The Power of Sports Betting Parlays
Here’s the latest betting strategy update from the team at Bodog Sportsbook.
Perhaps you’ve heard that old chestnut about the wheat and the chessboard. Long story short, put one grain of wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and keep doubling that amount until all 64 squares are covered. How many grains of wheat is that? 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. Even if you made the Earth a giant wheat farm, it would take 80 years to harvest that much grain.
That’s the power of parlays. Of course, your chances of picking 64 correct games out of 64 is frightfully small: (that number up there) to 1. So let’s start smaller. Let’s say you’re looking at this week’s NFL matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, and let’s say you like both the Ravens (+1.5) and the under on the total of 36.5 points (For current lines, see Bodoglife.com). You could wager $110 on each of them separately for a potential profit of $200, or you could place a single $110 parlay bet and earn $286 if both the Ravens and the under cash in. You pay half as much, and you win more.
You’ll already have noticed that’s $286 and not $330 on odds of 3-1. That factors in the juice the book collects for processing the bet. Every 2-team parlay (where the juice is –110 on each item in the parlay) is given odds of 2.6-1. Here is the full “fixed odds” list:
2-team 2.6-1
3-team 6-1
4-team 12-1
5-team 25-1
6-team 35-1
7-team 75-1
8-team 100-1
9-team 150-1
10-team 300-1
11-team 450-1
12-team 600-1
As you can see, those payouts can get pretty big – up to a maximum of $100,000. The more teams you parlay, the higher the risk and the juice as well as the payout. You can put together any combination of football and basketball games, using both pointspreads and totals.
There are a few simple things to know about parlays before making the plunge. The first is that every team in the parlay has to win to get paid. Four out of five is not good enough. However, if there is a push, that team gets taken out of the equation. Let’s say you have a 3-team parlay where one of the games ended in a push. That game is removed, and you proceed with your remaining 2-team parlay at 2.6-1 odds. If you started with a 2-team parlay and you get a push, the other team is treated as if it were an ordinary straight bet instead.
Get in on parlay betting with Bodog online sports betting.
An easy parlay strategy that many sharps employ is to bet the pointspread and the total on the same game, as we did in the above example. One important benefit is that you’re studying almost entirely the same handicapping information, so it’s a major timesaver – there’s a reason why they say time is money. You can also expect the underdog to have a better chance of covering if the score is low, particularly if the favorite is laying a ton of points. The underdog-under and favorite-over parlays are value bets following this line of reasoning. (Please note, however, that Bodog does not take action on correlated parlays.)
We’re into parlays so much that we’re pleased to be holding a special Parlay Promotion contest that earns you bonus points for all the parlays that you hit, all the way up to the end of the NFL regular season. There are weekly prizes available for the bettors who rack up the most points, and the more teams you parlay at once, the more points you get. Make sure to visit bodoglife.com to check out the rules and regulations, as well as the prizes you can win.
TAGS: Sports Betting Strategies
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Add comment October 30th, 2008
Here’s a quick summary of the bookie offers available on EPL football betting this weekend (1-3 November 2008). For the full listing of all Stake-back betting specials across all sports at the top online bookmakers check out the “
