Inside Look At Parlay Plays

Pay very close attention to what follows if you have ever found yourself thinking, even for the briefest of moments, of pulling out your hard earned money and placing a parlay bet. First a quick review of what it means to place a parlay wager so that everyone here is on the same page.

A parlay wager, which in some venues is referred to as an “accumulator bet” or occasionally a “combo bet” is a wager that brings two separate bets together and links them so that the parlay is entirely dependent on each and every one of these individual wagers winning together. You can readily understand that the potential payouts with parlay wagers is the huge attraction. The rather high payouts are the result of the much greater difficulty in hitting the parlay.

So that is the background you need to understand about the parlay wager. Would the use of a parlay as part of your wagering strategy make sense? Read on to understand what is really going on with parlay wagers.

Start with the language that sports books use in reference to parlays. Not to the customer placing the parlay wager of course, but the fact of the matter is that if you hang around at just about any sports book even for a little while you can’t help but overhear parlay bets being called ‘sucker’s bets’ or worse. If you look at it from the perspective of the sports book this make perfect sense. After all, sports books make their money on always knowing the numbers and making sure that they always have an edge, no matter how slight.

In this case, that attitude works out in favor of the sports book more often than not. After all, never lose sight of the fact that the odds of actually scoring on your parlay wager are astronomically high. So high, that the vast majority of parlay wagers simply end up padding the pockets of the sports book.

Well, unless they don’t. Like it or not, some lucky folks do end up making out with parlay wagers. You can think of this as more like winning the lottery. Sure the odds are like ridiculous, but there are real people that win the lottery all the time.

So what does that mean for you and your sports betting strategy? Now that you understand the real odds with parlay wagers you can clearly see that it may not be such a good idea to make them a key part of your strategy. An occasional parlay just for fun, why not? But as part of your sports betting strategy? Not so much.

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