Here's what winning a bet at odds of 100,000-1 looks like

[PaceAdvantage]

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https://nypost.com/2023/12/25/sports...14-leg-parlay/

Bettor puts down $5, wins nearly $500K as Christian McCaffrey TD finishes 14-leg parlay

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[Inner Dirt]

Good for him! I wonder what the real odds should have been? Too bad taxes will eat half of it.

[Parkview_Pirate]

Originally Posted by Inner Dirt

Good for him! I wonder what the real odds should have been? Too bad taxes will eat half of it.

You'd have to see the ticket to calculate the real odds. If he had chosen 14 games/bets with a 50-50 chance (ie, even money or a spread at -110), that would result in natural odds of 16,383 to 1. Since his payoff for a $5 bet was almost at the odds of 100,000 to 1, he had a couple of underdogs in there to win outright, or a bet like a prop that acted as a multiplier. (which is what McCaffrey scoring a TD probably was about)

That's just nuts though to string 14 winners together.

Here's an article on the "juice" most sportsbooks take on parlays - gives you an idea of what a bad bet they usually are.....

https://www.betfirm.com/parlay-odds/


Back in 2003 I was in Vegas one football weekend when Arkansas and Kentucky went into 7 overtimes to end with Arkansas winning 71-63. IIRC I had a small bet on Arkansas -5.5, so I only had a chance to win every other overtime - since I needed a TD out of Arkansas and then a stop to end the game.

IIRC, it was a night game, and there was only about 20 people in whatever sportsbook I was in. However, it included a group of six to eight guys that had gone in together on a 10 team parlay, were 9 for 9 going into that game, and needed Arkansas too. Needless to say when Arkansas stopped that huge quarterback from Kentucky on 4th and goal, these guys went nuts. A couple of them jumped up on tables or the racebook desks. I think their play netted $80,000+......

[PaceAdvantage]

I think the bet was that he picked 14 players that had to score a touchdown...

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by Parkview_Pirate

You'd have to see the ticket to calculate the real odds. If he had chosen 14 games/bets with a 50-50 chance (ie, even money or a spread at -110), that would result in natural odds of 16,383 to 1. Since his payoff for a $5 bet was almost at the odds of 100,000 to 1, he had a couple of underdogs in there to win outright, or a bet like a prop that acted as a multiplier. (which is what McCaffrey scoring a TD probably was about)

That's just nuts though to string 14 winners together.

Here's an article on the "juice" most sportsbooks take on parlays - gives you an idea of what a bad bet they usually are.....

https://www.betfirm.com/parlay-odds/


Back in 2003 I was in Vegas one football weekend when Arkansas and Kentucky went into 7 overtimes to end with Arkansas winning 71-63. IIRC I had a small bet on Arkansas -5.5, so I only had a chance to win every other overtime - since I needed a TD out of Arkansas and then a stop to end the game.

IIRC, it was a night game, and there was only about 20 people in whatever sportsbook I was in. However, it included a group of six to eight guys that had gone in together on a 10 team parlay, were 9 for 9 going into that game, and needed Arkansas too. Needless to say when Arkansas stopped that huge quarterback from Kentucky on 4th and goal, these guys went nuts. A couple of them jumped up on tables or the racebook desks. I think their play netted $80,000+......

A couple times back in the day when most people did not have internet I calculated the take out on future league championship pools on the major sports, it figured at around 50%, odds were pretty similar between Agua Caliente, Laughlin and Vegas. I would imagine player prop bets are probably just as bad.

[Parkview_Pirate]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

I think the bet was that he picked 14 players that had to score a touchdown...

Holy cow! That's insanely lucky. I'm sure the true odds versus the paid odds represents a huge takeout, as the sportsbook will list huge discounts for individual players on prop bets. A typical game might have four TDs by a team, and to get 14 players to score across 14 games is mind-blowing.

That sure does explain the higher payout, but he probably had to beat closer to a million to one to one to do it.

[lamboguy]

great story, my only regret is that he didn't have $100 on it.

[Poindexter]

Originally Posted by Parkview_Pirate

You'd have to see the ticket to calculate the real odds. If he had chosen 14 games/bets with a 50-50 chance (ie, even money or a spread at -110), that would result in natural odds of 16,383 to 1. Since his payoff for a $5 bet was almost at the odds of 100,000 to 1, he had a couple of underdogs in there to win outright, or a bet like a prop that acted as a multiplier. (which is what McCaffrey scoring a TD probably was about)

That's just nuts though to string 14 winners together.

