Parlay calculator: odds, payout and chance of winning

How a parlay is priced

New to the bet? Start with what a parlay is. A parlay joins two or more bets into one ticket. Every leg has to win for the ticket to pay, and if one leg loses, the whole bet loses. In return the payout is far larger than any single leg would give, because the prices are multiplied together.

The calculation uses decimal odds, which show the total return per dollar staked, stake included. An American price of -110 is 1.909 in decimal, and a price of +150 is 2.50. Multiply the decimal prices of all the legs and you have the decimal price of the parlay. Convert that back to American odds and you have the number a sportsbook shows you.

For example, two legs at -110 multiply to 3.64, which is +264 in American odds. A $100 stake pays $364.46 in total, which is $264.46 in profit plus the stake back. A mixed ticket of -110, -110 and +150 with a $10 stake has decimal odds of 9.11 and pays $91.12.

The chance every leg has to win

The break-even chance is one divided by the decimal price. It is the share of times a parlay like this must win for you to come out even over many bets. Four legs at -110 pay +1228 and need to win 7.53% of the time. That sounds small, and it is, because winning four bets in a row is rare.

The useful comparison is with the chance the legs really have. If each leg is a true coin flip, four of them win together 6.25% of the time, and the price implies 7.53%. The gap between those two numbers is what the sportsbook's margin costs you, and it grows with every leg you add.

One bet at -110 costs an average of about $4.55 per $100. Four legs cost about $16.98 per $100, and six legs cost more than $24. The ticket looks more generous as the payout grows, but the price you pay for each dollar of chance grows faster.

The same arithmetic with no margin shows where the loss comes from. Four legs at +100 each pay +1500, and if each leg is a true coin flip the average result is $0.00. Nothing is lost on average, because nothing is taken. The whole cost in the table above is the margin, multiplied through the legs. The article on how the margin grows in a parlay walks through the same numbers step by step with a chart.

Testing your own estimates

The second column of inputs is optional. If you can say how likely each leg is, enter it as a percentage, and the calculator multiplies the chances together. It then shows the chance that the whole parlay wins and the average result per bet, which is the chance of winning times the profit minus the chance of losing times the stake.

Suppose you believe each of three -110 legs wins 55% of the time. The parlay pays +596, wins 16.6% of the time on your estimate, and averages $15.76 per $100 staked. That number depends entirely on the estimates being right. A few percentage points of optimism on each leg compounds across the ticket, so the same ticket with 52% legs is a losing bet on average.

Honest estimates are the hard part. Most people have no reliable way to say that a team has a 55% chance and not a 50% chance, and a sportsbook's price already holds a lot of information. Treat the number as a way to see how sensitive a ticket is to your assumptions, not as a forecast.

Legs that depend on each other

The calculator multiplies the chances of the legs as if they were independent, so one result tells you nothing about another. That is a good model for bets on different games. It is not a good model for several bets inside the same game, where the legs often move together. A team that wins by a wide margin can make its own spread bet and the over more likely at the same time.

Sportsbooks price same-game parlays with their own models, and the combined price they show can differ from a simple multiplication of the legs. Use the calculator for a plain multiplication of prices you have been shown, and read the price on the ticket as the final word on what the bet pays.

One parlay or separate bets

Say you have $30 to stake on three games, each priced at -110, and you see each as a coin flip. As one parlay, the $30 pays $208.74 in total if all three win, which happens 12.5% of the time, and the average result is -$3.91. As three separate $10 bets, each pays $19.09 in total when it wins, and the average result across the three is -$1.36.

The separate bets lose less on average, and they change how the results feel. Two or more of the three win half of the time, and that outcome is a profit of $8.18 or more. The parlay pays far more when it lands, but it loses the whole $30 on seven tickets out of eight. Neither choice beats the margin. What differs is how often you win and how large the swings are, which is worth deciding before you pick the ticket.

Pushes, voids and house rules

A bet can end in a push, when the result lands exactly on the line, or be voided, for example when a game is canceled. Operators write their own rules for what happens to a leg like that, and many remove it and price the rest of the ticket again, but the details differ. Read the house rules for parlays in the app before you place one, and do not assume the payout shown on the calculator holds if a leg is pushed.

Apps also set their own limits on the number of legs, the size of a stake and the maximum payout on a parlay. Those limits are part of the offer, and they can change. The calculator ignores them on purpose, so it can show any combination of prices.

Reading the numbers before you bet

Start with the break-even chance and ask whether you believe the legs together win that often. Then look at the size of the stake. A parlay is a bet where the most likely outcome is losing the stake, so it fits money you can afford to lose and a small share of your betting. Keeping the stake small is the simplest way to enjoy the bigger payouts without letting one losing ticket matter.

If you want to check a single leg first, the odds calculator converts a price to a probability and strips the margin from a two-way market. The wagering requirement explorer covers what a welcome offer asks for before it can be withdrawn, and the odds course teaches the underlying ideas in five short lessons.

A short checklist before you place one

• Does each leg stand on its own, or are you adding legs only to make the payout bigger?
• What is the break-even chance of the whole ticket, and do you believe the legs reach it?
• Are any legs in the same game, and does the price on the ticket match the legs taken one by one?
• What happens to the ticket if a leg is pushed or voided under the app's rules?
• Is the stake an amount you could lose without it mattering?

Common mistakes with parlays

• Judging a parlay by its payout alone. The payout rises with every leg, but so does the margin you pay on it.
• Adding a leg you are not sure about because it makes the price bigger. Each extra leg lowers the chance of winning the whole ticket.
• Treating several legs from the same game as independent. They often move together, and the price on the ticket reflects that.
• Comparing parlay prices from two apps by eye. Convert each to a break-even chance first.
• Forgetting that a pushed or voided leg changes the payout under the operator's own rules.
• Betting parlays to win back a loss. A losing run is part of normal variance, and a bigger ticket is not a way out of it.

If betting stops being fun, or you are staking more than you meant to, the responsible gambling page lists limits you can set and where to get help. You can also call 1-800-GAMBLER at any time.

Frequently asked questions