The Betting System: How Bookies Make Money from Your Bets by Placing Vigs or Margins

Enjoying sports is not just about playing or watching your favorite game of basketball, football, volleyball, racing, or even cricket. Sports betting is currently most popular for football fans worldwide. What follows this is the NFL, which has quite a huge following in the US.

During these game seasons, many people root for their favorites and some do this by wagering on their favorite teams. Punters turn to bookmakers or bookies to place their bets. Some do this for fun, while others consider this as a serious way to earn money.

The thing about placing bets with bookies involved is that you have to know how they work to better your chances of gaining profits. Knowing how they work can also let you know whether you’re looking at a great bookie or not. You have to keep in mind that some bookies offer poor value and sometimes it could be hard to spot.

While checking for today’s match prediction is important as it could help you have a better betting decision, it’s just a must that you know whether you’re giving your bets on a bookie that offers a nice value.

You need to know how they make money first as the edge will always be with them. There’s really no way to trick and change the edge that they have, but you can still improve the profits that you can possibly get while playing around their edge.

Bookies make money by taking bets from the people with a price that doesn’t exactly represent the probability of the game outcome. Whether you win or not, bookies will still make money. They don’t have control over the game outcome but what they can control is how much money they make from their punters.

Bookies never really offer the true probability of a sports event. What they do is to make sure that their price markets go over 100 percent. This makes them sure that the edge will always be in their favor. This is bookies set a minimum amount of bet for you to bring home a specific amount if your bet wins.

They always set the right bet prices or the vig, Vig stands for Vigorish. It’s also known as the juice, margin, or the overround. This is part of the odds that the bookies set to make sure that they get profits. The coin toss is a great way to explain how this works.

When tossing a coin, you get two probabilities or possible outcomes. You get a 50 percent chance that you get the heads and another 50 for getting tails. Remember that bookies don’t offer the value of the real odds. This is why they don’t offer even money with these two probabilities.

The bookies would typically offer heads or tails below their value to make sure that you bet more to win. If bookies charge for the true value of the outcome probabilities, they won’t profit from this at all. If 10 customers are betting 10 dollars on heads for the coin toss, and another 10 bets on tails, the bookies will just have to give all they received from their bettors as the total payout.

Incorporating the vigs to the odds that they present can guarantee that they gain profits no matter what the outcome is of the game. Since their price is lower than the real probability, they still earn money.

For two odds (2.0) like the coin toss, it is common for the bookies to use the vigs of 1.9091. So a successful ten-dollar bet would return a total of $19.09.  The bookie then gets a profit of $9.09 and the ten-dollar original stake.

The truth is that bookies don’t really display how small or big the vig is on their offers, and this is why it’s best for you to know how to calculate the margins. This will help you understand the variation between different bookmakers.

Knowing how to calculate for the margin, vig, juice, or overround can greatly impact your possible profits from wagering. Just always keep in mind that not all bookies keep the same offer and have the same offer.

This is why you should always look around for bookies if you’re planning to bet on the next game of your choice. Whether you’re planning to bet online or in an actual bookie, check for at least three offers or check on at least three bookies first.