Here are two round robin examples that showcase how complex and interesting the bets can be.
Three Pick Round Robin
Let’s first build moneyline round robin across three major sports leagues: NBA, MLB, and NHL. Picking three teams keeps things simple because the breakout parlays are relatively small in number. Here are our selections for the purposes of explaining how round robins work:
- Boston Celtics moneyline: -230
- Chicago Cubs moneyline: +136
- Washington Capitals moneyline: +180
Combining these selections into a round robin gives us three separate two game parlays and total odds of +367. But remember, you’re placing a bet on each individual parlay. In this case, the three parlays are:
Parlay 1:
- Boston Celtics moneyline
- Chicago Cubs moneyline
Parlay 2:
- Boston Celtics Moneyline
- Washington Capitals moneyline
Parlay 3:
- Chicago Cubs moneyline
- Washington Capitals moneyline
In sportsbook lingo, this bet would be listed as “Round Robin (2’s) x3 wagers. When you type in your wager amount on this bet, that is the amount you are betting on each parlay within the round robin. So a $1 bet would actually be $3 total: $1 per parlay.
The max payout of this bet is $14.01, but that’s only if all three teams win. There’s a chance you could win a smaller return if, say, only the Cubs and Celtics won, because one of your parlays combines those two bets.
Five Pick Round Robin
Now things are getting interesting. When you make five selections, you have many more options in terms of how you break your round robin into smaller parlays. When you pick five bets, you can break the round robin into one of the following combinations:
- 1 five-leg parlay
- 5 four-pick parlays
- 10 three-pick parlays
- 10 two-pick parlays
You can bet on more than one of these in a single bet slip, too. So if you like the 5 four-pick parlays and the 10 two-pick parlays, you could bet on both, creating two round robins with a few easy clicks without having to redo all your picks.
Let’s build a five-team MLB moneyline round robin to show how this works. Here are the five picks:
- Arizona Diamondbacks: -104
- Seattle Mariners: -154
- San Francisco Giants: -220
- Chicago Cubs: +136
- Detroit Tigers: -126
Using the different parlay options above, you can now choose how to break out your selections into a round robin bet. We won’t detail each possibility here. Instead, let’s pretend you wanted to break those picks into 5 four-pick parlays. Here’s how they break out
Parlay 1
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Seattle Mariners
- San Francisco Giants
- Chicago Cubs
Parlay 2
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Seattle Mariners
- San Francisco Giants
- Detroit Tigers
Parlay 3
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Seattle Mariners
- Chicago Cubs
- Detroit Tigers
Parlay 4
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- San Francisco Giants
- Chicago Cubs
- Detroit Tigers
Parlay 5
- Seattle Mariners
- San Francisco Giants
- Chicago Cubs
- Detroit Tigers
It’s a lot to take in. But the reality is you simply have five separate parlays that you’ve built. Each can be treated as a separate wager from here on out, though you obviously hope each one will hit. Consider round robins a shortcut to building multiple interrelated parlay bets. Remember they’re high risk, high reward because each leg needs to hit for a parlay to win.