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What is a Parlay Bet?
A parlay is a single bet that covers multiple events. Parlays are a popular way to bet on sports because they give gamblers a chance for a huge win even if they only bet a small amount of money. These exotic bets can add a lot of fun to your sports betting experience without the risk of big losses. A good site for parlay-betting is Bet365. For american residents the best site for parlay betting is Bodog.
Here’s an example of how a parlay works. Let’s say there are three football games you’d like to bet on which are all taking place today, and you’d like to bet on the Cowboys, Patriots and Colts all to cover the spreads in their respective games. You could bet $110 dollars on each game, and if you won all three (assuming a normal -110 line on the spreads), you’d come out $300 ahead at the end of the day!
On a parlay, you’d have the chance to win much more money than you could have by betting each game individually. A three-team parlay might pay as much as 6-1 on a win. This means that if your teams covered in all three games, you’d win $660 on that same $110 bet!
You might be thinking that there must be a catch – and of course, there is. In order to win a parlay bet, you must win every single bet in the parlay. A single loss will mean you lose, no matter how well the other games went for you. If you bet games individually, you win and lose on each one. In the above example, if the Cowboys and Patriots won for you, but the Colts lost, you’d still end up $90 ahead by betting each game individually. If you made a $110 parlay, you’d lose the entire $110.
If your main motivation for sports betting is to make money, you’ll probably avoid parlay bets most of the time. A parlay will almost always have a much higher house edge than regular bets. This makes it very hard to win at parlays in the long run, since you’d have to pick a very high percentage of winners in order to overcome the sportsbook’s edge.
However, for a casual gambler, or for someone who normally takes their sports betting seriously but wants to spend a couple extra bucks for the chance to win a big score, there’s nothing wrong with the occasional parlay. At most sportsbooks, you don’t even have to stick to a single sport or type of bet; you can mix and match bets from a variety of sports and events, and sometimes even combine bets from different days into a single parlay. And the bigger the parlay gets, the more massive the payoffs become; a 10-team parlay typically pays odds of 300-1 or more. And there are sometimes spots where you may think you have a big enough advantage to make the parlay worthwhile; in these cases, a parlay bet can be extremely lucrative.
What is a Teaser Bet?
There are also special types of parlay bets known as teasers. These teaser bets allow you to adjust the point spread in your favor by a certain number of points (in football, usually between six and seven points) in exchange for much lower payouts when you win. For instance, a three-team football teaser where you get an extra six points on each bet might only pay around 2-1 odds. Like regular parlays, you’ll have to win every game to win the bet, and they’re usually not profitable. However, there are times when smart bettors will jump all over teasers, normally when taking the teaser allows them to win at certain key point spreads (in football, this normally means three and seven).
