Profitable Parlays - Fact Or Fiction?

· 4 min read
Profitable Parlays - Fact Or Fiction?

There are countless 'handicapping services' available of providing people with parlays. They will tout win rates similar to one of the most impressive straight wager cappers. Needless to say, you will see that they refer to money line parlays as 'safe' bets. On several sites you may have the privilege of dealing with some type of royalty in neuro-scientific parlay wagering. Regrettably, thousands will be fooled by this fiction again this football season.

The truth is that exotic wagers keep sports books running a business. Next time you are in Vegas take a look at the discarded tickets you see spread all over the place. It's safe to assume that might be nearly all these losers are made of such bets positioned on both sports and racing. Of all sucker bets open to sports bettors, the parlay is king. Bettors are lured in by the promise of an enormous payout while disregarding the fact that there is absolutely no reasonable expectation of any return on investment.

The home edge on a typical straight wager at -110 is 4.5%. Compared with many table games this is actually a fairly raised percentage. Plenty of table games and slots offer a better value for the common bettor placing a random wager. However, everybody knows that betting on sports isn't anything like throwing a set of dice at the trunk wall.

Chance plays a role in everything the house provides. Additionally, there are steps that could be taken to decrease the edge in only about every game. Nowhere in the casino are elements such as for example skill and preparation more useful than the sports book. The edge on a straight wager can be reversed in the bettors favor by utilizing statistics and expertise in a sport. However, a double digit house edge can't ever be overcome in the long run.

# of Teams | Actual Odds | Typical Payout | House Edge



2 | 3/1 | 2.6/1 | 10.00%

3 | 7/1 | 6/1 | 12.50%

4 | 15/1 | 10/1 | 31.25%

5 | 31/1 | 20/1 | 34.38%

6 | 63/1 | 40/1 | 35.94%

7 | 127/1 | 75/1 | 40.63%

8 | 255/1 | 150/1 | 41.02%

9 | 511/1 | 300/1 | 41.21%

10 | 1023/1 | 700/1 | 31.54%

As you can plainly see every parlay you can possibly bet comes with a whopping 10% house edge or better. Such casino advantages are more in line with keno, plus they are equally impossible to overcome over time. There is no mystery surrounding the world of parlays. Bettors are attracted to risking a small amount of money for large payouts.  nhà cái 123win  which are most often played in the casino are slots that offer thousands as well as millions in progressive jackpots. The mentality of the bettors is 'Go big, or go back home.' The casino is clearly pleased to oblige as millions of bettors go home with nothing within their pockets every year.

It is fair to assume that the biggest number of losing bets a book accepts are exotic wagers of equal to or double the home minimum. Simply because most bettors don't have a meaningful bankroll reserve for sports betting. Given that they don't believe they can make any real money by placing $25-50 on a few games per week they continue taking parlays for $20 or less. Using this method they essentially ensure a significant loss by the end of the season. Meanwhile, if they only placed straight wagers at that same level they would limit their potential losses to some units at most.

Many bettors assume that because they're keeping the size of their bets low they are not taking on a significant risk. This analysis is flawed because it ignores several factors. Most of all, it is my experience that most bettors do not place just one parlay per week. In football this means at the least 34 parlays are placed through the regular season. In baseball that number can easily exceed 100. With a low unit bet this is still a dangerous number of wagers to put with such a high house edge. For instance, when you are placing only 5 team parlays your expectation ought to be to lose about $35 for every $100 you wager. Because the amount of bets you place increases it really is inevitable that you'll hit that $100 mark several times over.

Using parlays as a side bet will usually result in increasing your losses or erasing any profits you managed to make on straight wagers. In '09 2009, I had a client who broke even after increasing his bankroll by 45% using my picks. He managed to do this by placing 'small' side bets including parlays, reverses, and teasers. That is an expensive lesson to learn especially when you consider I issued an identical warning to him.

If you are going to follow his lead and continue using parlays I've a few pointers that will help in the long term. First of all, the best value of most parlays is clearly the three team parlay. The difference between your house edge on a 2 & 3 teamer is insignificant, but the payout is more than twice as much. If you take a glance at the graph you need to understand why I would never bet a parlay of 4 teams or more. However, if you are going to make this investment listed below are two useful tips:

If you are likely to bet a four or five 5 team parlay, always make it 6 as well as 10. The difference between your house edge to include one or two 2 more teams is at 5 percentage points and the payout is significantly higher for both options. The house edge on a 10 teamer is virtually exactly like a 4 team parlay, but the actual odds of hitting it are over 1,000 to at least one 1.
If you are likely to throw your cash away chasing huge payouts on 7, 8, and 9 team parlays then just bet the 10 teamer. The House edge is about 10 points lower than all three of these bets and it typically pays about 700/1.

Setting reasonable goals and being patient while attempting to achieve them may be the sign of a profitable professional bettor. Greed should be kept in check to become successful. In this regard, every bettor has two options. It is possible to chase high returns while assuming plenty of unnecessary risk. Or it is possible to minimize your exposure to a few units while maintaining a reasonable expectation to improve your bankroll by 50%...The choice is yours.