Successfull Sports Betting | Avoid Parlays

Believe it or not, one of the easiest ways to become a successful sports bettor is to avoid some of the traps and pitfalls that many amateur bettors routinely fall into. This includes many things which will be discussed later, including: following the crowd; betting on your favorite college sports teams; and betting only on television games. Today I'm going to talk about one of the primary ways to save your bankroll and actually make money betting on sports - avoiding sucker sports bets.

There are really two true sucker sports bets out there. And when I say sucker bets I'm not talking about proposition bets, which you should know immediately are sucker bets. Proposition bets are betting on things that are completely random and involve no critical analysis, like the coin toss, who is going to score a touchdown first, who the high scorer in a basketball game is going to be, and even what the score will be at the end of the first quarter, half, etc. Clearly these bets are not good for your bankroll. They are fun to do, and sometimes fun is all you are looking for, but don't expect to actually make any money doing them.

Now on to the real stinkers - parlays and teasers. A parlay is a sports bet in which you pick two or more teams, all of which must win for you to win. In other words, if you have a four team parlay and one team doesn't cover the spread, you lose. What is the draw for these bets, then? Well, the payoff is much much higher than that of a single bet. Traditionally, two team parlays pay off about 6/1, three team parlays pay off 10/1 and up and up and up. This is the draw.

A teaser, on the other hand, is very similar to a parlay, except that you get points that you can use to alter the spreads in any direction you want. Teasers span from 2 points to 8 points, seemingly making a parlay much more likely to win. What is the draw here? Like parlays, the odds are greater for winning a teaser (though not nearly as high as true parlays). For many amateur sports bettors, these appear to be goldmines just waiting to be cleaned out.

So what makes these sucker bets? The odds of winning are not nearly high enough to justify the payoff. I would try to explain why on here, but it takes a math whiz, which I am not. You are just going to have to trust me on this. Or you can Google it and there are plenty of explanations out there. In case you want to big picture it, just imagine how hard it is to pick three random events correctly, for example. It is difficult. This is why parlays are bad bets for sports gamblers.

But that is not to say you should never play them. In fact, if you look at my last post, where I discuss managing your bankroll to be a successful sports bettor, you will see in my sports bets of the day that I parlayed all the bets together. It would be nice to win, but I pretty much do it just for the fun of it. In other words, I expect to lose going in. If you make a bunch of parlay bets, you should expect the same thing.

That is it for Rule number 1. Many more rules and words of insight will follow. And hopefully they will help you become the successful sports gambler you've always dreamed of.

Now, on to my sports bets of the day.

If you are checking up on me, you will see that I didn't have a great night last night, going 2-3 against the spread and losing my five team parlay, for an 0-1 parlay record. You can't win them all, though, so let's move on to today!

If you didn't know, Friday nights are notoriously slow in the college basketball world. They just need one night where there isn't a lot going on. So I don't have many picks tonight. I don't know anything about the small conference games, so I am probably going to try to stay away from them for the most part. Additionally, most of the small school teams are in their conference tournaments, playing at neutral courts (although that does pit some stinkers against some decent teams). So, here we go.

Indiana St. vs. Northern Iowa (-7) - my pick is NIU for 1 unit. Not much to go on except conference record, they are in their conference tournament, and NIU needs a couple more victories to get into the NCAA tournament.

UNC Wilmington vs. Hofstra (-7.5) - my pick is Hofstra for 1 unit. Same reasons for NIU except Hofstra needs to win out to get into the tournament. UNC Wilmington is not having a great year.

St. Johns vs. NOTRE DAME (-11.5) - my pick is the Fighting Irish for 1 unit. I think they are the better team and still have NCAA aspirations, however remote they might be.

Wichita St. vs. Creighton (-7.5) - my pick is Creighton for 1 unit. Same reasons as NIU and Hofstra.

I also parlayed NIU, Hofstra, and Notre Dame for one unit to pay off 6.5/1.

Let's hope the good guys win!

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Have any questions are comments about college sports betting? Please leave a comment and we can discuss.