How Round Robin Betting Works

By now, you’ve likely heard of parlay betting, so you are looking at broadening your sports betting knowledge and attempting to get in on round robin betting action. Round Robin betting essentially is a parlay, but instead of three to 15 individual games or outcomes, you have a parlay with three or more parlays within it – parlays within a parlay.

These round robin bets can include any betting option – moneyline, totals, point spreads, etc. You will be required to create three separate parlays with at least three lines. These mini parlays will all be created from a number of games you pick – between three and 15. Once you select your games, you will be prompted to pick how many ‘ways’ you want your combinations based on how many games you’ve chosen.

The difference with round robin betting and regular parlays is that you are able to still make a profit even if one leg of your wager doesn’t win. Your payout will inevitably be reduced if all legs of your bet don’t cash.

You will have different combinations of whichever number of lines you choose – such if you choose 4 games and decide to do 3-ways, you would have four, three-game parlays with different combinations of those initial four lines.

Another example could be if you could choose 10 events, and select that you’d like to do a 5-way round robin wager. Our sportsbook will create five parlays based on the possible combinations available in those ten games. That also means you only need to get five of the ten combinations right to still win some money.

How to bet on a Round Robin

To start, you will do your research and decide how many games you want to wager on for your round robin wager. You can select between three and 15 events or lines to bet on, and how many ways you want your round robin wager to go.

The BetUS Sportsbook will prevent you from wagering on any opposing outcome of the same event – I.e. picking the opposing team of a team you’ve already picked. If the Vancouver Canucks are playing the Las Vegas Golden Knights, and you pick the Knights -3.5, you cannot pick the opposing Canucks +3.5 wager. You also are unable to bet on the Knights point spread and bet the Knights on the moneyline as those bets would correlate.

If you chose to create an eight-event round robin where each parlay created would contain the same number of bets. You would choose how many ‘ways’ you want this round robin to go, you can choose two, which would create four two game parlays, or you could choose six, which would give you 28 separate 6-team parlays.

The amount you decide to risk will be multiplied by the number of parlays in your round robin wager. Depending on how many ‘ways’ you choose, you could bet $5 on a 4-way bet, and you would end up paying $20 as you are betting on each of the four parlays.

Round Robin betting can be a bit tricky, and highly risky, as you need so many outcomes to occur. You will need to do plenty of research into the three to 15 bets you decide to place so you aren’t throwing your hard-earned money away.

Let’s start the example with a simple four-event, three-way round robin bet. The sportsbook will show you what ‘ways’ are available, in this case, we have the option to do two ways or three ways.

This means there will be four events we want to bet on, and we are going to bet on the 3 combinations of those four bets. So, for this example you will have:
1-2-3
1-2-4
1-3-4
2-3-4

When deciding what your stake will be, you have to keep in mind that you are betting on all four combinations. So, if you bet $10, you will be betting $10 on all four which means your total stake will be $40.

Each game will appear three times, so you will need to hit at least three of your games to ensure you come out with some winnings. If Game 3 ended up being a loss, the combination that doesn’t have game 3 in it will still win (Combination 2). The odds would play a big factor in how much you would win in this scenario, as you would calculate each parlay separately. Let’s say combination 2.

Let’s add some odds to the mix:

Game 1 (+100)
Game 2 (-110)
Game 3 (+350)
Game 4 (+105)

So, if we were looking at our one winning wager of $10 on Combination 1-2-4, we would be looking at combined odds to win $68.27. Obviously, we lost $30 on the three other legs of our round robin wager, but we’d still be up a bit. Risking $40 to win $68 isn’t really the goal here.

If you bet on this wager ($40) and all four of your games ended up winning, you would be looking at $570.70 in winnings. That’s the difference between winning one and winning four.

What’s the difference between placing this wager and placing a $10 four game parlay on those games? If you decided to just do a straight parlay, you would win $342.22. So you would win $228.48 more by round robin betting.

Because round robin betting is considerably riskier, the reward will be much sweeter in the end.

Now that you have a basic idea of how round robin betting works, head over to the sportsbook and give it a try! You can also head to our Action Reverse page to check out how to beef up this bet by betting the action both forward and backward to gen

Setting up a Round Robin at BetUS

To set up a round robin at BetUS, select between three and fifteen events. Then choose a subset of combinations of those teams to win; the number of ways in your round robin.

Example 1: If you select eight teams, you would create a round robin of between two and seven teams* where every possible combination of that number will be made into separate parlay wagers. Each parlay will contain the same number of teams**.

*Between 2-7 because one team would be a simple straight bet and all eight events together would be a normal parlay bet.

** The number of events you ‘choose to win’ is called a “way” and is the number of teams in each combination (parlay).

With eight events, for example, if you choose parlays of six teams each, this would be an 8-team round robin in six ways. Note that a round robin wager contains every possible combination of the number of ‘ways’ you choose.  In this example, there are 28 possible 6-team combinations within any set of eight teams, thus an 8-team round robin with 6-ways will always be made up of 28 separate 6-team parlays (see table below).

A round robin with four ways has four teams in each parlay; eight ways have eight teams in each parlay, and so forth.

The Risk amount you enter will be multiplied by the number of parlays in your round robin.

Example 2: In a four-team round robin we have the choice of two ways or three ways, meaning getting parlays with every possible two-team or three-team combinations. Choosing three ways, we have the four teams: Team A, Team B, Team C, and Team D.

All of the three-way parlays with four teams are:

ABC, ABD, ACD, and BCD

Since we’ve chosen three ways, we know we have to get at least three winners out of the possible four in order for at least one of our parlays to win. Say in this case, we picked three winners, but Team C, the Flyers, lost. We lose every parlay that contains the Flyers. But if you look at the combinations, there’s one parlay that the Flyers are not a part of. We would win the three-team parlay that contains the Celtics, Braves, and Mariners.

