Parlay betting is a common way to bet on sports that allows you to raise the stakes for larger payouts. To place a parlay bet, you can combine the odds for three or more events and if all legs of your wager are correct, you will win a much larger payout than a simple single-game wager.
We repeat all legs of your parlay must be correct or you lose.
Your parlay bet can consist of two or more moneyline bets, point spreads, totals and even prop bets. Usually sportsbooks prevent you from adding more than one bet from the same game, so you can pick a few different games and mix and match betting types if you so desire.
It’s common on any given night for there to be multiple sports being played, so not only can you mix different betting types, you can bet on different sports on the same ticket. You could bet on the NFL, NBA and NHL all at the same time, spreading your wagers out across different leagues.
Parlays are appealing to sports bettors because you can win some big money by betting on multiple games at once – you just have to do your research and ensure you are making smart betting decisions because you can’t make a single mistake or your bet won’t cash.
Let’s look at an example of the difference between betting on three single games individually and combining them into a parlay.
Example:
New England Patriots (-5.5 point spread, -110 odds). A $100 wager would pay out $90.91
Colorado Avalanche (moneyline +105 odds) A $100 wager would payout $105
Toronto Raptors versus Boston Celtics (225 total, under, with -120 odds) A $100 wager would pay out $83.33
If you bet all of these games you would win a little over $279.24.
If you took those three games and combined them into a $300 parlay, you would be looking at quite a different scenario. If you combine those odds and all of those outcomes occur, you would walk away with $1,852.52 in winnings plus your initial stake – so a payout of $2,152.52.
It’s pretty amazing what some sports bettors can win by correcting a few games correctly. That’s just three games, imagine cashing in on a 10-game parlay!
How to Calculate Parlay Odds
When you place a single game wager, you will be able to view the odds for that specific game outcome. When you bet a parlay, you’re combining the odds together, pooling those odds so that if you correctly predict all outcomes you can expect a big payout. You can choose between two and 15 picks and see if you can correctly pick the outcome of all selections.
At BetUS, the largest parlay payout you can receive is $200,000.
In the case of a push on your parlay ticket, you wouldn’t lose your bet, but you would reduce your odds – pushes just eliminate that bet from your wager, because you didn’t technically lose that bet. For example, if you had five legs on your parlay ticket, and you had a moneyline soccer wager that resulted in a tie, you wouldn’t ruin your whole ticket, that game’s odds would just be removed from your ticket, and your odds would reduce.
When all of your picks in a parlay are at standard odds of -110, the parlay will payout according to the parlay payout table below: