Well, it's football season. So in Vegas, that means: Parlay cards!! Except, as I'll show below, there really isn't all that much to be excited about.
The standard parlay card payoff in Vegas has become 6 for 1 on 3-teamers. This is clever marketing lingo for 5:1. The advantage of parlay cards is that they contain stale lines. However, many books will remove games from them if there is too much action and subsequently line movement on particular games.
If we want to find out the price we are paying per leg, you would perform the following calculations:
First, find the implied probability of the payout of the card. Since the standard is 5:1 (+500), for 3-teamers, we'll use this as our example.
You can either use the Odds Converter on SBR (http://www.sbrforum.com/Betting+Tool...Converter.aspx) to find this value, or you can plug in the numbers into the following formulas:
For positive odds (>= +100):
100 / (L + 100) = 100 / (500 + 100) = 100/600 = .16666667
For negative odds (<= -101) we'd use L / (L - 100).
Now that we've found the probability of the payoff, we need to find the implied probability of each leg. If we have 3 legs, then (each leg's probability)^3 = payout probability. So to find an individual leg, we'd find the cubed square root of the payout probability. Likewise, if we were dealing with a 4-teamer here, we'd find the quaternary square root.
So... Sqrt^3(.16666666667) = .55032
This tells us that each leg of our parlay card has an implied probability of 55.032%
Again, we can plug this number into the odds converter and find our line of -122.38. This is the price you pay per leg on most parlay cards in Vegas, which makes them extremely hard to beat. However, there are still ways to do so but the opportunities are extremely limited.
BTW, you can also perform these calculations for teasers.
Good luck!
The standard parlay card payoff in Vegas has become 6 for 1 on 3-teamers. This is clever marketing lingo for 5:1. The advantage of parlay cards is that they contain stale lines. However, many books will remove games from them if there is too much action and subsequently line movement on particular games.
If we want to find out the price we are paying per leg, you would perform the following calculations:
First, find the implied probability of the payout of the card. Since the standard is 5:1 (+500), for 3-teamers, we'll use this as our example.
You can either use the Odds Converter on SBR (http://www.sbrforum.com/Betting+Tool...Converter.aspx) to find this value, or you can plug in the numbers into the following formulas:
For positive odds (>= +100):
100 / (L + 100) = 100 / (500 + 100) = 100/600 = .16666667
For negative odds (<= -101) we'd use L / (L - 100).
Now that we've found the probability of the payoff, we need to find the implied probability of each leg. If we have 3 legs, then (each leg's probability)^3 = payout probability. So to find an individual leg, we'd find the cubed square root of the payout probability. Likewise, if we were dealing with a 4-teamer here, we'd find the quaternary square root.
So... Sqrt^3(.16666666667) = .55032
This tells us that each leg of our parlay card has an implied probability of 55.032%
Again, we can plug this number into the odds converter and find our line of -122.38. This is the price you pay per leg on most parlay cards in Vegas, which makes them extremely hard to beat. However, there are still ways to do so but the opportunities are extremely limited.
BTW, you can also perform these calculations for teasers.
Good luck!
