Dime Line: What is a dime line?

 One of the terms most likely to encounter when talking about sportsbooks is “dime line”. If you've ever wondered what is a dime line, here you will find an explanation of this betting term.

 Being around bettors and listening to the lingo will definitely lead you to hear “dime line” being mentioned about either a sports game or a sportsbook. Dime line is essentially a difference between the odds (or line) payout between the money you would lay on the favorite and the money you would get from the underdog sides in a sporting event. Let's cast the net a bit wider to help you understand dime lines.

 The betting lines often work by offering payouts on two sides, the underdog and the favorite. To give an example of a dime line, let's imagine that the favorite will have a betting line like -125 and the underdog will have a line of +115. You must have immediately seen the 10 cents difference between the two betting lines. And what is 10 cents if not a dime? There it goes the explanation of how the dime line gets its name in the sportsbooks world. But where does the 10 cents come from? Good question!

 If you've done your homework, you already know that American odds work as follows: the favorite line (with the minus sign) shows how much you have to bet to win $100 and the underdog line (with the plus sign) shows how much you would get if you bet $100. If we scale the Benjamin down to just one dollar and use the previous example outlined above, you can calculate that if we have to bet $1.25 on the favorite line and we'd get $1.15 if we bet a dollar on the underdog line. The difference now between the two lines is exactly 10 cents, i.e. a dime. Keep in mind that we chose -125 and +115 lines just to make it simpler to show the dime line. Don't get hung up on exactly these lines, they could be anything, for example, -117 and +107.

 A dime line is considered that standard juice of the sportsbooks. Using this as the reference, a sportsbook offering 20 cents lines, instead of dime lines, is getting more money from the bettor and should be naturally avoided. On the other side, a sportsbook like 5Dimes (Now you're getting it!) offers half the juice on their odds and is more profitable for the player to bet at this low juice sportsbook.

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