What Parlay means
A parlay combines two or more individual bets, called "legs," into a single wager where every single leg must win for the whole parlay to pay out. Odds compound multiplicatively across legs, which is why parlays offer much larger potential payouts than the same bets placed individually - a three-leg parlay of three -110 bets pays out at roughly +596 instead of needing three separate winning bets, but the actual probability of hitting all three drops sharply with each additional leg, which is the trade-off every parlay bettor is making even if it isn't always obvious from the payout number alone.
Key points
- A parlay combines two or more individual bets, called "legs," into a single wager where every single leg must win for the whole parlay to pay out.
- Odds compound multiplicatively across legs, which is why parlays offer much larger potential payouts than the same bets placed individually - a three-leg parlay of three -110 bets pays out at roughly +596 instead of needing three separate winning bets, but the actual probability of hitting all three drops sharply with each additional leg, which is the trade-off every parlay bettor is making even if it isn't always obvious from the payout number alone.
Example and context
Odds compound multiplicatively across legs, which is why parlays offer much larger potential payouts than the same bets placed individually - a three-leg parlay of three -110 bets pays out at roughly +596 instead of needing three separate winning bets, but the actual probability of hitting all three drops sharply with each additional leg, which is the trade-off every parlay bettor is making even if it isn't always obvious from the payout number alone.
Related glossary terms
These terms sit in the same part of the betting vocabulary and are useful to read next.
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