He checks his phone.
Puts it down, shifts his position on the couch, picks it back up again.
The visiting team scores.
Bookie A shady character that takes illegal bets on horse races, fights, sports games. Such people usually are robbed regularly as they have large amounts of money. All of these factors are why bookies generally root for the underdog—too many favorites winning in a sport with a short season (such as the NFL) can cause a bookmaker to lose money, while a bunch of upsets (like you generally see in college football) is a guaranteed profit for the bookmaker.
Emotion comes - is quickly restrained.
'I don't usually watch the games,' he says, now standing. 'Too superstitious.'
Instead, he'll usually watch TV with his kids. Go hang out with his girlfriend. Take care of the myriad other trivial daily life tasks we're all forced to endure.
He's not some big wig, some shark in Vegas or Reno, planning to break your legs if you don't come up with cash. He's not some guy in a suit and tie, showing up on your doorstep to collect or grudgingly make payouts that come in digits greater than three.
No, he's just another guy, looking to make cash on the side, to help feed his kids and pay his bills.
He's no shark - at least not in the sense you're probably thinking. He's your friendly, neighborhood bookmaker - or 'bookie' for short. He's the guy you hit the bar with, the guy whose kids you pick up from football practice. He's the guy you went to high school with.
And to you, he's Vegas.
Only don't mistake the fact that he's not a shark for meaning he's a minnow.
He'll goad you; maybe he'll even tempt you. The only thing he won't do is pressure you and, more often than not, there's really no need.
He knows what he's doing - and even more important, he's good at it.
***
'People plead for their ability to gamble,' says the bookmaker, who spoke to HNGN on the condition of anonymity due to the illegal nature of his work. He makes no attempt to hide the incredulity in his voice as he says this, leaning over to show me messages from clients on his phone.
But even as he's showing them to me, even as he's laughing at the unbelievable ridiculousness of it all, he can't help his softer side, his prideful, compassionate nature from coming through.
'Have I ever cheated anybody? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because I wouldn't want that done to me,' he says.
Sports-betting, both legal and of the kind the bookmaker engages in, has lived an inconceivably healthy existence in the U.S. for decades. From 2006 to 2012, the average total amount wagered legally on sporting events rose from $2.43 billion to $3.45, according to the website Statista.
According to sportingpediaat the moment, four states - Nevada, Delaware, Oregon and Montana - allow some form of sports-betting with the majority of sports-based gambling done in Las Vegas. New Jersey governor Chris Christie recently lifted his state's ban on sports betting, but no racetrack or casino will allow it due to concern over federal sanctions.
American's are expected to make $3.8 billion worth of illegal bets on the impending Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, according to the American Gaming Association. The average annual legal wagers on the Super Bowl amounts to approximately $100 million, meaning the illegal market is 38 times greater than the legal one.
The National Gambling Impact Study Commission estimated that illegal sports gambling in the U.S. could amount to somewhere between $80 billion and $380 billion annually, per the New York Times.
In the small town in the Northeastern portion of the U.S. the bookmaker lives in - full of second-generation immigrants, the relics of a bygone age, the glitz and glamor of Las Vegas a million miles, a lifetime, away - these figures are beyond meaningless.
Most of his clientele is made of friends, friends of friends, casual acquaintances and even some family. These are people you see around town. People, who frequent all the same bars and restaurants, take their kids to the same schools, drive the same roads and attend the same churches.
And so he, this bookmaker, this bet taker, does his work - his shadowy back-room work, accepting illegal bets on sporting events - with a knowing, friendly, oftentimes personal touch.
'I've got a guy, a close friend; our kids are very, very close,' the bookmaker explains. 'We spend time at each other's houses in the summer, we do activities together, and our families are close. Not that it got weird, but it got different. It didn't change the relationship that much but, he got down - a lot.
'I didn't even want to take his money because it was just weird to me, and when I went down just to hang out at his house with the kids and everything and he tried to hand me money, I tried not taking it. And his response to me was, 'If I won this week, I would take your money.'
'And that made me feel better.'
The symbiotic nature of the relationship is hard to ignore. The gamblers want to gamble. The bookmaker wants their money and, in all reality, probably enjoys a bit of the 'gambler's high' himself.
But, whereas it's a tight rope for the gambler, it's a broad, well-kept bridge for the bookmaker.
The bookmaker might lose certain games, he might have bad weeks. That's where the trick lies though. That's where your friendly neighborhood bookmaker thrives, where he - literally and figuratively - makes his money.
