Guide to Betting on Sports: Parlay Strategy

Parlay wagers are sometimes dismissed as “sucker bets.” For the most part, this is the kind of uninformed opinion you hear from a blowhard at the bar who has no grounds for what he says except that he heard it somewhere (“My Uncle Leroy says all the old timers will tell you you’re throwing your money away if you bet parlays, and he should know, because he used to go to Vegas all the time!”) In fact, parlays can be an important part of the arsenal of a winning sportsbettor.

But let’s look at some of the specific pros and cons of this bet type, and how to use it wisely.

1. Parlay odds can be better or worse than the odds on straight bets.

For non-moneyline parlays, most sportsbooks use a payoff chart that is a rounded version of multiplying together the standard -110 odds for straight bets. For two-team parlays, sportsbooks generally use odds of +260 (when true odds are closer to +264); for three-team parlays, they generally use odds of +600 (when true odds are closer to +597).

As you can see, you’re costing yourself a smidgen on the odds when you bet a two-team parlay instead of making two straight bets, while you’re gaining a smidgen on the odds when you bet a three-team parlay instead of making three straight bets. Really the difference is so small, though, that this should be only a very minor factor in deciding between parlays and straight bets (though there’s a bit more of a differential-in favor of straight bets-at most sportsbooks for four-team and above parlays).

And if a parlay contains at least one moneyline, then this factor disappears, because sportsbooks use true odds for those parlays, rather than an approximation.

But there is another sense in which the odds can be a much more important factor for or against parlays.

In order to gain a competitive advantage, many sportsbooks nowadays offer “reduced juice” or “reduced vig” on straight bets, either in their everyday pricing, or as special promotions. Most often this means that instead of -110, they set the odds at -107 or -105.

It is considerably less common to see such reduced juice promotions for parlays. So often you’ll be in a situation where you can either pay say, -105 each for straight bets, or string them together into a parlay that pays just a hair above or below the equivalent of multiple -110 plays, and all of a sudden this trivial difference isn’t so trivial.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that while it’s less common to see reduced juice for parlays, it isn’t unheard of. I have played at shops that paid +280 for two-team parlays and +650 for three-team parlays, for instance, which is much better than the +264 and +597 that true odds would be for -110 bets multiplied together.

Indeed once in a great while, I have even come across shops paying +700 on three-team parlays, which is to say no juice at all. (If you see that, either avoid it entirely, or try to get in, win, and get out quick, because sharps invariably eat sportsbooks alive who are foolhardy enough to offer this promotion. Chances are either the promotion won’t last long, or the sportsbook won’t. You obviously want to be very careful risking your money at a place that’s vulnerable to going under at any time.)

So it really doesn’t matter that reduced juice on straight bets is more common than reduced juice on parlays. What matters is which, if either, is available at the specific book you’re using, on the specific bets you are interested in making.

2. Parlays have a multiplier effect on wins and losses.

You’d think that if you’re betting parlays at true odds, or at very close approximations to true odds, then all else being equal, in the long run you should come out very close to the same whether you stick to straight bets or combine those into parlays. But this isn’t quite true.

It turns out that mathematically, all else being equal, you stand to win a little bit more with parlays and lose a little bit more with parlays.

For example, the break even point for -110 straight bets is about 52.4%. If you win 52.4% of your bets, you’ll not win or lose anything to speak of. And yes, if you’re betting parlays at odds that are equivalent to -110 straight bets, then in the long run if you win 52.4% of the legs of those parlays, you should similarly end up almost dead even.

However, if you are able to hit at a rate of, say, 55%, you’ll win a little more betting parlays than you would have on straight bets. And on the flip side, if you hit at a rate of only 49% or 50% or 51%, you’ll lose a little more on parlays than you would have on straight bets.

And as you get farther out from break even-say you hit 60% or 44% of your plays-the difference gradually becomes more pronounced.

So the bottom line on this factor is that if you’re a recreational player who doesn’t really have the skills and knowledge and commitment to make picks at better than the break even line, and you’re just playing for fun and hoping to get lucky, then you’ll lose your money a bit faster on parlays than straight bets. Whereas if you’re doing this at a serious enough level to win more often than you lose, you’ll win a little faster on parlays than straight bets.

3. Parlays require less capital.

If you’re betting on credit and just settling up at the end of the week or month or whatever, then this isn’t a significant factor. However, the norm at legal sportsbooks in Las Vegas and around the world is that, in effect, you pay your full risk amount in advance, and then get it back plus your winnings if you happen to win your play.

What I mean is, if you want to bet $110 to win $100 on the Bulls tonight, you have to hand over $110 to the sportsbook. Then you get paid $210 if you win, and zero if you lose.

Now with parlays, you don’t have to tie up as much money. Instead of betting, say, $110 to win $100 on three different straight bets, you can combine them into a parlay and bet $100 to win $600. Thus you need only give the sportsbook $100 to hold instead of $330.

