Sports Betting: Parlay vs. Straight Bet

At OGPaper you are bound to find the most comprehensive guides to sports betting, online gambling and casino reviews, today we will look into the basics of sports betting by comparing two of the most common bet forms - the parlay and the straight bet, also knows as single bet. For the seasonal betting pros this may seem entertaining at best, but thousands of people from all over the world face the betting sheet for the first time every day and the decision between placing a straight bet or going parlay will be one of the first they have to make. The difference between these two bets is very simple to grasp, so let's compare the sports betting forms of parlay and straight bet.

We will start by looking at the simpler of the two sport bets, the straight bet. Depending on the online sportsbook you've chosen, this bet can also be seen as "single bet", which makes explanation so much simpler. In its essence, a straight bet is a wager placed on only one betting option. This would be best illustrated with an example. Let's look at the betting options on the New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys game as posted by the online sportsbook 5Dimes. The bookie has the following figures available for placing a straight bet:

	Point Spread	Money Line	Total
New York Giants	+3 +100	+155	o44 -110
Dallas Cowboys	-3 -120	-175	u44 -110

At this point, if we have selected to place a straight wager, we can only choose one of those options and place a bet on it. We can, for example, choose to bet the money line that the Cowboys will win the game with odds -175 or we can choose to bet the spread at -3 points chalk the Cowboys. Either way we go, we can only wager on one of those choices, hence the "single bet" as called by some other sportsbooks.

As you can see, unless you bet a large amount of money on a straight bet, the chances are you will not win much. For example, if we wager $100 on Dallas to win outright with the -175 money line we would get only around $57 in profit, if the Cowboys win.

That's where the parlay comes into play as a form of betting - you can increase the risk of the bet while increasing the reward, as well. With the parlay one can wager on the outcome of two or more games, increasing the possible payout of the bet. Let's illustrate the parlay bet with another example. Let's say that the odds to win on the three different football games are as follows: Cowboys will pay out on -175 odds, Packers on -137 and Broncos on -380. Let's say you think all three games will come out like that and you have a bankroll of $300. If you place straight wagers on all 3 games with $100 bet on each you would win your wager back ($300) plus a profit of just $156. But if you bet a parlay with all three games and wager the bankroll of $300 you would win your $300 back plus the profit of $726, since with the parlay bet the odds multiply by each other (-175x-137x-380)x$300=$1026.

As one can see from the example above, parlay betting greatly increases the profit from the wager, but at the same time multiplies the risk one takes. Unlike a straight bet, where all you have to guess is the outcome of one single event, for your parlay bet to be a winner all wagers must be winners, i.e. if from the three games above the Packers lost their game, the entire bet is a loss. There are different bets that protect you from a loss, but we will look at those specialty wagers in another article. For now, the decision between parlay and straight bet is whether one wants to bet on a single game, i.e. small risk for small reward, or if one prefers to increase the risk and the reward by wagering on two or more games simultaneously.

Published on 10/21/2010