I understand that a parlay is effectively a bet on the outcome of multiple propositions at once. But the math isn’t mathing for me. If I bet $100 on Tennessee to beat Clemson AND Arsenal to draw against Burnley, I’d probably be the only person in the world who made that bet. How could the house even calculate odds on that? The entirety of the betting pool would be my $100 minus the sports book’s juice. Since no one else bet on that, would it be a push? Or does the house like multiply the odds on each individual bet and go from there?
The bookie will simply multiply the legs (each individual bet), subtract a bit for vig, and give you payout odds (and likely charge you more vig). They don’t need to consider each parlay individually, as long as they adjust the odds on each leg as usual, they’ll be fine.
So if you parlay two pick 'em games (50% to win each), the bookie will give you 2.5 - 1 odds on the parlay, when the “real” mathmatical odds should be 3-1.
PS Don’t bet parlays. They’re dumb.
I was under the impression that they give you a little discount on the vig, because I assume it encourages more parlay bets, which are the biggest money-makers in the house.
It’s not paramutual betting - you’re simply betting against the house, not the other betters.
Betting on sports is dumb, unless you possess a) an encyclopedic knowledge of the sports you’re betting on, and/or b) access to a database/computer program that can run sims and predict a likely outcome, and/or c) a contact in the system who can give you some info that the rest of the betting public doesn’t have.
I swear, I’m no prude, and I feel that people should be free to make their own (bad) decisions. But damn. These online sports books prey on people who think they know what they’re doing (and don’t).
You’ve pretty succinctly described all of current capitalism, political discourse, and, dare I say, religion too.
It was my understanding that with the amount of bets they take, finding an actual arbitrage opportunity isn’t that rare. But also they’re sophisticated enough to catch people that only make positive EV bets and restrict your bet size pretty significantly.
In English???
I’m assuming that as long as both bets (Tennessee vs. Clemson and Arsenal vs. Burnley) are bets that already pre-existed and the books had already created odds for them in advance, they’d have no problem just combining the two with some sort of formula. It would be no different than betting on two NCAAF games or two Premier League games.
Arbitrage is when you have an opportunity to take both sides of a bet and make a guaranteed profit. EV = expected value.
Basically you can make money, but the books will catch you making money and stop you, like casinos banning card counters.
Assuming you mean, for example, taking both the over and under on total points?
If you place two individual bets of equal value, you will lose money. One bet will lose and one will win, but you’ll lose the vig.
If you attempt to parlay the two bets, you will find that you cannot do so, at least in the online sportsbooks to which I belong.
You need a pricing error at different sports books.
Ok, gotcha. Tough to find those, I assume.
I read some time ago about a fuckup involving some online casino and a mistake having to do with a promotion. Basically they gave new customers some amount of free money to bet, and the punters realized that there’s a bet in baccarat where the house’s edge is like .01%, or something, so they bet their own money on one outcome, and the house’s money on the other. Step 3 was Profit! I don’t remember the specifics, but you get the drift.