American terms - low / no juice and freeplay?

[davidz1]

Just turning to american books and trying to understand their signup offers. Can anyon explain (in terms an idiot like me can understand) what "low juice" means and what is the meaning of a "free play"? FAQs seem to be full of jargon and want to be sure I understand the terms before I go in.

[munk]

Hopefully US guys will shout out but from what I understand 'no/low juice' means that the bookie doesn't add on any vig/overround to their book for an event, you're basically getting higher value odds than you would normally.

Say for example for a coin tossing book, you have two outcomes, heads or tails. The bookie will write up his book for this event:

Heads: 2.04
Tails: 1.87

This book is 'overround' because if you add up the sum of the reciprocals, the total is over 1 / 100% - the total is 1/2.04 + 1/1.87 == 1.025 roughly. This means that for every $1 you bet on this book, you're paying $0.025 as 'vig' to the bookie, this is the bookies 'juice' for this book.

Now, instead if the bookie offers these odds:

Heads: 2
Tails: 2

then this is a 'no juice' book because for every $1 you pay on this book you're paying $0 as vig (ie if you put $0.5 on heads and $0.5 on tails, you'll end up with no profit/loss, you come out even).


Have a look on wikipedia for the entry for 'vigano', that should hopefully explain it better than I have The important bit though is that low/no juice means you're getting better odds than normal.

No juice odds are good because usually you can find another book that's offering the complement to your no juice selection at odds that mean you'll make a profit - ie if someone's offering evens / 2 decimal on both results of the heads/tails coin tossing event and someone else is offer 2.2 for the heads selection, you can make a juicy profit because that's 'underround' - 1/2.2 + 1/2 == .95, so you're making 5% profit on that.

[davidz1]

Many thanks Munk. This is really helpful.

[armyvet]

alot of books advertise -105 lines on spreads and totals. I think betjam does this on Fridays and I know for a fact youwager does it on fridays also at certain times of the day. Easy arb opportunities against matchbook for the americans and you guys across the pond have a few more places to pick from.

I guess they call it reduced juice is because other places are offering -110 lines and these books offer the -105 lines

The difference between a cash bonus and a freeplay bonus is if you wager the freeplay and it wins you only get to have the winnings added to your account and the freeplay disappears. If it is a cash bonus and it wins the cash bonus and winnings are added to your account.

Those arer the basics. Maybe a few other americans can chime in to give a better or different explanation behind it

[munk]

np - I don't know what the 'free play' thing you mention is though, anyone?

EDIT: ah ignore this I just read your post armyvet cheers So it sounds like 'free play' is the US equivalent of 'stake not returned' (SNR) compared to 'cash bonus' or w/e which is 'stake returned' (SR).

Nice one cheers

[Andy]

Low juice = It means you get better odds than standard.

Freeplay = Freebet (alot of US sites say that when you win the freeplay you then have to wager it again a set number of times so watch for that)

The US sites will not always show odds in decimals but use the decimal system, you can convert them to decimals here:
The Gambling Times - Odds Conversion Tool, American/Decimal/Fractional types.