What bettors should know as same-game parlays arrive in Las Vegas

Before Shohei Ohtani’s start against the White Sox on Tuesday, Caesars Sportsbook offered a same-game parlay on its mobile app on the Angels to win and their two-way star to hit a home run and surpass 7½ strikeouts.

Countless bettors cashed in at +850 odds on the same-game parlay — which until recently hadn’t been offered in Nevada by Caesars — when Ohtani homered twice and had 10 strikeouts in Los Angeles’ 4-2 win over Chicago.

“That game was magical if you’re an Angels fan — and a bettor if you bet on Ohtani,” said Kevin Fulmer, Caesars Entertainment vice president of digital sports.

Same-game parlays, or SGPs, which have become wildly popular in the U.S. since they were introduced a few years ago, became available in Nevada in June with the launch of the new Caesars Nevada Sportsbook app.

“It’s a fun feature for the customers. We’re excited to bring this to Nevada,” Fulmer said. “These same-game parlays are exciting because the customer has the ability to create his or her own and bet a little to win a lot on their favorite players and team in the same bet.”

While other local books such as Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming also offer prebuilt SGPs, the real fun for bettors on the Caesars app is creating their own SGPs from innumerable options.

Each game that is available for a SGP will have a small “SGP” denotation next to it on the app. After clicking on the game, bettors are taken to another page where they can click on “Same Game Parlay” at the top.

That will open up a SGP menu where bettors can combine the money line, run line and/or total on the game with player props to hit a home run, total hits, bases, pitching strikeouts, singles, doubles, RBIs, runs scored, hits allowed, outs recorded, pitcher to be credited with a win and more.

“Right now, you’ll see them in baseball. But thinking forward to football, typically in the past you were never able to bet on Travis Kelce to score the first touchdown and Patrick Mahomes to throw for 200 yards,” Fulmer said. “This allows the customer to put those two together, and they can tack on the Chiefs to win, which many people did for the Super Bowl.”

Calculating correlation

Parlays, in which gamblers combine multiple bets into one wager for a bigger payout but must hit every leg to win, have long been popular with gamblers.

“Everybody wants to bet a toothpick to win a lumberyard,” longtime Las Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro once said.

Parlays also are one of the most profitable bets with Nevada bookmakers, who have averaged a 30.3 percent hold, or win percentage, on parlay cards over the last 10 years, according to the state Gaming Control Board. During that time, the books won $152.1 million of $502.1 million wagered on parlay cards.

By comparison, Nevada books have averaged a 5.5 percent hold on all bets the last 10 years, winning $2.9 billion of $52.6 billion in wagers.

But books had previously refused to take correlated parlays, where if one leg wins, the chances increase that the other leg will win as well.

“You couldn’t do a favorite and over, and you couldn’t do a dog and under,” DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello said. “For instance, if you had a 17-point favorite and the total was 37, you could not make that parlay. That type of bet was a slightly advantageous bet for the bettor.”

But new technology and algorithms have enabled books such as Caesars, DraftKings and FanDuel (the latter two not available in Nevada) to calculate odds and generate prices on SGPs in real time.

“People will say, ‘We’ve been doing same-game parlays for years.’ But they haven’t been offering a team to win the game, the game goes over and this guy scores over 40 points,” Avello said. “The reason they haven’t been able to offer it is a correlation for all that to happen. The same-game parlay takes all that into consideration.”

Avello said the business on SGPs has increased significantly in the last year or so at DraftKings.

“Some of them come back with some really big numbers,” he said. “Every day there’s a $5 one paying like 15 grand. Of course, there’s many being played. I’ve seen $10 come back for 60 grand.

“That’s why they’re popular. You can really make a big score for not a lot of money.”

Caesars also offers what it calls a super parlay, which combines a SGP with non-SGP bets.

In April, a Caesars bettor in New York turned $6 into $78,693.15 after hitting a super parlay in which the bettor parlayed three SGPs on the NBA playoffs with three money-line bets on NHL and NBA playoff games, 12 legs in all.

Bettor beware

While SGPs continue to surge in popularity, bettors should know that the odds are stacked against them and might be less than the actual chances of hitting them.

“Parlays are hard to hit to begin with,” longtime Las Vegas oddsmaker Dave Sharapan said. “From the book’s standpoint, if you put four items together in a same-game parlay, the book only has to win one and the book wins.

“Books always want more parlays, but the legal books in Vegas want to be fair. I don’t know if same-game parlays are always fair.”

Circa sportsbook operations manager Jeff Benson agreed.

“It seems like they’re all the rage in the industry these days, and people enjoy them,” he said. “I have no issues with the same-game parlay product. I’m all for innovation and different bets, things that can make sports betting more fun.

“I just try to educate people on the hold that they’re betting into, that they’re aware of it. When you bet a parlay off the board at Circa Sports, you’re getting true odds, whereas when you’re betting a same-game parlay, you’re not getting, for the most part, true odds for what you bet.”

Bookmaker beware

Books don’t always get the best of it. In January 2022, bettors beat them to the punch on information that injured Warriors forward Draymond Green would take the court for the opening tip to honor teammate Klay Thompson’s return from injury before quickly leaving the game.

Gamblers pounded the under on Green’s points, rebounds and assists props and put them in SGPs for a larger payout as books took a big hit.

Fulmer said Caesars also lost on SGPs in the Super Bowl as the Chiefs and Eagles combined for 73 points in Kansas City’s 38-35 win.

“Customers love to bet the over,” he said. “Same-game parlays were an expensive proposition for the sportsbook.”

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on Twitter.