1. Easy Football Bets To Win
2. Easy Football Bets To Win Real Money
3. What Are The Easiest Football Bets To Win

1. A) Team A wins with less than three goals, loses or draws then you win the (+4) bet at bookie B. Profit: 28.75€ B) Team A wins with more than four goals then you win the (-3) bet at bookie A. Profit: 25.50€ C) Team A wins with exactly four goals, you win the (-3) bet at bookie A and your (+4) bet for Team B will be refunded at bookie B.
2. Of course, your friends might manage to win some bets in other ways. To not let this happen, it’s better to offer a list of items with one hidden, and set the condition that nothing more can be used. This way you’ll finally mislead them and make sure that everything will go according to your plan.

A parlay is a wager on multiple games all placed into a single bet. In theory the payout for a 2-team parlay is the same as if you bet one game, collected your winnings plus stake, and then bet the winnings plus stake on a second game. A three 3-team parlay in theory pays the same as if you repeated this process of rolling forward an additional time and a 4-team if you repeated it yet another time… so on and so forth. Some online betting sites allow players to bet up to 25-teams in the same parlay, while most allow a lesser amount such as 10-team max or 8-team max. Now I stated “in theory” because when it comes to football parlays the payouts are often less.

What’s important to note for football betting is many online sportsbooks short-pay point spread selections when adding them to a parlay. In their defense, they get away with this because built deep into their betting rules are terms such as “fixed parlay odds” for football point spreads. Although this might seem unethical, bettors always see the payouts prior to confirming their bet. So, this is more a matter of betting sites taking advantage of recreational bettors who don’t know any better, than it is cheating.

Beware of Fixed Odds Parlays

The casino Sportsbooks make their money on sports bets by collecting a commission on losing bets. This is called the Vigorish or Vig for short. The most common odds are 11 to 10. This means that if you want to win $100 you are risking $110. For example, you place a bet on the Giants at the casino sports book and pay $110.

The image to the right shows the fixed parlay odds for football point spreads offered by popular US betting site BetOnline (review). Now to make sure we’re clear you can wager any number of selections as you’d like in the same football parlay. If each selection wins you’ll get the payouts shown to the left. If any one or more selections lose your entire stake is a lost. Now let me take some time to show what the payout would be if you wagered these individually and then rolled your profit forward each time.

You start with a $100 bet and wager it at -110, this is $100 to win $90.91 so if it wins you end up with $190.91. You then wager that all on the next game at -110, and this is $190.91 to win $173.55 so if it wins you now have $364.46. $100 was your stake, so your profit is $264.46. At BetOnline $100 pays $260. I calculated this by noticing their odds are listed as 13/5 and $100 has 20 parts of 5 so 5*13=$260. As you can see by offering “fixed odds” BetOnline is able to short the payout by $4.64. I’ll save showing the work behind the math, but if you were to keep rolling your $100 initial stake plus winnings forward 6 consecutive times without a loss you’d end up with $4841.27, of which $100 was your stake, and $4741.27 profit. Notice BetOnline only offers 45 to 1 on a 6-team parlay, when the actual odds are over 47.4 to 1. If you think this is small, it’s not; it adds up in a hurry.

When betting sites offer fixed parlay odds on point spreads generally the more teams you bet the worse the odds become. If you were to roll all bets forward 8-times, staking your full return each time, you’d get paid 175.45 to 1 and notice BetOnline only pays 165 to 1 on 8-team parlays. I cover some of this math in my article on football teasers in case you’re interested in how it is calculated, but for now let me state at BetOnline 6-team fixed odds parlays for football give you odds of -111.92 per team and BetOnline 8-team fixed odds parlays for football give you odds of -111.67 per team. For BetOnline parlays it’s fairly consistent and just a matter of rounding. However at sites such as Sportsbook.com and BetUs.com the payouts are even worse on higher number of teams.

How to Get Around Fixed Odds Parlays

There’s a trick you should know about. In Las Vegas, and with many online sportsbooks, fixed odds only apply to point spreads priced -110. If you were to add an alternative selection you can force the sportsbook to give you the true odds. For example an 8 team point spread parlay at BetOnline where 7 teams are -110 and one team is -115 you’ll end up with a payout of 171.8 to 1 instead of the 165 to 1 they offer if all teams were -110. You’re also more likely to win because teams priced -115 win more often than teams priced -110. The golden rule is to never select only teams priced -110 at betting sites that use fixed odds for football parlays.

