Parlay Bets

Sadonna Price
Sadonna Price
icon time
6 Min
icon range
Basic

Spend 5 Minutes To Learn

What Is A Parlay Bet
What Do Parlay Payout
Best Strategies For Parlay Bets

Parlays are one of the most popular wagers in online betting. The reason they are super popular is simple, payouts can be massive.

Hitting parlays is quite hard, though. It’s the classic high-risk, high-reward bet. There are lots of different parlays for a bettor to choose from. Nowadays, most online sportsbooks offer parlay betting for most professional sports.

In this guide, we’ll show you all you need to know about parlays, so let’s get right into it.

What Is A Parlay Bet?

A parlay bet is a sports wager that combines several bets on one ticket alone. Usually, you would go with moneyline bets but can use spreads, totals, and futures.

In some sportsbooks, you can also make prop bet parlays, which bring the payouts to an even higher ceiling. Some other sportsbooks like FanDuel or DraftKings earned popularity by making same-game parlays.

Parlays have at least two bets in one but can go up to 10, 12, or even 15 games in some betting houses.

What Do Parlays Payout?

Parlays are pretty simple. You select a plural number of bets within one big wager. You win them all, you cash out. You so much as lose one of them, it draws dead.

In parlays, you’re not tied to one sport only. Most sportsbooks will allow you to have a mixed-sport parlay. For example, you have various NFL bets, an NBA spread, and a tennis moneyline, all placed in one parlay.

2 Team Parlay Payout: Often parlays payout at +264, depending on the bets chosen. Normally ones around the -110 per bet. If you choose two big favorites, you won’t get much profit. Odds depend on the moneyline attached to your wager.

3 Team Parlay Payout: Payout gets higher than a two-team wager. This is because the chances of getting the three plays right are tougher than only two results. The standard odds would go for about +600 if the bets placed were -110.

4 Team Parlay Payout: When you get a four-team parlay, the odds are really high. A standard number would go around the +1200 odds.

5 Team Parlay Payout: The odds from a 4-team to a 5-team parlay double. The standard payout can go up to +2400. The chance of hitting these is slim, but one can give your bankroll a much-needed boost.

6 Team Parlay Payout: The standard payout for a six-team parlay is a whopping +4700. Clear to say, a six-way bet is a real tough wager to win. Hence you can find massive payouts at the end of them.

Parlay Betting Odds

Standard payouts are not set in stone. These can change depending on the individual moneylines that compose your parlay.

The payouts tables or calculators you can find will often be based on single bets set at -100 odds. To have a better understanding of parlay calculations, let’s take a look at this:

Parlay Odds Chart

You can estimate how much a parlay will pay depending on the odds of the bet. For example, using the standard -100 odds. The parlay payouts chart is:

If the parlay has spreads and totals with odds other than the -100 value, you have to use a True Odds Calculator. In this case, you must enter the moneyline of every individual bet. Then, the calculator will provide you with the parlay payout.

Parlay Betting Strategies

Parlays are hard; it requires a lot of studying and, let’s be real, a lot of luck as well. However, you can try and bend luck your way as there are different strategies you could use to play on parlays.

Moneyline Parlay

This is one of the best tools a bettor can use when betting on parlays. This is because of two main reasons. The value of parlays is a big one, and moneylines are simple to understand.

Plus, you erase the risk of a team not covering a certain spread. If the teams chosen win, then you win.

There are two types of moneyline parlays. The first one is the aggressive moneyline parlay. This is mainly used when spreads are close or when the underdog is the bettor’s choice to win. It’s riskier.

The other type is the neutral moneyline parlay. You lower the risk but also the reward. This is one when your focus is to strengthen your bankroll, not to get the big payout.

Progressive Parlays

What is a progressive parlay? This is a unique parlay. Why? Because you don’t need to win all the bets to make a profit. You can get a piece of your winnings or even make some profit if you win three or four out of five bets.

Online betting sites are not fond of progressive parlays, but you can find them at some. Hence, it is very difficult to find a progressive parlay sportsbook in the regulated US market.

Multi-Chance Parlays

They are similar to the progressive parlays but have one vital difference. While the payout of the progressive parlay depends on how many bets you get correct, the multi-chance payout doesn’t.

Multi-chance bets have the same payout whether you get every bet right or the minimum number needed for the payout.

Open Parlays

The open parlays bring the most value out of all parlays. These kinds of parlays allow you to pick several bets in a parlay and add more at a later time.

Let’s say you bet a three-team parlay on the evening window of the NFL Sunday. Then, you want to add the Sunday Night Football Game to the parlay, and you can do it.

This allows the bettor to manage the games added to the parlay in his quest to get a better payout.

Boosted Odds Parlays

The sportsbooks will throw boosted odds every once in a while, which you can use to boost your parlays. An important thing to note is that an odds boost doesn’t increase your chance of winning. It increases the payout if you win.

Parlay Betting Things To Know

Before placing a parlay, there are a few things you have to keep in mind and consider.

Most sportsbooks offer great bonuses. They are like free money to your bankroll but come with certain restrictions. When it comes to free play bonuses, parlay bets make a lot of sense.

Free play only returns the won amount, not the staked amount. So it makes sense to wager the free play more than once, and that’s what parlays allow you to do.

Circumventing Betting Limits

Sportsbooks usually come with betting limits, but parlays can help to bypass them. For example, let’s say a recreational site has a $1000 max bet on NFL games. If you see three bets that you would like to bet on, a three-team parlay makes a lot of sense.

If you bet the games separately, you’re limited to risk $1,100 to crack a $1,000. In a parlay, you’ll be risking approximately $2,185 to win $1,986 on each. Of course, it comes with the risk that one result can kill your parlay.

Parlays And Pushed Bets

We established that to win a parlay, you have to win all bets involved. If you lose one, it’s done. But what happens if one of the bets ends in a push?

Basically, the odds will null that bet, like it never happened. The odds are recalculated accordingly. For example, a four-team parlay ends up with three wins and one push. The payout would be as if it was a three-team parlay.

Parlay Bets In Professional Sports

Parlay’s popularity comes from the big payouts it offers. It spices up the sports you love the most. You can place parlays on NFL, NBA, NHL, and many more sports leagues. You can even mix sports within the same parlay. A new type of parlay is same day parlay bet that is slowly is being offered by various sportsbooks.

The more results, the bigger the payout, the tougher it is to win.

Thirsty For More Betting Knowledge? Check Our Sports Betting Guides Hub.

Author

About the author

For almost two decades, Sadonna has remained at the forefront of the gambling industry in the US and abroad, covering the latest news and legal update...

[Read full bio]