How parlays, payouts and odds actually work

American odds are written with a plus or a minus. A minus price is what you have to risk to win $100: at -110 you stake $110 to win $100 profit. A plus price is what a $100 stake wins: at +250 a $100 stake wins $250 profit and returns $350 in total.

Decimal odds say the same thing in one number: your total return per $1 staked, stake included. 2.50 means $1 comes back as $2.50 — $1.50 of it profit. Stratos shows American odds by default and uses decimal odds internally because they multiply cleanly across parlay legs.

Every price carries an implied chance of winning: 1 ÷ decimal odds. At 1.91 that is 52.4%. Add up the implied chances on both sides of a market and the total is more than 100% — at -110 / -110 it is 104.8%. That extra 4.8% is the sportsbook's margin, called the vig or juice.

That is why beating the market takes more than picking winners: a coin-flip bet at -110 loses money over time. Stratos strips the vig out of the market consensus to estimate a fair price, then compares each book's actual price to it. The gap is the edge shown on the board.

Moneyline — pick the outright winner, no margin involved. Spread (handicap) — the favourite must win by more than the posted number, the underdog can lose by less than it or win outright. Total (over/under) — bet whether the combined score finishes above or below a posted number.

Player props are markets on one player's output, like passing yards or points scored. A same-game parlay combines several markets from one match; because those outcomes are related, books re-price them rather than multiplying them straight through.

A parlay is one bet made of several legs. Every leg has to win or the whole bet loses — there is no partial payout. In exchange, the odds multiply, so the potential return climbs fast while the chance of winning falls just as fast.

The maths is simple: convert each leg to decimal odds, multiply them, multiply by your stake. Three legs at 1.91, 2.10 and 1.75 multiply to 7.02, so a $10 stake returns $70.20 — $60.20 of it profit. The combined implied chance is 1 ÷ 7.02 = 14.2%.

The vig compounds too. Each leg carries the book's margin, so a five-leg parlay carries it five times over. Longer slips are not automatically worse, but they need a genuine edge on every single leg to be worth taking.

Legs from the same match are correlated: a quarterback throwing for 300 yards makes his receiver going over 70 yards more likely. Because of that, a sportsbook prices a same-game parlay as one combined market instead of multiplying the legs, and the quoted price is usually shorter than the straight multiplication suggests.

Stratos flags correlated legs on a slip so you can see when the book's combined price is fair, and when it is taking more than it should for the correlation.

Return means stake plus profit; profit is return minus stake. A $10 stake at +150 returns $25 and profits $15. Wherever Stratos shows a payout, it is the total return unless the label says profit.

A push is a tie against the number — a spread of exactly 3 in a game decided by 3. A push refunds the stake on a straight bet. In a parlay, most books remove the pushed leg and re-price the slip with the legs that remain, so a four-leg slip settles as a three-leg one at lower odds. A void (cancelled game, a player who never takes the field, a suspended market) is treated the same way.

Cashing out early takes the book's buyout price, not the original odds, and it settles the bet immediately. Stratos records the amount your book actually returned, so a cash-out shows up in your history at its real value rather than the theoretical payout.

A bet settles on the sportsbook's official result, which is the only result that counts. Where your book reports outcomes back to us, your ticket updates automatically with the payout it actually paid. Otherwise the ticket is graded against final scores once the game is confirmed final, and the settlement check runs every hour.

Overtime normally counts for moneylines, spreads and totals, but many player props settle on regulation only. Rules for abandoned or postponed fixtures vary by operator — the operator's own rules always govern the bet you placed with them.

Decide a bankroll you are comfortable losing and stake a fixed small share of it per bet — one to two percent is a common discipline. Flat staking survives losing runs that chasing does not.

Judge yourself on closing-line value, not on last night's result. If you consistently take a better price than the market closes at, profit follows over a large sample. A handful of bets tells you nothing either way.