Remember, when you place a round robin wager, the Risk amount you enter will be multiplied by the number of possibilities available to you for a win (the number of parlays in your round robin). In the 4-team, 3-way round robin example shown above, a $50 risk amount would put $50 on each of the four possible parlays, or combinations, that make up this round robin bet, for a total of $200 wagered.

Here, we lost 3 x $50 = $150 on the three parlays we did not hit.

However, using a parlay calculator, we find that our $50 winning parlay paid out $328.80, including the $50 risked. Overall, even though we lost three out of four parlays in our round robin, we end up ahead by $128.80.

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ROUND ROBIN PARLAYS TABLE

(Trying to make it easier to differentiate between # of events with color and bold within these 93 rows…you can do better, I’m sure)

Picks in Round Robin	Number of Ways (Events in each Parlay)	Total Number of Parlays in Round Robin
3	2	3
4	2	6
4	3	4
5	2	10
5	3	10
5	4	5
6	2	15
6	3	20
6	4	15
6	5	6
7	2	21
7	3	35
7	4	35
7	5	21
7	6	7
8	2	28
8	3	56
8	4	70
8	5	56
8	6	28
8	7	8
9	2	36
9	3	84
9	4	126
9	5	126
9	6	84
9	7	36
9	8	9
10	2	45
10	3	120
10	4	210
10	5	252
10	6	210
10	7	120
10	8	45
10	9	10
11	2	55
11	3	165
11	4	330
11	5	462
11	6	462
11	7	330
11	8	165
11	9	55
11	10	11
12	2	66
12	3	220
12	4	495
12	5	792
12	6	924
12	7	792
12	8	495
12	9	220
12	10	66
12	11	12
13	2	78
13	3	286
13	4	715
13	5	1287
13	6	1716
13	7	1716
13	8	1287
13	9	715
13	10	286
13	11	78
13	12	13
14	2	91
14	3	364
14	4	1001
14	5	2002
14	6	3003
14	7	3432
14	8	3003
14	9	2002
14	10	1001
14	11	364
14	12	91
14	13	14
15	2	105
15	3	455
15	4	1365
15	5	3003
15	6	5005
15	7	6435
15	8	6435
15	9	5005
15	10	3003
15	11	1365
15	12	455
15	13	105
15	14	15

Why use Round Robins?

The advantage of placing a round robin is that you do not need to win every combination in order to make your money back for the entire round robin.

The round robin with the most parlays is a 15-team round robin with either seven or eight “ways.” Both of these options have 6,435 separate parlays. Huge. A $5 wager means you would be risking $32,175. If you went seven ways, even with four losses and two pushes out of those 15 games, you would still be up about $9,000. Any more losses or pushes, however, and you’d not be very happy.

Placing an Action Reverse:

Go to the sportsbook page at BetUS. If you only want to see the lines for one sport, such as football, click the football link in the menu on the right to see what options are available for wagering on football. The options will show up in a dropdown menu underneath the main football tab.

If you want to bet on NFL, click on it and the available games will show up in the middle of the page in what is called the betting engine. Choose which NFL events you would like to bet on by clicking on the odds displayed in the betting engine. After your choice loads, you will see it in the right-hand column under Bet Slip.

To choose another sport to add to your ticket, go back to the Sports column on the left and click another sport. Choose again from the available events and add them to your Bet Slip. Only full game lines or series are allowed for exotic wagers, which include reverses.

Note 1: The system will automatically inhibit you from choosing two correlated wagers on the same game. For example, choosing Team A to win on the point spread and also on the Moneyline. You will only be able to choose one or the other, as they are otherwise too similar (correlated) to allow on the same ticket.

Note 2: BetUS also allows you to place what is called a Rolling If-Bet. This allows you to place a new bet with the funds from a previous bet, with a few conditions. Click the link to find out how if a Rolling If-Bet can work for you.

All your chosen events will be listed in the Bet Slip with your wager options above.

As you are choosing your events, you will see wager options for placing a Parlay, If Bet, Reverse, and Teaser in the Bet Slip. Straight will be the default wager type until you choose something else. Whatever wager type the Bet Slip is set to will be grey, as below.

Because Round Robins are just a series of Parlay wagers, they are nested within the Parlay choices. You must select the Parlay button in the Bet Slip, as you will place round robins from the parlay selections.

Click the Parlay button and you will see all your selections listed in the Bet Slip. Clicking on the drop-down arrow will show you your available Round Robin options. We have chosen five games and we want to place a four-way round-robin wager using those five games.

Using the table, you can see that a five-team, four-way round robin wager will actually place 5 four-team parlays. Each parlay will require the same Risk amount you enter. Here, we have risked $10, which means we will place five $10 parlays, risking a total of $50 to win $600.

To add more selections or an event from another sport on the menu, just bring up the lines for that sport in the betting engine again and select another event. The Bet Slip will add that event and keep itself in Parlay mode. If you have already entered a Risk amount, the Payout amount will automatically readjust with the new event’s odds.

Placing your Round Robin

To place your bet into the system, click the Place my bets button under the Bet Slip:

Here, your BetUS Bet Slip gives you one more chance to view your pending wager before it is placed. This includes the game information, lines and Risk and Win amounts. To confirm your wager, simply click Confirm. After you do this, you will be unable to change your wager and BetUS will be unable to cancel it.

Once confirmed, you will see five separate four-team parlays listed in your Pending Wagers, each risking $10 to win $120.

Once your wager is confirmed, the Bet Slip will again show you all your wager details and ask you to print a hard copy of your Slip. In case of emergency or other circumstance, no internet claims will be honored unless a printed copy of bets in question is supplied.