Parlays are Totally Bad.. Unless You Hit One
Scott Morris | November 17, 2019
When sportsbooks report their profits, at least a good chunk of that number is a result of parlay bets. The parlay bet is one in which you can string together several games and have it pay off at an exponential number.
Sports betting purists recommend highly against this type of bet, yet many of us still take part. This is because the promise of such a large win based on such a low financial risk is appealing.
Your regular Joe bettor will admit that he plays more parlays than he should. But the jolt you receive when you actually hit one is so great that it is hard to forget.
Sportsbooks have reported that up to 30% of their profits on some weeks are the result of the parlay wager. The betting odds show that the odds of cashing one are stacked against you. Yet we play.
Go to any sportsbook Twitter feed and chances are they will have a post about a player that just cashed a multi-teamer for big money. They do this so that we all know that IT IS POSSIBLE. But, hey, so is winning the lottery. This is the exception and not the norm.
Speaking of lottery, only a fool really plays that game. The odds of winning a large payoff via the lottery are way worse than any parlay. In a way, the multi-team parlay is the lottery ticket of sports betting. But at least you can actually enter your own teams that you researched vs just picking random numbers – or your kids birthdays or whatever people use to pick their numbers.
See – 20 things more likely to happen than winning the lottery
Below is a sports betting parlay chart. Remember, if you play these things for fun, fine, but if you play them regularly, and with large amounts of money, you will be sitting broke on the bench next to the guy that just lost all of his 100 lotto tickets.
Standard Sportsbook Parlay Odds
2 teams 2.6 to 1
3 teams 6-1
4 teams 10-1
5 teams 20-1
6 teams 40-1
7 teams 80-1
8 teams 150-1
