Round robins
A round robin is a batch of small parlays made from one list of picks. One loser doesn't sink the whole bet the way it does on a single parlay. You pay for that protection with more stakes, and with the same cut on every one of them.
Every pick against every other
In sport, a round robin is a tournament where every team plays every other team. The bet borrows the idea, so every pick gets paired with every other pick. Give the book three teams, A, B and C, and ask for a round robin "by twos", and it writes three two-team parlays:
- A and B
- A and C
- B and C
Each one is a separate bet with its own stake, so a $10 round robin on three teams costs $30. If you haven't read the parlays page, I'd read it first, because everything here sits on top of it.
How many bets you are buying
With more picks you choose the size of the parlays: by twos, by threes, and so on. The count climbs quickly.
| Picks | By twos | By threes | By fours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | 1 | |
| 4 | 6 | 4 | 1 |
| 5 | 10 | 10 | 5 |
| 6 | 15 | 20 | 15 |
The stake you type in is per parlay. Five picks by twos at $10 is a $100 bet, and plenty of people find that out on the confirmation screen (it is the most expensive surprise in the bet slip). Many books also let you tick several sizes at once, which stacks the columns on top of each other. Before I confirmed one, I'd multiply the stake by the number of parlays, because that total is the bet.
Three picks, worked through
Three picks, all at -110, $10 on each two-teamer, $30 in total. A winning two-team parlay at those prices pays $26.45 on $10. Here is how it comes out, next to the two other things you could have done with the same three picks.
| Your record | Round robin, 3 x $10 | One 3-team parlay, $30 | Three straight bets, $10 each |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 and 0 | +$79.34 | +$178.74 | +$27.27 |
| 2 and 1 | +$6.45 | -$30.00 | +$8.18 |
| 1 and 2 | -$30.00 | -$30.00 | -$10.91 |
| 0 and 3 | -$30.00 | -$30.00 | -$30.00 |
The second row is the one the book wants you to look at. Going 2 and 1 wins one parlay and loses the other two, which leaves you $6.45 ahead, and that is the selling point of a round robin: a near miss still pays something.
The third row is the one I'd look at. Going 1 and 2 loses all three parlays, because every parlay has at least one of your two losers in it. Straight bets would have got $19 of your $30 back.
So a round robin sits between a parlay and straight bets. It wins less than the parlay when everything hits, and it loses more than straight bets when most of it misses.
A safer parlay, not a cheaper one
A round robin does nothing to the price. Each two-teamer inside it carries the same cut as any two-team parlay, about 8.9 percent at -110 a leg, against 4.5 percent on a straight bet, and splitting your money across three of them doesn't shrink it. You are paying the parlay rate on all $30.
That is the part I'd want a player to see. It is sold as a safer parlay, and in one sense it is, because you can lose a leg and survive. What it can't be is cheaper. The straight bets in the last column cost half as much in vig, and most of the time I'd take them.
When I'd bet one
If you like three or four sides and want more than straight-bet money without the all-or-nothing of one ticket, that is a fair reason, so long as you see the full stake before you bet. Three or four picks by twos is plenty. The other reason is a real edge on each pick: parlays multiply an edge as well as the book's cut, and a round robin spreads that over several tickets so one bad bounce doesn't take all of it. This applies to very few people.
It doesn't make sense with a long list of picks you half like. Six picks by twos is 15 bets, and a list that long usually has the losers in it. However many parlays are inside it, I'd count the whole round robin as one bet against the bankroll.
Pushes, prices and pairings
At most books a pushed leg drops out of each parlay it is in, and those parlays are paid at one leg fewer, so a two-teamer with a push becomes a straight bet on the other team.
The picks don't have to be -110. Moneylines work too, and each parlay then pays on its own two prices, so a winning pair of underdogs pays more than a winning pair of favorites. What a book won't usually do is pair two bets from the same game in an ordinary round robin.
The parlay calculator will price each parlay in the set if you want the exact figures first. A round robin spreads the risk around. It doesn't remove any, and you pay for every piece of it.