Vig

What the vig is

The vig, short for vigorish and also called juice, is the margin a sportsbook builds into its prices. On a fair coin flip, both sides would pay even money. A book instead prices both sides slightly worse than fair, so that if it takes equal money on each side it pays out less than it took in. That gap is how a book makes money whichever team wins.

The vig is visible when you convert odds to implied probabilities. On a two-way market priced at -110 on both sides, each side implies about 52.4%, which adds up to about 104.8%. The extra 4.8% is the book's cushion. Parlays and other combined wagers stack that cushion once per leg.

An example

Two bettors take opposite sides of a spread, each risking $110 at -110. The book collects $220. Whichever side wins receives the $110 stake back plus $100 in profit, $210 in all. The book keeps $10 without caring who covered. Across thousands of balanced wagers, that is the business.

How Speed Survivor is different

Speed Survivor has no vig, because it has no prices and no house. Speed Labs sets the question, never a price, and takes no position in any contest. Entrants compete against each other for a prize pool funded by the entries in that contest and held by a third-party custodian, and Speed Labs may add prizes on top of what the entries put in.

Each paid contest shows its payout tiers before you enter, so the ladder you are playing for is known up front. What decides where you land on it is how many questions you get right, how fast you answer, and whether you survive the cuts. How it works explains the split.