I was just wondering how many of you parlay? If so do you usually limit it to just 2 or 3? Also any big success or bad failures on parlay? I'm just getting into this, and I understand O/U, pt spread, moneyline, but parlay is different to me. 
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Higher the stake/risk/bet, the lower the legs of the parlay. Three should be the absolute most if you're betting much on it because the chances of all three winning are not good enough to warrant huge risk.
I often parlay two outcomes that I'm very positive about. Last night I cashed Dallas -10.5 and over 222.5 in the TOR-GS game, and Houston -5.5 and Denver -15.5. The inital three plays really stood out to me, and I considered a three-way parlay that would've paid out ridiculous, but I had to pass because a backdoor Bobcats cover or slightly lower total in the GS game would've killed me.
Don't parlay every night, only when you REALLY like two or more lines enough to put them together as if it was one game. For instance, I really felt last night that 222.5 was too low for a home Golden State game (even though it proved a good total), and didn't think Charlotte had any chance to compete with Dallas. Because the Dallas cover was my lock of the night, I was tempted to parlay that with a couple other games seperately, including Cleveland in New Jersey, but I stayed away because I just wasn't confident enough that the flaky Cavs would get it done. Fortunately, I was right.
To sum it all up, you need to parlay on nights when you've got two locks that you're 100% confident in. That's not going to happen every night unless you force it, which is a horrible strategy. Never force or talk yourself into liking a line to parlay with another good one. If you only like one, single it heavy.Comment -
Go into the ML Parlay and Discussion thread located in the NCAA Basketball Section.. New threads are postly daily and usually are started by yours truly. The thread typically has 100+ replies and 1000+ views so you can obviously see why you could learn a lot from just reading that thread daily.. I get PMs and emails all the time from people telling me that they have learned so much about the parlay system.
90% of my plays are of the parlay variety. I play parlay's different than most people. A lot of people try to get the odds to -110 or lower, me on the other I don't really look at the juice..
If you have any questions feel free to ask.. I live and die by parlays and have done very well for myself lately. Would love to have you as a regular contributor in that thread.Comment -
I like parlays. A lot of guys play ML parlays including myself. But myfavorite would be ML round robins. Pick say 5 solid faves to win. Do a ML round robin of 5 teams. Even if 2 teams find a way to lose, you almost break even.Comment -
Round robin is a must on Big Saturday Cards.. One day 4 of my parlay teams lost and I still ended up +2 units.
Try not having all eggs in one basket.Comment -
You just need to remember that while parlays and round robins may be fun, they're also more expensive than straight bets in terms of juice.
As such, recreational bettors need to use caution when betting parlays as they can eat through a bankroll quickly.
To give an example, betting the favorite at -500 given odds of -500/+400 will cost you 3.23%. Parlay two such bets at -500 and you'll be paying almost twice as much (6.35%). Parlay five such "locks" and you'll expect to lose more than 15% of each dollar bet.
Now that doesn't mean that parlay should always be avoided by the recreational but rather that such bettors should reduce their dollar exposures to parlays rough;y in proportion to their higher juice.
(I'll also point out that for advantage and correlated bets the situation changes substantially.)Comment -
and from what I've seen, parlaying locks is a favorite of many players.Parlay five such "locks" and you'll expect to lose more than 15% of each dollar bet.Comment -
also parlays don't allow you to line shop because all plays are from one book.Comment -
not everything is "according to hoyle"
and yes you definitely can line shop.. Some places have better MLs than others.Comment -
Perhaps not ... but in this case the math is very straightforward.
If a player's bets have -EV to begin with, parlays will further depress his expectation. OTOH, if a player's bets are +EV then betting parlays will increase his expectation.
Nevertheless, +EV players still do need to be careful with parlays given their substantially greater risk versus single (straight) bets. While they may be more "fun" or "interesting", the increased risk of parlays (of uncorrelated events) will nevertheless tend to make them inferior (except in very extreme cases) to straight bets for the advantage player looking to grow his bankroll as quickly as possible.
The point is that with a parlay you'd need to line shop en masse ... you can't pick and choose the best lines between books as you can do with singles. This will serve to further increase the effective juice paid by a bettor.Comment -
I play 2 team parlays and 3 team parlay on occasions, but I am always looking for 1 good play all the time. Parlays are bad and dangerous because so much has to go right. 1 good play is the safest bet, ALWAYS.Comment
