Paste the prices for every outcome of a market and get the hold — the share the book keeps — along with the no-vig fair price behind each one. Works for two-way markets and for three-way ones like soccer.
This calculator prices one market at a time. TrueEdge prices every market across US sportsbooks and exchanges, devigs them, and lists the low-hold pairings and +EV bets as they appear.
Every price implies a probability. Decimal odds of 2.00 imply 50%; American odds of −110 imply 52.4%. Add up the implied probability of every outcome of a real market and you get more than 100% — and you should, because the excess is how the book gets paid. That excess is the hold.
Lower hold is strictly better for you: it is the headwind every bet at that book runs into before skill matters at all. It is also how you compare books honestly — a book with a flashy price on one side and a terrible one on the other is not a cheap book, and the hold is the number that says so.
If the prices you paste come from different books, the total can land under 100%. That is a negative hold, and it means backing every outcome locks in a profit — an arbitrage. No single book prices itself into one; it only appears when two books disagree.
The lower the better. A standard −110 / −110 market holds 4.76%. Under 2% is low for a two-way market and under 1% is very low — the pairs the low hold bet finder ranks first, usually with the best price on each side at a different book. Below 0% is an arbitrage.
Not in a market's prices. Hold, vig (vigorish) and juice all name the margin built into a book's odds: how far the implied probabilities of every outcome add up past 100%. "Hold" is also used for the share of all money wagered that a sportsbook reports keeping as revenue, which is a different figure that includes the results of the games.
Exactly as on a two-way market, with one term per outcome: convert each price to an implied probability and add all three. Home +150, draw +240 and away +190 imply 40.00%, 29.41% and 34.48%, which add to 103.89%, a 3.89% hold. Leave out the draw and the two sides add to only 74.48%, which looks like an arbitrage and is not.