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Parlays, accumulators & combi bets

How parlays, accumulators and combo bets work

When you make a parlay bet (also known as an accumulators or combo bet), you’re actually placing multiple bets on different events. For example, a traditional soccer accumulator might look like this:

• Selection 1: Arsenal (Handicap -1 and -1.5) 1.794
• Selection 2: Chelsea (Handicap -1.5 and -2 ) 1.877
• Selection 3: Tottenham Hotspur (Handicap -0.5 and -1) 2.050

The above selection shows that a bet has been placed on Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur to win (with a handicap) against their rivals on the 17th of August.

If all three of those teams’ won (and covered the handicap), the payout would be the three sets of odds multiplied together.

1.794 x 1.877 x 2.050 = 6.903

Therefore if you placed a £100 bet on this accumulator, you would get back £690.30 – £590.30 profit plus your £100 stake. If you simply bet on these three outcomes individually, you would win £79.40, £87.70 and £105, for a total of £272.20.

As you can see, even simple accumulators can win you more. With increased winnings comes increased risk, however. Should any of those three selections be incorrect, you won’t win anything. It’s considered a good tactic with accumulators to have “anchors”, selections where you feel more strongly about the outcome. You can then use these to build bigger winnings using slightly longer-odds bets.

As the above example was a handicap bet, it’s important to take note of what happens when an outcome is a “push”, which means after the handicap is taken into account the game is a tie. For this circumstance, that selection is removed from the parlay, the winnings are recalculated and that part of the stake is returned to you.

Parlays at Pinnacle

The number of selections in parlays can range in size from just two selections up to eight, which means it’s possible to get some very large wins from them. Parlays at Pinnacle now start from $99, with limits going up to as high as $10,000.

The maximum bet you can place on a parlay is determined by the limits for the markets involved. It’s generally correct to assume that parlay limits match those of the lowest limit in a market, so if two of you selections were $10,000 limits and one was $100, it’s likely to be closed to $100. The maximum win on a parlay for one calendar day is $250,000.

Parlays can also be placed between different leagues and sports, so you can bet on Arsenal, the New York Knicks and Anderson Silva in the UFC all on one slip.