Re: Who pays the vig: The loser or the winner??
As I stated above, I tend to agree which the viewpoint presented in the article quoted by Craig that the winners pay the vig. However, I don't think it an indisputably "correct", but rather a point-of-view and here's why:
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The illustration accompanying this text (above) shows precisely the cost of vigorish when dealing with 11-10 bets. Notice that since the winning bettor is always charged for the vigorish, the higher the percentage of bets won, the higher the percentage of vigorish paid. It might help if you picture what happens this way: If you lost all 100 of 100 bets, you would lose 100 percent of the amount put at risk - with or without the services of a bookmaker - but if you won all 100 of 100 bets, you would win only 91 percent of the total amount you were required to risk.
In those two extreme cases, the 0-100 loser would have played for 'free' while the 100-0 winner would have paid more than 9 percent in vigorish. Notice also that even though the bookmaker's commission is 4.55 percent, it is only the bettor who wins exactly half his bets who pays precisely 4.55 percent in vigorish. Everybody else pays something different. In order to break even you must win 53 percent of your bets - assuming the sizes of all your bets are exactly the same - and in order to win 53 percent of your bets, you must pay 4.82 percent in vigorish. Successful sports bettors who win more than 55 percent of their 11-10 bets typically pay more than 5 percent in vigorish.
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The above is a valid viewpoint, however you can look at a bet of $110 risked to win $100 as a $100 bet with a prepaid $10 service charge "deposit" which is returned if you win. In this case, the 100% winner would win all his $100 bets and have all his $10 "vig charge deposits" returned to him, while the 100% loser would lose all his $100 bets and the bookmaker would keep all the $10 "vig charges". From this point of view, the 100% loser pays all the vig, the winner pays nothing.
As I said, to me this seems a bit more convoluted way of looking at it, but not wrong. In reality it really doesn't matter which way you look at it, everybody pays vig, it's just a cost of doing business.
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