Round Robin Bets
If you surf around the available wager types offered by your sportsbook, you will probably come across the option to place a round robin bet. Most of time, we’re zoned in on moneylines, teasers and parlays, but round robins are a type of bet that is useful in certain situations. Here is an explanation of what they are and when it’s worth using them.
What Are Round Robin Bets?
A round robin bet is a way to set up multiple parlays at once. Most online sportsbooks will allow you to have between two to six teams. From a technical standpoint, you could simply make individual parlays but the benefit of a round robin is that it saves you the effort. If it sounds a bit confusing, let’s use an example to illustrate how it works. Let’s say you like these three betting picks:
- 1. Green Bay Packers -3.5
- 2. Dallas Cowboys -6.5
- 3. New England Patriots -9.5
Let’s say you feel very confident about each of those games to the point where you’d like to create some parlays. You could do individual ones or if you played a round robin, the sportsbook would automatically create three two-game parlays of the variations here. So you’d get a parlay of:
- Green Bay & Dallas
- Dallas & New England
- New England & Green Bay
Costs
In terms of the costs involved, you’re going to be paying three times – in this case – as you’re laying the same amount on each of the three parlays. Now remember, this is a three two-team parlay but of course, you can add in many more games if you like. If you add six picks with three permutations, you’d actually have a total of 20 bets going. Keep that in mind when you’re laying your action as the costs can add up very quickly.
Risk Versus Reward
So is a round robin bet a sharp or a square play? Well, for the most part, it’s for the squares. Not only is it confusing and not particularly necessary, parlays tend to be a sucker’s bet to begin with. It’s hard enough to win 55% of your picks but when you start getting into parlays, now you need even more to go right for you before you can cash in. With a round robin, things start to get even more expensive. Of course, there’s the chance that your picks are bang-on that day and doing a round-robin proved to be wise – in the case that say, you would have got one selection wrong in a regular parlay – but for the most part, if you get anything more than one wrong in a round robin, its’ a losing proposition.
So in short, round robins can save you time if you were planning to make a bunch of bet combinations anyway. But in terms of whether you should be doing that in the first place is another question altogether.
Everyone loves the idea of betting $5 to win $500, but it’s just not a sustainable strategy in the long run. The odds are against you and that’s the case here with round robins as well.
