Parlay strategy
There is no parlay strategy that turns the book's margin around. What there is, is a handful of habits that make you pay less of it: fewer legs, a better price on every leg, and a stake you can lose without noticing. Everything else sold as a parlay system is the book's best bet dressed up as yours.
Start from what the book keeps
A parlay multiplies the prices of its legs, and the book's cut multiplies with them. On a straight bet at -110, over time, the book keeps about 4.5 cents of every dollar you stake. On a three-team parlay at -110 a leg it keeps about 13 cents, and on a five-teamer more than 20. The parlays page has the full table.
So the first rule of any parlay strategy, NFL or otherwise, is the dull one. Every leg you add makes the bet worse for you unless that leg is a winner more often than its price says. I'd keep a parlay to two or three legs, and I'd want a reason for each of them, not a fourth team because the payout looked better with one more.
Shop every leg
The price on each leg gets multiplied, which means a small difference on each leg becomes a big one on the ticket. Here is the same parlay, $100 on it, at two books.
| Parlay | Every leg at -110 | Every leg at -105 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two teams | wins $264.46 | wins $281.18 | $16.72 |
| Three teams | wins $595.79 | wins $644.21 | $48.42 |
Nothing changed but where you bet. The teams are the same and they win or lose the same games. That $48 on a three-teamer is money a player hands back every time he plays his parlays at one book out of habit. If you only shop the price on one kind of bet, make it this one.
Use the parlay calculator to check what a ticket should pay before you place it. Some books pay from a fixed table instead of multiplying, and the table is usually a little short of the full price.
The favorites trap
The most common parlay idea I ever saw at a counter was stringing heavy favorites together, on the theory that they almost never lose. Take three favorites at -200. Each has to win two times in three to break even on its own. Put them on one ticket and $100 wins about $238, which sounds like a bargain for three teams you were sure of.
Now run the arithmetic. At -200 each leg is priced at 66.67 percent, and the parlay needs to come in 29.63 percent of the time to break even. If each favorite really wins 65 percent of the time, which is close to the price but a little short, the ticket comes in 27.46 percent of the time. You lose money on the parlay and you'd have lost a bit less on each favorite on its own. The shortfall on each leg doesn't add up, it compounds.
Heavy favorites don't make a parlay safe. They make it a bet that loses rarely enough to feel safe, and pays little enough that one loss eats several wins. I'd rather bet a favorite I liked straight, at its price, and know exactly what I was paying.
Legs that move together
The one place a parlay can be better than its parts is when the legs are related: if one wins, the other is more likely to win too. A big favorite and the over in the same game, for instance, if you think the favorite wins by scoring a lot. Multiply two related prices as if they were independent and you are paid as if they were, which is more than the combination is worth.
Books know this better than anyone. Most won't let you put two clearly related bets from one game on an ordinary parlay, and the ones that will do it through a same game parlay, where they set the price themselves and charge for the relationship. So the edge is real in principle and mostly gone in practice. If a book lets a related pair through on a standard ticket, it is usually an oversight, and it doesn't last.
Round robins and teasers
A round robin is a set of small parlays built from one list. Three teams by twos gives you three two-teamers for three stakes. It feels like protection, because one loser doesn't sink everything. Here is what it costs, with $100 on each two-teamer at -110 against $100 straight on each team.
| Result | Round robin, three two-teamers | Three straight bets |
|---|---|---|
| All three win | up $793.39 | up $272.73 |
| Two of three win | up $64.46 | up $81.82 |
| One of three wins | down $300.00 | down $109.09 |
The round robin pays big when you sweep and pays you less, or costs you more, every other time. That is the parlay's trade, spread over three tickets.
A teaser is the other common variation, a parlay where you move the spreads in your favor and take a smaller payout. In football it can be the best-priced parlay on the board, but only when the points carry you across the key numbers of 3 and 7. That page works through which ones do.
How I'd play them
Small and fixed. A parlay is a lottery ticket with better odds, and I'd stake it like one: a small, set share of your bankroll, the same every week, and never the bet you use to get back what you lost on Saturday. Two or three legs, each at the best price you can find, each with its own reason.
That won't make parlays a winning bet. It makes them a cheaper one, and with parlays, cheaper is about as good as it gets.