My Situation Going Into This Season

[MidniteOwl]

Because I'm new here and new to handicapping in general, I thought I'd put up what I'll be doing this football season and get some feedback from you folks about it. Because I am only a weekend bettor and have only bet during Football season, you'll probably get a good chuckle over this stuff. It's OK though, cause I'm starting off with very small bets and I'm willing lose every week if I have to in order to get better and more experienced. Here goes:

I am currently not working because of a surgery that I had done last week, so I've decided to "Recuperate" during my absence from work by doing some football hadicapping. I have a family to support and stuff like that and can only afford to make small bets every weekend. Because of this, I've decided to play strictly parlays with about 4 to 5 teams per parlay, making 2 or 3 parlay bets a day (8 to 15 teams total Sat & Sun) depending on how comfortable I feel and how many teams I can cap for that week. Each bet will be only the minimum of $5 at the window of my local casino (I can't drive right now so the wife would kill me if I dragged her and the kids around town looking a book with better odds LOL! ).

Example:

Sat: 4 team parlay college $5, 4 team parlay college $5
Sun: 4 team parlay Pro (5 team if I'm feeling good about some games) $5
Total money bet for weekend: $15.

No matter how good (or bad) I do on Sat., I will only be making one bet on Sun.. However, if I win on one of my college tickets, I'll be adding another $5 to my Sun. bet to bring my total investment for the weekend to $20. In the past, if I did very badly on Sat., I would not even bet on Sun. This year, I may change that depending on how good I feel.

The payout for hitting one of my parlay tickets on Sat. would be high enough to cover my investment for the weekend ($15 to $20) and allow me to add to my Sun. game as well.

In the past I have stuck to just college football and some Pro's. This year, with the falcons looking to do something again this year (hopefully ), I may decide to look at the pro's a lot harder and see if I can find some numbers that I can believe in. Also, I only followed two conferences, SEC and The Big Ten. This year I'll be adding the ACC to the mix to see if I can get some better games off the board each week, because if I don't feel good about a game that one of my conferences is playing, I don't play it.

Finally, the way I'll be managing my money will be to start at $5 per ticket. If I win on one of my tickets, I'll increase next weeks bet by 1 or 2 bucks. But if I win 2/3 or 3/3, I'll double my bet on next weeks games ($10 per parlay ticket). Now, I know that there is a very very good chance that I'll be loosing weeks in a row, but if it does happen (as it has in the past for me), I will just keep playing the same amount of teams and keep my bet at the minimum until I pull out a winner or two.

Well, that's it!! Let the flaming begin!!! Just kidding, but I really would appreciate all criticisms and comments because no matter what, I'm in it for the long haul (or at least until football seasons over )

MidniteOwl

[kbiggz]

I've done this before in Baseball and a little in football. Personally I would stay away and if you talk to CanadianGuy he would say the same thing. He has some really good input on parlay play and its true. In one month in baseball i was +1700$ in single bets but -765$ in parlay bets but my parlay bets were obviously a lot lower in money. Still its a tough way to go, what I would suggest is bet a solid 4 games, I'd go with Zorro's Percentages and then play 2 solid NFL games, you might not win as much as a big payout on a parlay. But you're more likely to have money for your children's food and shelter. Either way, GOOD LUCK

[Superman]

Same thoughts here, I personally stay away from parlays, i dont like them...but i do have friends that live and die by them, because when they do hit, it is a huge payday...but my thoughts are if you are liking 4 teams or however big your parlay is, why not take them all as single or reduce to your favorites of that bunch and play those as single games...when i first started out i hit one of my first parlays i ever bet on and i was sky high and how much i won and i thought this was great so i tried again and again, its just hard to get that many games to go your way...

anyway those are some of my thoughts...gl this year

[CanadianGuy]

If you scroll through this general discussion forum you will find a post I made showing the exact odds of winning a parlay. Books will try and blind you with payout figures to try and get you to do parlays and then add extra games to those parlays so that you lose. Trust me when I say you will win alot more money playing seperate games. If an underdog pays +200 and a parlay pays out say +250 I'd rather take my chances on the +200 underdog than I would the parlay.

The main problem is that people think they can invest small to win big with parlays....the problem is that people rarely win, and if you do win you're most likely just going to be recouping losses you've spent on other parlays. The only way to win big with capping is to bet big on single games. If you can only bet small then bet small and work your way up to bigger unit sizes but theres no easy way to make money doing what we do. You gotta work at it and not get blinded by the parlays and teasers. The basic odds I can give you without looking back at my math is your odds of winning a 2 game parlay are roughly 42%, odds of winning a 3 teamer is 26% and a 4 teamer 18% and it just keeps going down and down and down.

Teasers are slightly different as you're getting points back in exchange for picking two games...so I'd say the odds of winning a 2 team teaser is about 55-60% but anything more than that the percentage would drop below 50% I'd say.


I don't know, it's hard to convince people to stay away from the parlays because the payouts are so good, but just think of it from a business perspective. Sportbooks aren't losing money each year, they're making a ton of money, and its not by paying out big money parlays to people. If everyone was winning parlays they'd be out of business and they're not. Trust me, its hard enough to make a profit and build a bankroll playing single games nevermind trying to hit bigtime parlays. Its best to just stay away.

[MidniteOwl]

Thanks for all the great advise and words of encouragement! Week 1 of College Football was enough to convince me that the straight bets are the way to go. My record is at 12-9 taking games individually and I am showing a profit on my internet account for the weekend instead of the losses that I have (3) from playing only parlays.

This is really a great community here on these boards!

Thanks a whole bunch guys

MidniteOwl