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Raising the favourite to −120 pushes the dog to +100. A dog at +100 carries zero margin — we keep nothing on it, win or lose. And the dog is the side we are trying to attract: the recreational money that arrives after the early money is already down, typically 80 to 95 percent of everything we write on the game.
So the trade is this. We collect extra juice on the small slice that is already in, most of which was written before we juiced, and in exchange we write the overwhelming majority of our handle at no margin at all. Move the number instead and both sides sit at −110, and we keep 4.55% of every dollar that comes in.
Even the light version leaks. Going to −115 puts the dog at −105, where we keep 2.38% instead of 4.55% — we have halved the margin on the majority of the handle to add a point and a bit to the minority.
At a 15/85 split, moving holds 4.55 per hundred. Juicing to −115 holds 3.00. Juicing to −120 holds 1.25.
This is the part that gets missed. Juice is a charge on the next customer. It does not touch the position we already hold. If we are long the favourite, we are long the favourite at −110 and we are still long the favourite at −120 — identical exposure, we have simply made the bet more expensive for someone who was never our problem.
Moving the number changes what we need to happen for us to win. That is the job. Juice is a pricing tool; the number is the position.
Say the early money took the favourite at −5.5 and we now need dog money. If we write it at +6 and the game lands on exactly 6, the favourite ticket wins and the dog ticket pushes — we pay one side. If we write it at +6.5 instead, both tickets win and we pay both. Same game, same number, twice the damage.
That is a middle, and a middle costs roughly 2.1× an ordinary losing side because we pay two winners and keep nothing. Games land exactly on a whole number 3.83% of the time. Stopping on the number takes that risk to zero; stepping over it accepts it in full, for nothing in return.
Whole numbers keep working as you go. +7 is no worse than +6.5, because the 7 pushes and stops the window again.
Which is why the rule is to walk rather than jump. Writing at +6, then +6.5, then +7 spreads the exposure across three prices, and only the tickets at +6.5 and beyond can be middled at all. Jumping straight from −5.5 to −7 puts every dog ticket inside the same window.
The instinct against moving is fear of getting caught on the wrong number. The data does not support the fear.
| Decided within 1 point of the close | 8.4% |
| Within 2 points | 15.2% |
| Within 3 points | 22.5% |
| Never in play — decided by more than 3 points | 77.5% |
Three games in four are settled nowhere near our number. Refusing to move protects us against a three percent event while leaving us carrying a one-sided position that is certain. The exposure we are avoiding is small and occasional; the exposure we are accepting is large and guaranteed.
They can fire again, but never at a better number. Moving away from them makes their side more expensive every single step. Say the number really belongs at 7 and they opened us up at −5.5:
| THEY LAY | THEIR EDGE | WORTH TO THEM |
|---|---|---|
| −5.5 | 1.5 pts | +5.47% |
| −6.0 | 1.0 pts | +2.30% |
| −6.5 | 0.5 pts | −1.20% |
| −7.0 | none | −4.39% |
Each bite is worth less than half the one before it, and by −6.5 they are betting into a losing price even though we are still short of the true number. The vig does that work for us as we climb.
Standing still is the version that hands them everything. If we never move they do not need to bet again — they already hold the −5.5 ticket at +5.47%, the best price we will ever show, and we have simply decided to live with it.
And if they do come back at −6, that is a free read: it tells us we are still short and we should keep walking. If they go quiet, we have found the number. Juice would never have told us either way.
True, and worth conceding plainly. Small juice adjustments are a legitimate tool for fine-tuning, and for buying a few minutes when we genuinely do not know yet. The argument is not that juice is never right. It is that juice is not a substitute for moving when we are actually one-sided — used that way it costs three to five times the hold and leaves the position untouched.
The sharpest version of the pushback, and the answer is asymmetry. Correct, the half-point rarely decides anything — which is precisely why moving is cheap and freezing is indefensible. But landing on the whole number is free. It costs nothing to stop there on the way past. We take a free option even when it only pays three percent of the time, because the alternative is not a better outcome — it is the same outcome without the protection.
Modelled it. Move, and fill only 40% of the dog money we expected: we hold 7.51% of written handle. Juice, same partial fill: 5.86%. Moving still wins, because the price we write the dog at drives the result far more than how much of it we get.
5,544 games from the 2025-26 season, each matched to its sportsbook opening and closing line. One corrupt record was found and removed — a closing line of −158 against an opener of +2, which is a moneyline that landed in the spread column.
The 3.83% push rate is measured on the 2,663 games that closed on a whole number. Anyone computing it across all games will get 1.84% instead, but that figure is diluted by the 52% of closes that are half-points, where landing on the number is impossible by construction. 3.83% is the correct conditional.
The calculator models final margin as normally distributed around the true number with a standard deviation of 11.37, fitted on those same games. It predicts a 3.51% chance of landing exactly on the number against 3.83% observed, so if anything it understates the cost of stepping over one.
Hold figures assume both sides priced at the stated odds and a fair number, so each side is a coin flip. The favourite covered 47.8% of the time against the closing line last season, and the average miss was 9.14 points when the favourite covered against 9.19 when it did not — as symmetric as a market gets.