'Even though it felt weird taking his money, I felt justified knowing that he knew the stakes going in,' he says. 'I didn't hammer him, he was probably down $2,500 and we settled for $500.'
And this is at the heart of the bookmaker's operation - a willingness to work with his clients. They know him. They like him.
Why?
Because he'll work with them, he'll cut them deals, he'll take $50 when they really owe $200. To them, he's doing them a favor. To him, he's keeping them as clients.
'If the Patriots are beating the Bills by 14 points and the line is 8 points and the Bills score a touchdown with 35 seconds left, where it doesn't really count but they cracked the line and everybody who took the Patriots loses, and they get upset, I'll say 'Hey listen, it was a backdoor cover,' he explains. 'Let it go. Don't worry about it.'
'I'll just charge them the vig. So if they bet $100, instead of losing $110, they lost $10 bucks. To them they feel great and I did them a favor - which I did - but that keeps them with me.'
The vig - short for 'vigorish' - is the fee charged by the bookmaker. It, like many aspects of the operation, highlights why the notion of taking bets is so appealing. No matter what happens, win or lose, the bookmaker makes money. If he loses a 10x (times) bet with a client - x means multiplied by five, the bookmaker's standard betting format - he must pay out $50, minus the vig - in the bookmaker's case, a flat fee of 10 percent, or $5.
So even though he's lost the bet - something that, as Vegas, he does not often do - his payout to the winner will only be $45.
As for his close friend, some people may view that as a loss - taking $500 when the real debt is much heftier. Not the bookmaker. This job, this station, both is and isn't about the money.
'Did I lose $2000? Yes and no,' he says. 'But it's $500 I didn't have ten seconds earlier and I still had a friend. And since then, he's done the same thing every week, but on a much lower scale. And he asks me for advice on who I think is gonna win, and I'm completely honest with him about if I think a certain team is going to cover the spread or the over is going to come in.
'...For the most part that's worked out where he hasn't had to pay that much and if he has it's probably about $100 every two weeks or so.'
'Settling' is one of the bookmaker's key methods of keeping the juice flowing.
If a client owes him $300, he'll 'settle' with them for $180 right there and wipe the bettor's slate clean. The gambler gets away without having to pay as much he really owes.
'I have people thanking me - really, thanking me - for them owing me money,' the bookmaker says, showing me a recent text from a client and favoring me with a knowing, 'can you believe this?' type of grin.
'I'd rather take $180 right there than take payments or have them duck me, because then you lose a friend,' he says. 'Then you don't get paid. Something's better than nothing in this world. Even if you get $30, it's still better than having somebody hide from you.'
For the bookmaker's clients, winning is the ultimate prize, the end all, be all.
But settling is, more often than not, the reality. Settling means a glimmer of hope, it means finding the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how fleeting, no matter how small, and it means they'll keep betting. And that's all he wants. That's all he really wants. It's the basis of his operation, the meat and potatoes of his schtick.
The bookmaker wants his clients to periodically taste victory, to remember what it feels like to win - but he really wants them to lose, at which point he has no issue settling with them, because it means he wins and they'll keep betting. They'll keep using him and paying him and acting, essentially, as a free source of income for him.
And so the bookmaker makes a nice second living off this principle.
'Where you make the real money is by settling, is by the little guy,' he explains. 'The guys who bet heavy are so up and down that they'll only be with you for one year and they'll move onto someone else, or they stop or they get in trouble with their family or somebody around them realizes what's going on and they have to stop.
'But the people - for example there's a local high school coach - him and two or three other coaches, they do it together, but they call it in as one bet. They have been a steady, $300 to $500 a week income for me just by taking a bet. I always settle with them because they place a lot of bets on Saturday's, especially on college football is heavy. And now college basketball is going on, it's nothing for them to do 25-30 individual bets on games.'
Settling, making a deal and ensuring the client comes back for more, even if the bookmaker never sees the full amount of their losses, is key for business. When the NCAA bowl games wrapped up, the bookmaker estimated he had discounted a total of about $3,000 just to keep people going.
The bookmaker knows and, in many instances, carries a certain and sometimes deep affection for these people that bet with him.
But the bookmaker is also shrewd.
He knows that these people - his friends, his neighbors - want to bet and they want to win. They want to take his money.
He wants them to stay with him. He wants to take their money.
So he settles, almost always settles, because something is better than nothing. A happy client is better than no client at all.
