Most bookmakers make most of their money from combo bets! Bookmakers do everything they can to make these accumulator bets look attractive to bettors. They offer things like acca insurance and this is not without a reason. Just think about it, there can be only one explanation for this – they advertise accumulators because they are very profitable. More profitable than any other their product.
It is profitable for the bookmaker, not the punter of course. It’s important here to realise that these bookmakers are companies with shareholders that need to make a profit. You need to know, they have to survive in what is one of the most competitive industries. It would be very irrational to invest their resources into advertising parlay bets when they actually make a loss out of them on the whole.
Two main reasons why combo bets are a bad idea :
- You give the bookmaker a lot bigger margin = you lose money. Let’s take a NBA match for our first simple example. The total line is evaluated at 200.5 and the bookmaker gives 1.95 odds for both over and under outcomes. Since these outcomes are implied to be 50%, the real odds would be 2.00, but that 0.10 is the bookmaker’s margin. They make money off these margins. The bigger the margin – the more profit for the bookmaker. Let’s say you bet 10€ and win, you get 19.5€ instead of 20€ and bookmaker keeps the 0.5€ profit. But if you accumulate 4 of these bets, the bookmaker gives 14.46 odds instead of the real 16.00 odds (2*2*2*2). This way, when you bet 10€ and win you only get 144.60€ instead of 160.00€. The bookmaker now keeps 15.40€ of your profits! The more bets you accumulate, the bigger the profit bookmaker keeps.
- When accumulating bets, people tend to overestimate their chances of winning by A LOT. Let’s say you make a 10 bet combo bet. Each bet has a very strong probability of 80% to win. Each of their odds are 1.20. When you accumulate these, you get “staggering” odds of 6.19. It seems like a very little risk for a very big award at first sight. And that’s when the bookmaker gets you. You see, the real probability for all of these 10 bets (each has 80% chance to win) to win is only 10.74% percent. Just use math – 0.8^10=0.1074. That is indeed a very little chance to succeed.
Accumulators are popularly referred to as “sucker bets” and teasers. They got their name because, you guessed it, they’re a tease. On the surface, the teaser sounds like a layup and can’t-miss bet. After all, you are getting much better numbers that look like they can’t possibly lose. But almost always, one of the bets ends up losing.
There’s nothing wrong with placing a parlay or teaser bet every once in a while for fun. But bettors should never make parlays and teasers a daily habit or common routine. You are assuming massive risk and playing right into the sportsbooks hands.