new88 regarding parlays is: DON'T.
Parlays generally carry a higher house edge than straight bets, which means you give the book a more impressive advantage over you once you play them. That, alone, is reason enough to suppress the misplaced feelings of greed coupled with fear that often result in betting parlays. People think they are risking less with parlays, however they are not. They believe they are able to win more with parlays, however they cannot. The bigger win with parlays is far outweighed by the bigger possibility of losing. Parlay bettors are in fact risking more, with less possibility of collecting.
A parlay is not an individual bet. It really is two bets -- a one-unit bet using one team and a two-unit bet on another. Which team gets the two-unit bet? In point-spread betting at constant money odds, if both teams win or both teams lose it doesn't matter which team gets the double bet. When one team wins and something team loses, however, the double bet is presumed to possess been on the loser. How smart is that for the bettor? Go ahead, make a parlay. We'll wait until both games are over, and in case there is a split we'll put the double bet on the loser. If your bookmaker sold you a parlay with that line, how many of you would still make the bet?
A parlay is also bad money management. In a parlay you either bet double on the second team, or nothing on that same team, dependant on if the first game won or lost. That adds an element of luck to your betting that doesn't must be there. The skilled handicapper is always wanting to make smart investments. He tries to eliminate the result of luck to the best extent possible to make his results as predictable as possible.
Much like every rule, however, there are exceptions. The exception to the rule regarding parlays occurs when the two bets are co-dependent.
I knew one bookmaker who was taken for tens of thousands because he didn't understand the co-dependency of certain bets. He allowed a new player to consistently parlay the first half with the overall game. The ball player parlayed totals by combining the over in the first half with the over in the overall game, and the under in the initial half with under in the overall game. Both parlays were manufactured in the same game. Each time the player won he'd win 2.6 times his bet. Betting $100 on each parlay, if one of these won, the player would win $260 and lose $100 on another parlay for a net win of $160. He could never win both parlays. If he lost both parlays he would lose $200.
Initially, this appeared to be a great opportunity for the book. The standard coin-flip probability of winning one parlay out of the two are 50-50. So far as the bookie was concerned the bettor ought to be winning $160 half the time, and losing $200 half the time. The bettor, however, making $500 parlays, was ahead a lot more than $20,000 after 6 months, and the book started to look at what the bettor was doing more carefully.
The issue for the bookmaker was that both halves of each parlay were co-dependent. At the end of the first half, the bettor was almost never in a 50-50 situation.
Take the Thursday night game between Utah and Air Force. The overall game total was 53 and the first half total was 27. At the end of the initial half, the score was 31-21, for a total of 52 first-half points. The initial half of one of the parlays, the "over" in the first half was a winner. For the parlay probability to be correct, there should now be a 50-50 probability of winning the "over" for the game. Obviously the odds of winning the "over" in the game weren't 50-50 but much better than 99% and only the "over." The ball player only needed to win the first 1 / 2 of the parlay to be virtually assured that he would collect 2.6 times his money instead of just $10 for $11.
Before you rush out to try this, be aware that most off-shore books are much too smart to enable you to parlay first half to game. Should they do enable you to do this, start fretting about collecting because that book will be taken up to the cleaners.
There are, however, some less obvious co-dependent parlays that may still be made at many books. One kind of co-dependent parlay may be the parlay of the side and total in exactly the same game.
Any game where the total is significantly less than double the spread can provide you an advantage in parlaying side to total in the same game. We've already discussed, in a prior article, how exactly to use these anomalous side and total combinations to hedge each other and increase your win with hardly any increase in risk. This type of bet, however, required that you have an impression on the side or the total. Parlaying is another method to boost your potential win on these games, or even to create a potential win in case you have no opinion.
There are two games this Saturday that qualify. They're Virigina -25 over Duke with a complete of 48 �, and Kansas St. -24 � vs. North Texas with a total 46 �).
In the Virginia game, if you believe that Virginia covers the 25 points, then they must hold Duke to no more than 11 points or the game will go over the full total. The more likely it becomes through the game that Virginia will cover 25 points, the more likely it becomes that the game will review 48 �. The wider Virginia's winning margin, the much more likely the game will go over. If you like Virginia to cover the spread, and you also believe that Duke will never be shut out, in that case your possibility of winning a parlay on Virginia and the over are greater than the normal 25%. Likewise, if the scoring stays low, it really is less likely that Virginia will cover the 25 points. Subsequently, the probability that a parlay of the under with the underdog will win is greater than the normal 25%.
If you have no opinion on the game, you can parlay the favorite with the "over" and the underdog with the "under" and collect sufficiently often to exceed the losses when both parlays lose. In the only real other game meeting the qualifications this week -- Friday's game between California -30 against New Mexico State with a total of 58 -- the under has recently won with the underdog for an absolute two-parlay spread.
The closer the posted total is to the spread privately, the better win-rate will undoubtedly be on the parlay "spread" bet. The co-dependency in side to total parlays isn't as strong as parlaying first half and game totals (if it were, most books wouldn't normally allow such bets), but you will find a sufficient co-dependency in the games with low totals and high spreads to make the strategy profitable long-term.
Not all bookmakers will help you to parlay the side to the total in the same game, because increasingly more are realizing that these bets are sometimes co-dependent. But, enough books still do allow such bets that you can consider including such bets in your professional betting arsenal.
If your bookmaker provides "if/reverse" bets, you can replace the parlay bet with an "if/reverse" bet and achieve greater success.