4. Parlays reduce your flexibility in that you have to make multiple plays at once.

Serious sportsbettors invariably have multiple sportsbook accounts, maybe dozens in fact, because they know how crucial it is to shop lines.

It’s also somewhat common among winning players to monitor lines very closely throughout the day and then make a bet precisely in the few seconds or minutes between when a line moves at some shops and when other shops copy and move their lines in response.

As a result, they often find that they’re making their bets one at a time. If a bettor is looking to bet the Red Sox and the Giants, for instance, chances are the best line on the Red Sox and the best line on the Giants will be at different sportsbooks. Or the line move the bettor is waiting on will occur at different times on the Red Sox game and the Giants game. As a result he’ll make his two wagers at different sportsbooks and/or different times.

Which means it doesn’t make sense for him to parlay the Red Sox and the Giants, because that would necessitate betting both teams at the same shop at the same time.

So some bettors’ position is that they have no objection to parlays in principle, but rarely happen to have occasion to use them because they’re making their plays one at a time wherever they happen to get the best number.

5. Parlays are especially valuable when the bets are correlated.

To say that two bets, A and B, are “correlated” means that if A wins, then because of that B has a higher than chance likelihood of winning.

Fully independent bets have no such connection.

An extreme example of correlated bets would be, say, betting the Pistons on the moneyline and betting the Pistons at -3 on the pointspread. Obviously if the Pistons win the moneyline bet, they’re overwhelmingly likely to win the pointspread bet. It’s not impossible for them to win one and lose the other-they could win the game by exactly 2 points for instance-but the plays are very strongly correlated. If you could parlay the Pistons on the moneyline and the Pistons -3 (while perhaps separately parlaying the Pistons’ opponent on the moneyline and at +3), you’d be rich in no time.

But there of course is the rub. This kind of bet is so blatantly advantageous to the player that no sportsbook would ever allow it. All books have rules in place against correlated parlays.

So why do I even mention this factor if books disallow these wagers?

Because while sportsbooks do not accept parlays on wagers that are as extremely and obviously correlated as in the above case, they are not able to block all parlays that are correlated in smaller and more subtle-yet still profitable-ways.

Consider an example. Let’s say the Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins are playing home games a short distance from each other on the same day at the same time, and there is an ominous weather forecast of an approaching storm with very high winds that might or might not arrive in time to affect the games. Because of the weather uncertainty, the totals on these games unavoidably will be set at some compromise that is higher than if the bad weather were guaranteed, and lower than if clear and windless weather were guaranteed.

Now you don’t have a crystal ball, so you don’t know any more than anyone else does if the storm will hit. But what you do know is it’s very likely to either affect both games or neither.

In that case, the totals on the two games are correlated. You would want to parlay the Over in the Ravens game with the Over in the Redskins game, as well as parlaying the Under in the Ravens game with the Under in the Redskins game. You’re thereby covering only two of the four possibilities (the others are that the Ravens game goes Over and the Redskins game stays Under, or the Ravens game stays Under and the Redskins game goes Over), but because of the correlation, those two possibilities combined add up to considerably more than 50%.

Here’s one more example. Again let’s use NFL football. Sometimes on the last Sunday of the regular season, a team won’t know if its game will matter or not to its making the playoffs until the outcome of earlier games are known. So, say the Vikings will need to win their game if the Falcons win earlier in the day, whereas if the Falcons lose, the Vikings can relax and rest all their key starters because their playoff position will be assured regardless of the outcome of their game.

In this instance, there’s a correlation between the outcome of these two games. So you could parlay the Falcons winning with the Vikings winning (because you know the Vikings will be going all out if the Falcons win), and/or parlay the Falcons losing with the Vikings losing (because you know the Vikings will have no reason to bother trying in their game if the Falcons lose).

I’m not saying things like this come up very often, but if you look for correlations you’ll find some, and they won’t always be disallowed by the sportsbooks.

6. If you win on parlays rather than straight bets, you may operate under the radar longer.

It’s an unfortunate fact that most sportsbooks nowadays will ban (or reduce the betting limits of, or take other actions against) players they’re convinced can beat them consistently (just as casinos take countermeasures against skilled blackjack card counters).

But it’s also a fact that some of the decision makers at sportsbooks are as superstitious or ill informed as a lot of players, and believe that parlays or other non-straight bets are for suckers only.

So if one of the less savvy sportsbook managers sees a player cleaning their clock on straight bets, that sets the alarm bells ringing and he may well boot the player. Whereas if another player is up just as much against them on parlays, the manager may assume, for awhile anyway, that he’s a square who just got lucky and will certainly lose it all back before long, and that therefore the sportsbook should continue to welcome his action.In conclusion, there are many factors, many pros and cons (the above list is only a partial one; as you learn and grow as a sportsbettor you’ll discover more), to take into consideration in deciding whether, when, and how to bet parlays. But it’s certainly not the case that they should be dismissed out of hand. Many winning sportsbettors would not be nearly as successful without parlays.