Profitable Parlays - Fact Or Fiction?
There are countless 'handicapping services' available of providing people who have parlays. They'll tout win rates much like probably the most impressive straight wager cappers. Needless to say, you will see that they refer to money line parlays as 'safe' bets. On many of these sites you may have the privilege of working with some kind 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 in business. Next time you are in Vegas check out the discarded tickets you see spread everywhere. 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 the sucker bets available to sports bettors, the parlay is king. Bettors are lured in by the promise of an enormous payout while disregarding the truth that there is no reasonable expectation of any return on investment.
The home edge on a standard straight wager at -110 is 4.5%. Compared with many table games this is really a fairly raised percentage. Many table games and slots provide 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. There are also steps that could be taken to decrease the edge in just about every game. Nowhere in the casino are elements such as 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 an activity. 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 see every parlay you can possibly bet comes with a whopping 10% house edge or better. Such casino advantages tend to be more in line with keno, plus they are equally impossible to overcome in the end. There is no mystery surrounding the planet of parlays. Bettors are attracted to risking handful of money for large payouts. The games which are most often played in the casino are slot machines that offer thousands or even millions in progressive jackpots. The mentality of these bettors is 'Go big, or go home.' The casino is clearly pleased to oblige as an incredible number of bettors go home with nothing within their pockets every year.
It really is fair to assume that the biggest number of losing bets a book accepts are exotic wagers of add up to or double the home minimum. It is because most bettors don't have a meaningful bankroll reserve for sports betting. Since they don't believe they are able to make any real cash by placing $25-50 on a few games per week they continue taking parlays for $20 or less. Using onbet studio ensure a significant loss by the end of the growing season. Meanwhile, if they only placed straight wagers at that same level they might limit their potential losses to a few units at most.
Many bettors assume that because they're keeping how big is their bets low they are not taking on a substantial risk. This analysis is flawed since it ignores several factors. Most of all, it really is my experience that a lot of bettors usually do not place just one single parlay weekly. In football this implies at the least 34 parlays are placed through the regular season. In baseball that number can easily exceed 100. With a low unit bet that is still a dangerous number of wagers to put with such a high house edge. For example, should you be placing only 5 team parlays your expectation should be to lose about $35 for every $100 you wager. Because the amount of bets you place increases it is inevitable that you will hit that $100 mark several times over.
Using parlays as a side bet will most likely 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 with 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 have a few pointers that will help in the end. First of all, the very 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 a lot 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're 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 or even 10. The difference between the house edge to add 1 or 2 2 more teams is within 5 percentage points and the payout is significantly higher for both options. The house edge on a 10 teamer is virtually the same as a 4 team parlay, but the actual probability 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 HOME edge is approximately 10 points lower than all three of these bets also it typically pays about 700/1.
Setting reasonable goals and being patient while working to achieve them may be the sign of a profitable professional bettor. Greed should be kept in check in order to be successful. In this regard, every bettor has two options. You can chase high returns while assuming a huge amount of unnecessary risk. Or you can minimize your exposure to several units while maintaining a reasonable expectation to increase your bankroll by 50%...The choice is yours.