Here's an article on the "juice" most sportsbooks take on parlays - gives you an idea of what a bad bet they usually are.....

https://www.betfirm.com/parlay-odds/


Back in 2003 I was in Vegas one football weekend when Arkansas and Kentucky went into 7 overtimes to end with Arkansas winning 71-63. IIRC I had a small bet on Arkansas -5.5, so I only had a chance to win every other overtime - since I needed a TD out of Arkansas and then a stop to end the game.

IIRC, it was a night game, and there was only about 20 people in whatever sportsbook I was in. However, it included a group of six to eight guys that had gone in together on a 10 team parlay, were 9 for 9 going into that game, and needed Arkansas too. Needless to say when Arkansas stopped that huge quarterback from Kentucky on 4th and goal, these guys went nuts. A couple of them jumped up on tables or the racebook desks. I think their play netted $80,000+......

Imo, looking at parlay payoffs and calculating the takeout assuming a player has only a 50 percent chance of hitting each can be very misleading. Whille the masses will hover around 50 percent on average, plenty will reach the needed 52.38 percent (the break even point at 11/10 if I recall correctly. Also quite a few will exceed it. So telling someone who can hit 54 or 55 percent winners long term that parlays are a suckers bet can be very misleading.

The biggest problem with parlays is the advantage player can rarely lock in his best price on each game at the same time.

Thus round robins (which I like better than parlays) are best done simulated over multiple days, which can be work. Or you could just use a kellly based approach. I sort of like the idea of betting the appropriate Kelly percentage on your profits. That way you are only betting when/if you are on the houses money. The problem of course is when using a Kelly based approach on 15 or 20 games a week you have to include parlays or you can resize your bankroll at the end of each week (an approach that will miss out of a lot of profits should you go 14-1 one week, it will save you a lot of money on weeks you go 5-10).

Of course none of what I just posted has anything to do with the topic at hand.
The masses are betting sports and plenty of them will take shots on longshot parlays. Just like somebody might hit the power ball this time around. By the way, it is not unusual for somebody to sing me a song about how they went 7 for 8 on a parlay. My response is that they should play round robins instead. I usually get a blank stare “what is that.” So I explain it a little bit, they look more confused and have zero interest. Racing can use some of these people. Of course we know that is not happening.

[Poindexter]

by the way using .5238 as the break even on a play (thus assuming you are a break even sports bettor) the probability of hitting 2 to 8 team parlay followed by the fair odds and the actual odds given(per the article) are as follows:

2 tm)0.27436644 2.64476063471903 2.6-1
3 tm) 0.143713141272 5.95830590820738 6-1
4 tm) 0.0752769433982736 12.2842800843974 10-1
5 tm) 0.0394300629520157 24.3613594585671 20-1
6 tm) 0.020653466974266 47.4180211121934 40-1
7 tm) 0.01081828600112 91.4360845975482 75-1
8 tm) 0.0056666182073869 175.472097360718 150-1

As you can see anything over a 3 team parlay is indeed a sucker bet(you can decipher the same from the article posted by parkview pirate), but as previously mentioned round robins are your way around that. Say you want to parlay 5 teams.

parlay games

123, 124, 125, 134, 135, 145, 234 235, 245, 345

10 parlays say at $5 each. if you win less than 3 games you lose all $50. If you win 4 games you hit 4 parlays paying $35 each so you win. So for your $50 bet you get back $140 or a profit of $90. If you win 3 games of 5 you just hit one parlay for $35 and you would lose $15 on the play

So to summarize. For $50 bet on a 5 team round robin playing 10 3 game parlays.

Hit 2 or less and you lose $50
Hit 3 and you lose $15
Hit 4 and you win $90
Hit 5 an you win $300.


Obviously if you are not a break even player you will do worse with this approach. However some may still prefer it, because on days they go 0-5 or 1-4 they will not get killed will this approach.

If anyone prefers you can also do round robins with 2 teams instead of 3 team parlys.

In that case parlay

1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 3-4, 3-5, 4-5.

10 $5 parlays still cost $50.

If you hit 1 or less you lose all $50.
Hit 2 you will hit 1 parlay for $18 and lose $32
Hit 3 you will hit 3 parlays for $54 and make $4
Hit 4 you will hit 6 parlays for $108 and make $58
Hit 5 you will hit 10 parlays for $180 and make $130.

If you use round robins with horses you definitely want to use the latter approach. For sports see what appeals most to you.