It's the same principle as knowing that human nature means people are much more willing to do a small favor after being asked to do a larger one. The lesser pain of the smaller payout makes the clients happy. They're still losing, but they're appreciative of the bookmaker for taking a smaller chunk of their money.
'They literally send heartfelt messages thanking me and in a strange way it's a compliment, but at the same time I'm thinking, 'I did one aspect of my job, of keeping my business up and running, by keeping my customer,' he says.
He estimates that his to-be-collected balance for 2014, as of early January, is around '$25,000-30,000,' the bulk of which is owed to the bookmaker by one heavy hitter - a local politician with whom the bookmaker has a special arrangement.
'Another close friend, he's got a settlement coming, we've got a mutual agreement, so I know he's not gonna burn me,' the bookmaker explains. 'He just has a continuous running tab. I get a couple hundred bucks here and there from him just out of good faith - he gave me a couple grand early in the year - but he's down a lot.
'His lowest bet that he calls in are between $1200-$1600. It's nothing for him to lose $10,000 in a day then win back maybe $6,000. He calls in $400 parlays, which, if he hits on a three-teamer, it's thousands. If he loses, it's about a thousand.'
A parlay is a combination bet - it's the linking together of two or more individual wagers, with the outcome dependant on each bet hitting. The probability of the bet actually coming in decreases, but the potential payout increases.
But the close nature of all these relationships, coupled with the focus on money - the ultimate asset, the medium of the wealthy elite and the poor alike - lead to strained and, if the bookmaker isn't careful, broken relationships.
'There are a small handful of people who, in the beginning of the year, got down big, early - too much money too fast. Couple I haven't heard from since. It angers me, obviously, because they owe me money,' he says.
This is where the bookmaker shows his true colors, where he bares his teeth.
He's no shark, but he's also no minnow.
Part two of this series will be published Sunday morning.
According to a study by the American Gaming Association, 38 million American adults planned to bet on the 2019 NFL season. That's 15% of the adult population, betting only on professional football. That's a huge potential client base.
It's nice to win bets, but the guaranteed money is in bookmaking. Once you see the profits from betting explained, you won't want to be a gambler anymore. You'll want to be a bookie.
What Do Bookies Do?
Before looking at how bookmakers, or bookies, get paid, it's worth considering what bookies do. In other words, why should bookies get paid at all?
A bookie is someone who facilitates gambling. They make it possible for people to place bets by:
- Setting the odds (and sometimes changing them, but more on that later)
- Accepting and placing bets
- Paying out winnings
In popular culture, bookies are often shady figures. There are countless movies where a bookie sends some goons to break some problem gambler's knees after he can't pay.
Real bookies are nothing like that, especially now that sports gambling is legal in many places. Even with legal gambling, most bettors still place their wagers with local bookies. If these bookies broke knees, they would quickly lose all their customers.
In reality, a bookie is just a person who makes it possible for you to gamble. Like anyone else who provides a service, they exact a fee for it.
Betting Explained: The Vig
Sports Bookie Arrested
The fee that bookies charge is called the vigorish, or the vig. People also call it the juice, the take, or the margin. Because bookies usually don't place bets themselves, they make their money from this extra fee they charge on every bet, win or lose.
The place you can see the vig the clearest is in the moneyline for a particular game. Let's use a football game, Eagles versus Bears, as an example.
Suppose the Eagles are the home team and are the favorite to win the game. The point spread for the game might be Eagles -6.5. That means the Eagles must win by at least seven points for you to win your bet, or to 'cover' the spread.
But, the betting line will also include the moneyline. As the favorite, the Eagles are probably sitting at -110. That means if you bet $100, you would only win $90 (in addition to receiving your original bet back). If you wanted to win $100, you'd have to bet $110.
The easiest way to think about the moneyline is the amount you would have to bet to win $100. In this case, that extra $10 is the vig or the fee for the bookie.
There is no standard vig. The most common one is -110 (in other words, an 11 to 10 advantage for the bookmaker), but that varies depending on the game, the teams, and the bookmaker.
The moneyline could even go the other way. If the bookie wanted to encourage more people to bet the Bears, they could set the moneyline at +110. That means for every $100 you bet, you would win $110.
Balancing the Book: Betting Lines Explained
Because bookies make their money from the vig, they want to encourage equal numbers of people to bet on each side of a game.
From our example, they want the same number of people to bet the Eagles and the Bears. The bookie will not have to cover any winning bets himself and can pocket his 10% profit.
