Why Bet on a Parlay?

It was summer of 2002 and the Korea-Japan World Cup was about to kick-off. Among the matches in the opening days were Senegal-France and Ireland-Cameron. Many sports books were paying ten to one on Senegal to win, since France was the most favored to win even the Cup. A draw in this match was paying good too. I was strongly tempted to place a buck (a buck is $100 in betting parlance) on Senegal and another one on Cameron, because, it has already happened before that African teams are capable of pulling off an upset, at least at the initial stages of the games (remember Cameron-Germany in 1982). However, considering my financial status this was certainly an enormous risk to take.

Prior to this date I was already involved in online sports betting at several online sports books, placing bets mostly on single events. Sometimes I win, other times I lose - it was a simple cycle. Overall, I was losing money though not much. Remember that whenever you are betting, whether you win or lose the bet, you are always losing about 10% in form of bookie commissions. This means that, in single bets, you have to win about 11 times for every 10 losses in order to even out money-wise.

Returning to the World Cup games, I didn't want to risk $200 on such highly improbable outcomes, but I still wanted to play my feelings. After sleeping over it, it occurred to me that the best way to deal with such a situation was to minimize risk and maximize gain - after all this is what parlays are about. So, I made two 3-play parlays. On one I placed Senegal to beat France and Cameron to draw with Ireland; on the other I placed Senegal to draw and Cameron to win. On both these parlays I also put Denmark to beat Uruguay (which I thought was a sure thing), and wagered $15 on each parlay. In addition, I placed two more single bets: $10 on Senegal to win and $10 on Cameron to win, just in case. Here is a summary of my bets.

Then what happened? You guessed it right - I won with parlay-1. Well, also with one of my single bets. Parlay odds are computed by multiplying the individual odds, and it turned out that the odds on my parlay-1 were 63. So, the payout on that parlay was $15 x 63 = $945, my returns on the single bet of Senegal to win were $10 x 10 = $100. A payout of $1045 on a $50 investment is not bad at all! In fact, I would have won the the same amount if I had gone with my initial $200 wager, but the difference here is the risk and also the net profit. With the $200 wager, I would have gained only 5 times, but with the $50 system I gained 21 times my initial bet.