Lowell, I'm glad you asked because I've thought about doing a write-up several times about parlays.
I've seen a few people comment this year about pars being fools bets. A statement like this usually tells me that the person making the comment is (1) new to baseball betting (2) loosing anyway or, if he's really good, costing himself a lot of profit. It's the only bet in sports where you can actually change the odds based on your talent for capping. Think about it. Vegas sets the odds on a game and you try to pick the winner but the odds always remain the same. Even if you win, you are playing by their rules no matter how good you are. Now let's look at a parlay. The odds are based on the primings that you have a 50% chance of winning any game. That translates into 50% for the first game, 25% for the second. 12 1/2 for the third and so forth right on down the line. Even here, most places don't give you true odds. The best example of this is a 3 teamer. The true odds are 6 to 1 but you usually get 6 for 1 which is actually 5 to 1. So you see, Vegas gets you again. Now, lets suppose you can capp at 60 % on the season. Put a pencil to that on a parlay and see how it changes the odds but you are still getting odds based on you only hitting half you plays. In baseball, if you are playing favs at -140 or higher, you have to win almost 70% of you bets to make money so keep that in mind when playing baseball pars. Anything above -200 is only par fodder to me and only if I'm playing 3 or more real solid games. At that point a - 200 will just about double the payout on the par. A lot of times I will play the 3 teamer for a unit and add the -200 fav for another 1/2 unit par. If there's two -200 favs they will both go in the second par making it a 5 teamer. What I've started doing this year that has been very successful is playing the rl with the big fav but only when I think there's going to be a lot of runs scored in the game.
This sounds like I play of lot of parlays but I don't. In the NBA, I play 1 a day. If I like only two teams I straight bet them and parlay them. If it's 3 teams or 4, it's the same thing. Normally I will not go over 5 and even that's only a couple of times a year. In baseball I approach it a little different. Yesterday, my strongest plays were the night games but being the addict that I am, I just had to have something on the first game of the day. I had no real reason but I just liked the over in Cle which turned out to be about as far away from a winner as you can get. I made a 6 team 1/2 unit par out of it. Hell, if I'm going to gamble, why not do it right. Better chance than the lottery. Since I didn't really believe in this one anyway, I made me another 7 teamer which was almost the same as the one Ray posted on my thread with the exception of Atl who I won't play until they get a closer, and straight bet Pit for a unit figuring the worst I'd do was break even. Wrong. Now I'm down 2 1/2 units on the day going into the 4 night games that I really liked. Minn u was the first 4 unit play of the year (I usually play 1 unit on everything) and 1 unit on the other 3 games plus the par. Picked up over 20 units profit on the day. If there are day games, I will usually have one extra par. That's what I call my 1/2 unit throw-away par and if there's something I really like later in the day, I put that with my night plays for another par for 1 unit. If the par is winning going into the night games then that's it. I just straight bet the night games.
Lowell, I hope that somewhere in this rambling I've managed to answer your question.
Good luck to all of you today.
