Vigorish (also known as juice, under-juice, the cut, the take, the margin, the house edge or simply the vig) is the fee charged by a bookmaker (or bookie) for accepting a gambler's wager. In American English, it can also refer to the interest owed a loanshark in consideration for credit. The term came to English usage via Yiddish slang (), which was itself a loanword from Ukrainian () or Russian (). As a business practice it is an example of risk management; by doing so bookmakers can guarantee turning a profit regardless of the underlying event's outcome. As a rule, bookmakers do not want to have a financial interest creating a preference for one result over another in any given sporting event. This is accomplished by incentivizing their clientele to wager offsetting amounts on all potential outcomes of the event. The normal method by which this is achieved is by adjusting the payouts for each outcome (collectively called the line) as imbalances of total amounts wagered between them occur. Within the mathematical disciplines of probability and statistics this is analogous to an overround, though the two are not synonymous but are related by the connecting formulae below. Overround occurs when the sum of the implied probabilities for all possible event results is above 100%, whereas the vigorish is the bookmaker's percentage profit on the total stakes made on the event. For example, an overround of 20% results in 16.% vigorish. The connecting formulae are where represents vigorish and represents overround. Proportionality It is simplest to assume that vigorish is factored in proportionally to the true odds, although this need not be the case. Under proportional vigorish, a "fair odds" betting line of 2.00/2.00 without vigorish would decrease the payouts of all outcomes equally, perhaps to 1.95/1.95, once it was added. More commonly though, disproportional vigorish will be applied as part of the efforts to keep the amounts wagered balanced, such as 1./2.00, making the outcome with fewer dollars wagered appear more attractive due to the larger payout. Example Two people want to bet on opposing sides of an event and agree to "fair odds", also known as evens. They are going to make the wager between each other without using the services of a bookmaker. Each person agrees to risk $100 for the chance to win $100. The person who loses receives nothing and the winner receives both stakes. Rather