Wager Mage
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Is it smart to hedge a parlay?

Parlays are a good example of hedging as well. If the first two legs of a three-leg parlay came in and the third would be for a big payout, hedge by betting against the third leg to guarantee some profit from the parlay. The principle is the same as hedging against a futures bet that is close to coming in.

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Hedge your bets is a phrase that has stretched beyond its origins in sports betting. It means minimizing your risk and potentially locking in some profit. In sports betting, hedging is betting against a previously placed bet to avoid the worst-case scenario outcome. The concept is generally used to guarantee profit at the price of minimizing the best-case scenario outcome. This works most frequently when a futures bet is involved, but it can also be done when live betting is involved. In recent years, one of the more famous futures bets is the 2015-16 Leicester City team that won the English Premier League in a shock result. The Foxes were 5,000-1 to win the Premier League before the season started. As Leicester raced to the league lead, those 5,000-1 odds would have started to seem like a legitimate possibility. A $5 bet on Leicester would have turned into $25,000. If they collapsed and only finished second or third, that $5 would have turned into nothing. In this scenario, a bettor could have locked in guaranteed profit if they bet on Leicester’s main contenders in the final stretch of the season. This works as insurance in case Leicester fell apart. While hitting a 5,000-1 futures bet can be life-changing, it may also have been unnerving to sit through those spring months, knowing it could turn to nothing. While Leicester was a high-profile, high-value futures bet that offered multiple hedging opportunities, hedging is more straightforward in playoffs or an elimination tournament when there are binary outcomes. Someone who bet on Baylor men’s basketball to win the 2021 national title before the NCAA Tournament at +500 or 5-1 would have been sitting pretty by the championship game. If this bettor placed $100 on Baylor, they’d be in line to take $500 in profit if Baylor won. This bettor could hedge by betting against Baylor in the final to lock in profit. Gonzaga, Baylor’s opponent, was -200. A $300 bet on Gonzaga would net $150 in profit, which could cover the original Baylor bet and give $50 in profit if Gonzaga won. If Baylor won, the overall profit after covering the original $100 bet and the $300 Gonzaga bet would be $200. This is adjustable depending on how much the bettor wants to lock in and how they feel about the final matchup, but this is the general concept of hedging. Gonzaga is an example where it is difficult to hedge because they were so heavily favored that it’s expensive to bet on them in a hedging scenario. So let’s flip it and say the original bet was on Gonzaga to win the national title back in December when they were 4-1.

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The Bulldogs looked great through the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament, but they wobbled against UCLA in the Final Four, so you decide to hedge the final. If the original bet on Gonzaga was $20, that bet would pay out $80 in profit, plus the original $20 back. That $80 is not yours yet, but it is the number you can hedge with. If you hedge by betting on Baylor, one of the two teams has to win, which means one of those bets has to win. Baylor closed at +165 in the final against Gonzaga, so if you bet $40 on Baylor, you would get $66 in profit. By betting on Gonzaga early in the season when the futures bet had many odds and having them get all the way to the final, you can artificially create a bet where both sides have plus odds. So essentially, the final has moneyline odds of Gonzaga +400 and Baylor +165. Guaranteed profit. If Gonzaga wins, the $40 used to bet on Baylor and create the hedge is gone, but the $80 profit from the 4-1 futures bet comes in, and the overall profit is $40. On the other hand, if Baylor wins, which is what actually happened, the original $20 on Gonzaga is gone, but the $66 from the Baylor moneyline bet comes in, and the overall profit is $46. In this example, there were four possible scenarios from the betting perspective based on two variables: which team won and whether or not a hedge was made. Winning team Hedge? Profit Gonzaga No $80 Baylor Yes $46 Gonzaga Yes $40 Baylor No -$20 By hedging, the best and worst scenarios are removed and profit is guaranteed. The amount bet on Baylor in the hedge is up to the person betting. You could match up the profits so that the result of the final is irrelevant. For example, betting $37.74 on Baylor would guarantee a profit of $42.26 regardless of which team won the final. Hedging doesn’t have to involve a one-game scenario like the final either. Take the same hypothetical Gonzaga 4-1 futures bet for $20. Gonzaga was heavily favored throughout the tournament. You could hedge by taking moneyline bets against them in every tournament game, knowing that those would be big payouts to cover the original futures bet losing. However, this can be expensive over the course of multiple games and can really eat into potential profit.

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Hedging parlays

Parlays are a good example of hedging as well. If the first two legs of a three-leg parlay came in and the third would be for a big payout, hedge by betting against the third leg to guarantee some profit from the parlay. The principle is the same as hedging against a futures bet that is close to coming in. Take an $11 three-leg parlay with each leg of the parlay having -110 odds. That parlay would turn into $79.23 if it won. In this example, the first leg wins with -110 odds on an $11 bet. That bet returns $21. Then for the second leg, that $21 is bet on the second leg, also at -110. That returns $41.50 if it wins. After two winning legs, the parlay is essentially a $41.50 bet on the final leg with -110 odds, but you only have $11 risked. You could hedge by betting the other side of the remaining bet to lock in profit, just like in the Gonzaga-Baylor example above.

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