A parlay hedging dilemma

One of the current systems that I use for MLB wagering involves assigning probabilities of hitting a parlay and computes the expected return per dollar wagered. I place wagers on any parlay with expected return greater than $1.00. Most of these parlays involve wagers on a home team and under, or a visitor and over. On occasion, like today, there will be positive returns on two contradictory parlays on a single game. For instance, the expected return on the White Sox and under today is $1.146, while the Indians and over is $1.057. So, what to do?

I posed this question in the “Handicapper Think Tank” forum on sportsbookreview.com a while back. The topic was “A different type of hedging dilemma”. The responses were mixed. Hence the dilemma. I used my last 8 years of data to look for similar situations. I found 149 situations where both parlays had positive and different expected returns (there were 3 games with identical expected returns). I looked at different wagering scenarios. The results follow.

	Bet on highest return				Bet on lowest
Year	Bets	Net	Ret/$		Bets	Net	Ret/$
2010	24	$376	$1.16		24	-$144	$0.94
2011	19	-$359	$0.81		19	$845	$1.44
2012	14	-$587	$0.58		14	$384	$1.27
2013	28	$893	$1.32		28	-$987	$0.65
2014	17	-$628	$0.63		17	$407	$1.24
2015	16	$222	$1.14		16	-$613	$0.62
2016	16	$490	$1.31		16	-$590	$0.63
2017	15	$1,753	$2.17		15	-$492	$0.67
Total	149	$2,160	$1.14		149	-$1,190	$0.92

Clearly betting on the parlay with the highest expected return had the best results, returning $1.14 per dollar wagered. Betting on the worst of the two was a money loser, returning only $0.92 per dollar. I did look at betting equally on both and a half unit on the worst of the two. These had positive returns, but lower than just betting on the better of the two. Clearly the poorer performer was dragging down the better.

Roughly two-thirds of the better performer was on the home and under while the other third was the visitor and over. This is consistent with the parlay biases published in previous posts. If you have any questions or comments on this issue, feel free to post them on the topic at “Handicapper Think Tank”. You can also Email me at ole44bill@gmail.com. I have another MLB study that I’m working on and will publish soon. Follow me @ole44bill on Twitter to know when it is done.