Parlay Strategy: When and When Not to Use Parlays in Your Bets

It’s the perfect choice for point-spread parlays or even moneylines. Just like any bet, the parlay holds significant pros and cons. One of the most obvious advantages is that you stand to win a great sum of money. Plus, it’s much more fun to play and a better option for high rollers looking to score big with their bets. Understanding these trade-offs will help you decide how much of your betting strategy should include parlays. But there are cases when the bettor wants to take a guaranteed profit from a parlay bet by covering/hedging the last leg of it.

Use Correlated Outcomes (When Allowed)

A great thing about parlays is that most bookmakers will automatically laugh and think ‘sucker bet’, when in fact some parlays are highly profitable for the bettor. First, the bettor tried to be smart and not raise the obvious red flag that a max bet would. Second, he was not greedy, and bet a lot of parlays that he knew would lose, in order to lock in some near-certain profits. For example, the market consensus is that Pittsburgh is a 5-point favorite over Kansas City. However, there is a sportsbook that gets a lot of action coming in on Pittsburgh, and so they offer Kansas City +7, which is a massive opportunity. You would be well served to first try and bet the max on Kansas City +7, since this bet will show a profit in the long run.

Even skilled bettors struggle with the mathematical reality that every additional selection increases the difficulty of hitting the entire bet. The biggest appeal of parlays lies in their potential for massive payouts. For example, a five-leg parlay can transform a small wager into a significant win.

• Without the typical sportsbook margins, you keep more of your winnings.
• They’re cheap, fun, and easy to control, and you should never build your betting bankroll strategy around them.
• Once you have that established, there are a few more strategies you can follow to help improve your win rate when betting on sports parlays.
• On BettorEdge, you can craft custom same-game parlays that go beyond what traditional sportsbooks offer.
• While spreads offer better odds, moneyline picks tend to be safer choices.

What Is a Parlay Bet? Strategies, Examples, and Key Tips

Punters are free to build their spread NBA parlays which can deliver incredible profit on small bets. In the case of a tie, the parlay reverts to a lower number of legs and payout. No big surprise here – this one is a parlay consisting of 4 separate picks. The risk is higher than in a 3 team parlay, but so is the potential payout.

Here, we discuss how payouts work, when parlay betting can be a good choice, and which sports are best for it. Let’s say you are handicapping an NBA game between an offensive-minded team like the Golden State Warriors and a defensive-minded team like the Miami Heat. You like the Heat’s chances to cover the spread as 4-point underdogs but don’t believe their offense can keep up. The most likely scenario in which your bet will win is if Miami’s defense can control the game’s tempo. Now that you know how parlay bets are calculated, let’s dive into the pros and cons of parlay betting. The reason parlay payouts get so large as you add more legs to them is because your winnings on each bet roll over into the next play.

Some bettors will chase their losses by building bigger or more frequent parlays, hoping to recoup some of their money. Parlays should be special, occasional plays; never your main strategy. The house edge looms large over every single leg, so daily parlays are only gonna burn through your bankroll. In addition to that face, only one loss in a parlay wipes out the whole bet. And because each leg carries the book’s margin, the effective house edge on a multi-leg parlay is enormous; it’s much higher than any single bet’s 4–5%. If you treat a 3-leg parlay as a single bet, the house edge can be seen as ~12.5% from the bettor’s stake perspective, and this makes parlays long shots, not fair wagers.

When you place Round Robin parlay tickets, you create a series of coexisting smaller parlays on the same ticket. Let’s say you back the Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a three-team parlay. In a regular parlay, https://indiaroobet.com/ the Chiefs losing, will cost you your ticket. American or moneyline odds are commonly used by sportsbooks in the US. If you want to understand American odds and how to use them, read more here.

Let’s dive into scenarios where parlays make the most sense. In a parlay bet, if one of the games ends in a tie (or a ‘push’), that game is removed. This reduces the total number of bets and, as a result, decreases your potential payout. The best parlay strategy for betting involves using correlated parlays.