants to do that?