Another option for parlay bettors is to just turn to sites which don’t short the payouts. Sites I know of that use true odds as opposed to fixed odds include www.bovada.lv and www.bookmaker.eu. Of course there’s another challenge parlays present. The best way to beat sports betting is to line shop for the best price. Forcing yourself to only bet in parlays, instead of straight point spread bets, limits you to using just a single betting site. Truth be told, more times than not parlays are an enemy of football bettors than they are a blessing. There are however times betting parlays does make sense.

Correlated Parlays Are Great

If a betting site allowed you to parlay yes or no for two propositions listed as “will it be rainy today?” and “willing it be cloudy today?” obviously you’d have a huge edge betting parlays instead of straight wagers. Unfortunately online betting sites block parlays for anything too heavily correlated. For example, a college football line from late last season was LSU –49 / NWST +49 with an over/under of 56. Obviously the betting sites did not allow parlays on this game because the results were too heavily correlated. However, there are times where correlations that do make sense are allowed. I recall the opening round of the January 2012 NFL playoffs had a very injured Pittsburgh Steelers team visiting the struggling offense and strong defense of the Denver Broncos. The line was Broncos +7.5 and over/under 33.5. The betting sites did allow me to parlay Denver and the under, which in my opinion was correlated for the reason I thought if Denver did cover the point spread it would most likely be by a low total. This wager didn’t work out as the game turned into a shoot out (go figure eh?) but I’m sure you see the point that betting parlays when there is a correlation does make sense.

Using Parlays for Bonuses

Bookmaker.eu offers a decent free play sign up bonus and then also offers 20% reload bonuses for deposits made on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. These bonuses are issued as free play credits, and it makes great sense to always use these on parlays. The reason is when you bet say $100 cash at +$100 and win you get back $200 (your stake + win). When you bet using free plays you only get back $100. This is because your $100 staked was a free play; it’s now used up and all you get is your return because win or lose that free play is gone. When you instead use Bookmaker free plays as parlays you’re getting to recycle this stake multiple times.

Easy Football Bets To Win

Circumventing Betting Limits

Easy Football Bets To Win Real Money

The final good use for parlays is to circumvent betting limits. For example, if you’re wagering with www.bovada.lv and they have a $1000 max bet on a football point spreads (the same they often do) but this bet has such large expected value you want to get a lot of action down on it. You could then bet more by adding this selection to various 2-team parlays. Perhaps you make one bet straight, and also make a $1000 parlay on the moneyline of the largest favorite on the board plus this team.

What Are The Easiest Football Bets To Win

Final Thoughts

Parlays are mostly lottery type gambles for recreational bettors, but when used on correlated outcomes, or to increase free play value, or to circumvent betting limits they can be smart plays. In most all other cases you’re far better off betting straight using a football betting system over adding the selection to the parlay. However, if you’re just looking to gamble, be reminded to avoid fixed odds by either adding a team priced something other than -110 to your betting ticket, or by using betting websites with favorable parlay odds. Popular US friendly betting site www.bovada.lv is a great choice for casual gamblers looking to wager football parlays.

Editor’s note: This article provided a decent introduction on “what is a parlay bet” and some basic strategy. If you’re interested in taking your game to the next level, read our page on football betting strategy where many articles to advanced topics are linked.

Each September, millions of sports bettors can barely contain their excitement as America’s most frequently bet sport returns in all its glory. Saturday and Sunday mornings are now occupied by looking at the day’s odds, and countless financial choices are made on the couch.

The only people more excited about football’s return than gamblers are the sportsbooks. After all, modest profits are made where there is modest action, and major profits are made where there is major action. Both on the field and in the sportsbooks, action is in abundance during football season.

While there is a myriad of ways to place a wager on a football game, I’ll stick to the basics in this article. Unless you have a true strategic grasp on the more nuanced betting plays, it can be overwhelming and lead to unnecessarily risky bets. In addition, I’ll offer tips on how to capitalize on the plays discussed and hopefully help you in the quest to grow your bankroll.

1 – The Bet: Point Spread

The most popular way to bet on football is undoubtedly the point spread. The spread will be listed as a one- or two-digit number following the team name. For example, you’ll see something like Cleveland Browns (-3.5). If a team’s number has a “-” sign before it, that team is the favorite. If it’s a “+,” that indicates a team is the underdog.

The spread works like this. The number in parentheses is the amount of points a given team has before kickoff. In the above example, the Browns would start the game with -3.5 points. Another way to think about it is by adding or subtracting the spread number from the final score. In order to win, the team you picked must still win the game after accounting for the difference.

