MMA Betting: The Power of a Two-Team Underdog Parlay
By Loot, MMA Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
In general, we want to play straight bets. We want to hone in on individual fights and try to pick a winner and hopefully wind up in the plus-column over the long haul. That means playing with the exotic bets with kid gloves. We don’t want to have too many wagers where our correct picks only pay off in the event that other picks pan out well. That doesn’t mean we can’t occasionally use bets like parlays as weapons.
A particular parlay that is worth a look is the two-team underdog parlay. It is a speculative bet--make no mistake. Veteran MMA betting men are more than happy to find a single underdog win. Hitting two on the same ticket is no walk in the park. At the same time, the reward warrants the risk when executed thoughtfully.
This is a sport rife with upsets. That’s true with most sports, but MMA is extremely conducive for bettors looking to upset the odds. The unexpected can also be expected on some level in this sport. There is only one person who you are betting on, as opposed to an entire team of players. In MMA, there are dozens of ways a fighter can win. The roads that lead to an upset are numerous.
If we operate under the pretense that upsets are not as abnormal in MMA as some sports, we can tailor our wagering accordingly. In addition, there is a tendency for favorites to be bigger favorites than they actually should be. Favorites are usually overvalued by the general betting public, which results in better value for the underdog.
A two-team parlay with underdogs yields surprisingly good results. Let’s look at some of the different options. Group similar underdogs together. If you’re going to take a +150 underdog, look for another one in the same ballpark, like maybe a +170 underdog. If you were to make a $100 parlay on a +150 and +170, your win would be a hefty $575. You see you could win one of these and lose several and still be ahead in this play. Every weekend, underdogs like that hit.
THE BEST PARLAY UNDERDOG ODDS CAN BE FOUND AT BOVADA SPORTSBOOK
Let’s say you play some mid-range underdogs, like in the +300 range. This also happens every weekend. 3-1 favorites are hardly invulnerable in this sport. If you hit a $100 parlay with two underdogs who are +300 and +320, your payout would be a staggering $1580! It’s not an easy bet to win. But don’t you think you might be able to hit 1 for every 16 of those bets you place? And of course not everyone can bet $100 on speculative parlays like that. But even a $10 bet would yield $158--a huge win for a smaller bettor. It would take him a year betting straight to win that much.
Let’s say you hone in on a couple vulnerable favorites who are fetching huge numbers. A $100 parlay on two big favorites can represent a monumental win. Take two underdogs at +600 and a $100 parlay would produce $4800. Even a $10 parlay would result in $480. Are these easy to hit? Absolutely not. You don’t think you could hit one out of 50, though? That’s about what it would take to render this a good play.
It can be painful to hit one underdog, but lose the bet and having nothing to show because the other one lost. that’s why it’s a good idea to bet the underdogs straight, so that you can still profit in the event that only one should win. Even if the underdogs are only slight dogs, winning 1 out of 2 is always a winning proposition in underdog betting and it can help you absorb losing the parlay wager.
This is a little off the script. We don’t want to get hung up on chasing the big score. But just like the fighters, we need to try to land the blockbuster every now and then. While showing patience as we chug along trying to win straight bets, we need to throw a haymaker when the situation is right. We shouldn’t go out of our way looking to play an over-abundance of underdogs just for the sake of it. At the same time, that doesn’t mean we should never go for the knockout.
