Winning with parlays

Parlays are often seen in a negative light, but what exactly are they? Well, in sports betting, a parlay is when you make two or more bets and combine them into one single bet. Depending on where you're betting, these might also be called "accumulators" or "multis."

Imagine you're placing several bets at once and hoping they all come true. This way, if they do, you could win more money compared to if you made separate bets. But, it's important to understand that as you combine more bets, the chance of winning becomes a bit lower because there are more factors to consider.

Here's the deal: for your combined bet to be a winner, every single bet you made within it has to be correct. That's the catch.

Now, can you actually win with this strategy? One approach that seems to work for some people is focusing on the number of rounds in certain events. Let's break it down with an example. We'll use Bovada as an example place to bet, but you could use any similar platform.

Say there's an upcoming UFC event - UFC Fight Night: Luque vs Dos Anjos. This could be a good test for our strategy. I usually like to concentrate on the women’s lightweight fights, but you could do this with other fights too.

One of the best bets we could consider is something like "Round Props" - specifically, betting on whether the total number of rounds will be over 0.5 or 1.5 rounds. Let's look at a specific fight, like Da’Mon Blackshear v Jose Johnson. According to the UFC Record Book, neither of them has finished a fight in the first round before. So, we might choose this as our first bet for the parlay.

Now, let's take another fight, Josh Parisian and Martin Buday. Parisian has gone beyond the first round 28% of the time (2 out of 7 fights), and Buday has done it only 25% of the time (1 out of 4 fights). This makes their fight a good (but not perfect) candidate for our parlay too.

You can continue this process, finding fights where the chances of going beyond one round are high, and stack these bets together into a parlay. Remember, though, the saying "the house always wins." It's popular because, over time, making bets with some edge usually make more money than they lose. But, if we're smart about our choices and create strong parlays, we might just come out ahead in the long run.