With sports gambling, there are two ways a bookie can adjust which side people bet on: shifting the point spread or shifting the moneyline.
Suppose after the bookmaker set the point spread at Eagles -6.5, most people placed their bets on the Eagles. The bookmaker, seeing this, would move the spread to Eagles -7.5 or higher to encourage people to bet the Bears.
Bookie Sports Betting
Again, the bookmaker wants to get the bets on each side close to even to avoid an unbalanced book.
On the other hand, if the bookmaker did not want to move the spread, he could shift the moneyline down to -120 or -130. Then the payout for winning a bet on the Eagles would be lower (which is the same as having fewer bets).
Bookmakers want a balanced book, so it's imperative that they set the right line, or adjust it as more bets come in. The volume of bets helps too: the more bets that come in, the more likely the bookie will adjust the line correctly.
Because the line is so important, the biggest bookmakers will have teams of statisticians helping them create and adjust their lines. They also recognize strong, or 'sharp', gamblers and respond to those bets by shifting the lines.
Most neighborhood bookies do not set their own lines. Instead, they rely on bookmaking services or copy lines from larger bookmakers.
Find A Bookie
What the Vig Means for Gamblers
People placing bets should never lose sight of the vig, especially if they hope to make money over the long term and not just on single bets. It changes the break-even point for betting.
With a -110 Moneyline, each time you lose a bet, you lose $100. But, each time you win, you only win back $90. Your wins are insufficient to cover your losses if you are betting the same amount each time.
In other words, the break-even percentage for winning is no longer 50%. Instead, it's higher, maybe around 53% or 54% depending on the exact vig. Given bookies set betting lines to encourage equal play on both sides, it's actually pretty easy to win 50% of your bets.
But, a sports gambler who wins half their bets will soon run out of money. Gamblers must win enough to cover the vig, hopefully with some profit left over.
For the Bookie, It's Not Really Gambling
'And that made me feel better.'
The symbiotic nature of the relationship is hard to ignore. The gamblers want to gamble. The bookmaker wants their money and, in all reality, probably enjoys a bit of the 'gambler's high' himself.
But, whereas it's a tight rope for the gambler, it's a broad, well-kept bridge for the bookmaker.
The bookmaker might lose certain games, he might have bad weeks. That's where the trick lies though. That's where your friendly neighborhood bookmaker thrives, where he - literally and figuratively - makes his money.
'Even though it felt weird taking his money, I felt justified knowing that he knew the stakes going in,' he says. 'I didn't hammer him, he was probably down $2,500 and we settled for $500.'
And this is at the heart of the bookmaker's operation - a willingness to work with his clients. They know him. They like him.
Why?
Because he'll work with them, he'll cut them deals, he'll take $50 when they really owe $200. To them, he's doing them a favor. To him, he's keeping them as clients.
'If the Patriots are beating the Bills by 14 points and the line is 8 points and the Bills score a touchdown with 35 seconds left, where it doesn't really count but they cracked the line and everybody who took the Patriots loses, and they get upset, I'll say 'Hey listen, it was a backdoor cover,' he explains. 'Let it go. Don't worry about it.'
'I'll just charge them the vig. So if they bet $100, instead of losing $110, they lost $10 bucks. To them they feel great and I did them a favor - which I did - but that keeps them with me.'
The vig - short for 'vigorish' - is the fee charged by the bookmaker. It, like many aspects of the operation, highlights why the notion of taking bets is so appealing. No matter what happens, win or lose, the bookmaker makes money. If he loses a 10x (times) bet with a client - x means multiplied by five, the bookmaker's standard betting format - he must pay out $50, minus the vig - in the bookmaker's case, a flat fee of 10 percent, or $5.
So even though he's lost the bet - something that, as Vegas, he does not often do - his payout to the winner will only be $45.
As for his close friend, some people may view that as a loss - taking $500 when the real debt is much heftier. Not the bookmaker. This job, this station, both is and isn't about the money.
'Did I lose $2000? Yes and no,' he says. 'But it's $500 I didn't have ten seconds earlier and I still had a friend. And since then, he's done the same thing every week, but on a much lower scale. And he asks me for advice on who I think is gonna win, and I'm completely honest with him about if I think a certain team is going to cover the spread or the over is going to come in.
'...For the most part that's worked out where he hasn't had to pay that much and if he has it's probably about $100 every two weeks or so.'
'Settling' is one of the bookmaker's key methods of keeping the juice flowing.
