Round robin betting explained

A round robin in sports betting is a bet comprised of parlays featuring at least two teams made up from a larger list of selections. For example, a three-selection round robin bet on Teams A, B, and C could feature three two-team parlays on Teams A and B, A and C, and B and C, as well as one three-team parlay on all three teams.

The obvious advantage to round robin betting is that it allows you to place bets with numerous selections without having to rely on a traditional multiple or parlay bet, which loses if one selection on the bet does not win.

Therefore, if you are confident of predicting the outcome of several different events, this can be a viable betting strategy that does not require an “all or nothing” approach. However, as the bet is essentially comprised of many smaller bets, the money required to stake them can very quickly increase depending on the number of selections involved.

For this example, let’s imagine that you wanted to place a round robin bet on the point spread for four NFL matches. Your initial list of selections is as follows:

As there are four selections in your round robin bet, this would create six two-selection parlays, four three-selection parlays, and one four-selection parlay:

• Two-selection parlays: A+B, A+C, A+D, B+C, B+D, C+D

• Three-selection parlays: A+B+C, A+B+D, A+C+D, B+C+D

• Four-selection parlay: A+B+C+D

You decide to bet $10 on each individual parlay, meaning that the total round robin bet comes to $110. As the odds for each individual selection are -110, any successful two-selection parlay will pay out $36.44, any successful three-selection parlay will pay out $69.57, and a successful four-selection parlay will pay out $132.81.

Therefore, here are the potential outcomes for this round robin bet:

As you can see in the table above, you can afford for one of the four selections to lose to still make a profit on the round robin bet overall. At the same time, if only two of the four selections come in, you will lose money, but also recoup some of the amount you have bet.

In this sense, round robin bets provide an extra layer of security compared to traditional multiple or parlay bets, as you don’t need to rely on every selection to win in order to make a profit.

While round robin bets may provide a safety net compared to multiple or parlay wagers, the tradeoff is that they often require you to stake more money.

For instance, if you traditionally place $100 on parlay bets, it is worth noting that staking a mere $10 on every parlay within a round robin bet would come to $110 for four selections, $260 for five selections, and $570 for six selections. You therefore need to consider if the extra security justifies the increased potential losses.

One way around this is to reduce what you bet on within the round robin. In the example above, $10 was staked on every single possible parlay, but if you wanted, you could keep to the two and three-selection parlays or even just the two-selection parlays on their own. Notably, in the latter case, only two of four selections winning would return a profit, provided the odds for each selection were +150 or longer.

Either way, you should still approach round robin betting in the same way as you would multiple or parlay betting, and only place them when you are confident that every individual selection within it will win. Make sure that every selection is well-researched, and you are getting odds with good value among your selections wherever possible.

The total number of possible parlays within a round robin bet depends on the number of initial selections within it. As the table below demonstrates, the more selections within a round robin bet, the more possible parlays it can have:

Number of possible parlays by number of selections