In the example, if the Browns win the game 21-17, they would “cover,” meaning they would win the bet. If they won the game 20-17, they would not win the bet, because 20 – 3.5 = 16.5, which is less than the 17 the opponent scored.

Keep in mind that a number of factors can contribute to what the spread number will be on game day. Weather, injuries, matchups, and history between the coaches can all play a role. Be sure to do your research, including taking a look at the schedules. Who each team played the week before (and the week following the current game) can play a role in performance.

It’s also important to consider that the spread is where the books make a great deal of their money, be wary of betting the same way as the general public.

2 – Moneyline

The moneyline, in my opinion, is one of the most underutilized betting options in football. Unlike the spread, there’s no math involved in knowing if you won or lost; the team that wins the game wins the bet.

However, as any good sports bettor knows, it’s not just about winning, but about the value in the play. The moneyline can provide tremendous value that the spread typically won’t for any single bet. You do need to be careful however, as a bad moneyline play can ruin a weekend.

Because the moneyline winner is simply determined by who wins and who loses, the real gamble is with the amount of money risked vs. the amount of money you could potentially win.

For example, the Patriots (for the sake of the example, a good team) might play the Dolphins (for the sake of the example, a bad team) and the moneyline odds might look something like Patriots (-260) and Dolphins (+240).

These numbers are based on what you would win if you bet $100 or what you’d need to be to win $100. Similar to the spread, the team with the “-” are the favorite, and the “+” the underdog. The numbers work like this. In the example above, you would need to bet $260 to win $100 if you bet on the Patriots, and would win $240 if you bet $100 on the Dolphins. It might seem a little tricky at first, but once you look over it a few times, you’ll get comfortable pretty quick.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to bet $100, it’s just a baseline number because percentages are based out of a hundred. In the example, you could bet $50 on the Dolphins to win $120 or bet $130 on the Patriots to win $50.

Making good moneyline decisions means finding the perfect balance of value and likelihood of winning a game. Generally speaking, if you have to bet $200 to win $60, the value just isn’t there. Not to mention, it’s football betting. On any given week (especially in the NFL), there can be a major upset.

Do your best to find a game where the two teams are somewhat evenly matched, and over time, you can profit if you bet on underdogs in the +130 to +150 range. Remember that when you frequently play the moneyline, you can still come out ahead on the financial side even if you lose more games than you win overall. Keep track of your progress by monitoring money, and not just wins and losses.

3 – The Over/Under

One of the most important numbers for sports bettors is the over/under. If you’re unaware of what this bet deals with, the good news is that it couldn’t be easier to understand.

The over/under is simply the total number of points in a game. Bettors choose whether or not the combined points will be more or less than that number and place their wager accordingly.

This bet can also be parlayed with a spread or moneyline bet, even within the same game.

Deciding which way to bet on the over/under requires some research and you’ll need to incorporate a range of factors into your prediction. For example, weather, especially in football, can play a major role. However, remember that the sportsbooks are also aware of the weather and set the odds accordingly.

In addition to weather, the history between the two coaches, prior performance throughout the season by each team’s offense, and any injuries might impact the overall number.

It’s also important to monitor the total number as it moves leading up to the game. As with almost all other lines, the public’s money will shift the number one way or the other. Typically, the public bets on the over, meaning the sportsbooks will make the total slightly higher in order to even out the action.

I don’t mean to make this bet sound overly simplistic, but whichever way the line “looks,” strongly consider the counterintuitive play. Meaning, if the line looks unusually low, the public will bet the over, meaning it’s a good idea to take the under. If the line looks unusually high, the public will likely be betting on the under, which means your best move is to do the opposite.

4 – Props

Prop bets are like the dessert of the sports betting day. They’re nice, but shouldn’t be the main source of your nutrition.

Examples of prop bets include things like whether or not Tom Brady will throw for more than 300 yards, whether or not the RB for Alabama will have two touchdowns, or whether or not a team will have an interception in the game.

Because prop bets don’t receive nearly as much action as regular bets, you might be able to get a slight advantage at real money sportsbooks. If you see a matchup advantage, feel free to throw a little money down if you’re able to find good value. Just be sure you don’t get carried away. Prop bets are hard to win consistently.

Conclusion

Gambling on football is taking off at record numbers for sports bettors across America. Utilize these football betting tips and you might just be able to capture some of the magic for yourself.