If a client owes him $300, he'll 'settle' with them for $180 right there and wipe the bettor's slate clean. The gambler gets away without having to pay as much he really owes.
'I have people thanking me - really, thanking me - for them owing me money,' the bookmaker says, showing me a recent text from a client and favoring me with a knowing, 'can you believe this?' type of grin.
'I'd rather take $180 right there than take payments or have them duck me, because then you lose a friend,' he says. 'Then you don't get paid. Something's better than nothing in this world. Even if you get $30, it's still better than having somebody hide from you.'
For the bookmaker's clients, winning is the ultimate prize, the end all, be all.
But settling is, more often than not, the reality. Settling means a glimmer of hope, it means finding the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how fleeting, no matter how small, and it means they'll keep betting. And that's all he wants. That's all he really wants. It's the basis of his operation, the meat and potatoes of his schtick.
The bookmaker wants his clients to periodically taste victory, to remember what it feels like to win - but he really wants them to lose, at which point he has no issue settling with them, because it means he wins and they'll keep betting. They'll keep using him and paying him and acting, essentially, as a free source of income for him.
And so the bookmaker makes a nice second living off this principle.
'Where you make the real money is by settling, is by the little guy,' he explains. 'The guys who bet heavy are so up and down that they'll only be with you for one year and they'll move onto someone else, or they stop or they get in trouble with their family or somebody around them realizes what's going on and they have to stop.
'But the people - for example there's a local high school coach - him and two or three other coaches, they do it together, but they call it in as one bet. They have been a steady, $300 to $500 a week income for me just by taking a bet. I always settle with them because they place a lot of bets on Saturday's, especially on college football is heavy. And now college basketball is going on, it's nothing for them to do 25-30 individual bets on games.'
Settling, making a deal and ensuring the client comes back for more, even if the bookmaker never sees the full amount of their losses, is key for business. When the NCAA bowl games wrapped up, the bookmaker estimated he had discounted a total of about $3,000 just to keep people going.
The bookmaker knows and, in many instances, carries a certain and sometimes deep affection for these people that bet with him.
But the bookmaker is also shrewd.
He knows that these people - his friends, his neighbors - want to bet and they want to win. They want to take his money.
He wants them to stay with him. He wants to take their money.
So he settles, almost always settles, because something is better than nothing. A happy client is better than no client at all.
It's the same principle as knowing that human nature means people are much more willing to do a small favor after being asked to do a larger one. The lesser pain of the smaller payout makes the clients happy. They're still losing, but they're appreciative of the bookmaker for taking a smaller chunk of their money.
'They literally send heartfelt messages thanking me and in a strange way it's a compliment, but at the same time I'm thinking, 'I did one aspect of my job, of keeping my business up and running, by keeping my customer,' he says.
He estimates that his to-be-collected balance for 2014, as of early January, is around '$25,000-30,000,' the bulk of which is owed to the bookmaker by one heavy hitter - a local politician with whom the bookmaker has a special arrangement.
'Another close friend, he's got a settlement coming, we've got a mutual agreement, so I know he's not gonna burn me,' the bookmaker explains. 'He just has a continuous running tab. I get a couple hundred bucks here and there from him just out of good faith - he gave me a couple grand early in the year - but he's down a lot.
'His lowest bet that he calls in are between $1200-$1600. It's nothing for him to lose $10,000 in a day then win back maybe $6,000. He calls in $400 parlays, which, if he hits on a three-teamer, it's thousands. If he loses, it's about a thousand.'
A parlay is a combination bet - it's the linking together of two or more individual wagers, with the outcome dependant on each bet hitting. The probability of the bet actually coming in decreases, but the potential payout increases.
But the close nature of all these relationships, coupled with the focus on money - the ultimate asset, the medium of the wealthy elite and the poor alike - lead to strained and, if the bookmaker isn't careful, broken relationships.
'There are a small handful of people who, in the beginning of the year, got down big, early - too much money too fast. Couple I haven't heard from since. It angers me, obviously, because they owe me money,' he says.
This is where the bookmaker shows his true colors, where he bares his teeth.
He's no shark, but he's also no minnow.
Part two of this series will be published Sunday morning.
According to a study by the American Gaming Association, 38 million American adults planned to bet on the 2019 NFL season. That's 15% of the adult population, betting only on professional football. That's a huge potential client base.
It's nice to win bets, but the guaranteed money is in bookmaking. Once you see the profits from betting explained, you won't want to be a gambler anymore. You'll want to be a bookie.
What Do Bookies Do?
Before looking at how bookmakers, or bookies, get paid, it's worth considering what bookies do. In other words, why should bookies get paid at all?
A bookie is someone who facilitates gambling. They make it possible for people to place bets by:
- Setting the odds (and sometimes changing them, but more on that later)
- Accepting and placing bets
- Paying out winnings
In popular culture, bookies are often shady figures. There are countless movies where a bookie sends some goons to break some problem gambler's knees after he can't pay.
Real bookies are nothing like that, especially now that sports gambling is legal in many places. Even with legal gambling, most bettors still place their wagers with local bookies. If these bookies broke knees, they would quickly lose all their customers.
In reality, a bookie is just a person who makes it possible for you to gamble. Like anyone else who provides a service, they exact a fee for it.
Betting Explained: The Vig
Sports Bookie Arrested
The fee that bookies charge is called the vigorish, or the vig. People also call it the juice, the take, or the margin. Because bookies usually don't place bets themselves, they make their money from this extra fee they charge on every bet, win or lose.
The place you can see the vig the clearest is in the moneyline for a particular game. Let's use a football game, Eagles versus Bears, as an example.
Suppose the Eagles are the home team and are the favorite to win the game. The point spread for the game might be Eagles -6.5. That means the Eagles must win by at least seven points for you to win your bet, or to 'cover' the spread.
But, the betting line will also include the moneyline. As the favorite, the Eagles are probably sitting at -110. That means if you bet $100, you would only win $90 (in addition to receiving your original bet back). If you wanted to win $100, you'd have to bet $110.
The easiest way to think about the moneyline is the amount you would have to bet to win $100. In this case, that extra $10 is the vig or the fee for the bookie.
There is no standard vig. The most common one is -110 (in other words, an 11 to 10 advantage for the bookmaker), but that varies depending on the game, the teams, and the bookmaker.
The moneyline could even go the other way. If the bookie wanted to encourage more people to bet the Bears, they could set the moneyline at +110. That means for every $100 you bet, you would win $110.
Balancing the Book: Betting Lines Explained
Because bookies make their money from the vig, they want to encourage equal numbers of people to bet on each side of a game.
From our example, they want the same number of people to bet the Eagles and the Bears. The bookie will not have to cover any winning bets himself and can pocket his 10% profit.
With sports gambling, there are two ways a bookie can adjust which side people bet on: shifting the point spread or shifting the moneyline.
Suppose after the bookmaker set the point spread at Eagles -6.5, most people placed their bets on the Eagles. The bookmaker, seeing this, would move the spread to Eagles -7.5 or higher to encourage people to bet the Bears.
Bookie Sports Betting
Again, the bookmaker wants to get the bets on each side close to even to avoid an unbalanced book.
On the other hand, if the bookmaker did not want to move the spread, he could shift the moneyline down to -120 or -130. Then the payout for winning a bet on the Eagles would be lower (which is the same as having fewer bets).
Bookmakers want a balanced book, so it's imperative that they set the right line, or adjust it as more bets come in. The volume of bets helps too: the more bets that come in, the more likely the bookie will adjust the line correctly.
Because the line is so important, the biggest bookmakers will have teams of statisticians helping them create and adjust their lines. They also recognize strong, or 'sharp', gamblers and respond to those bets by shifting the lines.
Most neighborhood bookies do not set their own lines. Instead, they rely on bookmaking services or copy lines from larger bookmakers.
Find A Bookie
What the Vig Means for Gamblers
People placing bets should never lose sight of the vig, especially if they hope to make money over the long term and not just on single bets. It changes the break-even point for betting.
With a -110 Moneyline, each time you lose a bet, you lose $100. But, each time you win, you only win back $90. Your wins are insufficient to cover your losses if you are betting the same amount each time.
In other words, the break-even percentage for winning is no longer 50%. Instead, it's higher, maybe around 53% or 54% depending on the exact vig. Given bookies set betting lines to encourage equal play on both sides, it's actually pretty easy to win 50% of your bets.
But, a sports gambler who wins half their bets will soon run out of money. Gamblers must win enough to cover the vig, hopefully with some profit left over.
For the Bookie, It's Not Really Gambling
The nice part about being the bookie is that so long as you set the right lines, you're no longer gambling. It's just math: the winners and losers cancel each other out, and you pocket your fee, every time. That's betting explained for bookies.
But, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. Otherwise, everyone would do it. Luckily, the right pay-per-head sportsbook service can help you start and grow your sportsbook as an independent bookie.