*Please note that we now have a course which covers the subject of multis in much more depth than you will find in this tutorial.*
Casual gamblers (or ‘mug punters’ as we call them) love to bet on multis.
By combining several selections into a single bet they can potentially turn a small stake into a huge amount of money.
They also get to enjoy the thrill as each result comes in – until one doesn’t.
Bookies also love multis, but they are not in it for the thrill. For bookies, multiple selections means multiple profits.
Let’s do some quick maths…
(or you can skip this bit and just trust me that bookies love multis)
In the semi-final of the Big Bash cricket league, Sportsbet had a market called ‘To Win The Toss’. That’s right, you can literally bet on the toss of a coin to see which team will bat first.
Assuming that no one had tampered with the coin, each team had a 50% chance of winning the toss. In gambling terms, this translates to decimal odds of 2.00.
So why were Sportsbet only offering odds of 1.95 on each team?
The answer is simple – this how they make their money.
Offering less than the true odds allows them to skim a little bit of profit off of each bet.
How much they skim is known as the ‘over-round’ and is calculated with the formula: =(1/odds of selection A) + (1/odds of selection B) – 1
In this case that translates to =0.5128+0.5128-1 which equals 0.0256 or 2.56%
So, for every hundred dollars wagered on this market, Sportsbet would expect to make $2.56 in profit.
But what if we included the bet in a multi with another coin toss bet? How would that affect the over-round?
Well, if the odds are the same, the second part of the bet would also have a 2.56% over-round. That would be added to the original 2.56% to give a total over-round of 5.12%.
Sportsbet would now expect to make $5.12 for every $100 wagered.
And if we add a third, fourth, or fifth coin toss to our multi in the hope of a huge payout?
Sportsbet would add an additional $2.56 to their expected profit for every one.
tl/dr bookies love multis because they increase their profits
If bookies love multi’s so much, why are we interested in them?
It’s all about the promos.
Bookies want to encourage mug punters to bet on multis, so they use promos to lure them in. And just like other promos, matched bettors can find ways to exploit them for profit.
The majority of multi promos follow a similar structure. They will be worded something like this:
A ‘leg’ just means a bet. A ‘4-leg multi’ would be a multi which includes 4 bets. A leg ‘fails’ if that bet doesn’t win.
So for us to receive the bonus bet, in this instance, we would need 3 winning bets and 1 losing bet in our multi.
Although the structure of most promos is the same, there are two distinct categories of multi promos – ‘Multiple Game Promos’ and ‘Same Game Promos’
Multiple Game Promos
This type of promo applies to the more traditional type of multis where you select 4 teams to win their individual matches.
In order to stop saying multi/multiple so much i will refer to these as ‘Classic’ promos from now on.
There are three different ways that we could approach a classic promo – ‘No Lay’, ‘Sequential Lay’, and ‘Lay at the Start’.
The approach that you choose to take will depend on your risk aversion.
This thread gives a detailed description of the different approaches, but here is a quick overview:
- No Lay – Should provide the highest returns in the long-term, but there are no guarantees in the short-term. Minimal effort required. Best for those with a high risk tolerance.
- Sequential Lays – Requires a lot of time, and will provide much smaller returns, but minimises risk. Only possible when games don’t overlap.
- Lay at the Start – Middle ground that has less expected value that ‘no lay’, but much less risk. Can also provide huge payouts in some circumstances.
Our multi-matchers can help you to identify the selections with the highest expected value for any ‘No Lay’ or ‘Lay at the Start’ multis that you are placing.
For sequential lays you can use the ‘Multi Promo‘ calculator.
Same Game Promos
Same game multis (SGMs) are a relatively new addition at most Australian bookies.
Like the name suggests, these are multi’s where all of the selections are on the same game.
For example, an NBA SGM could be ‘LA Lakers to win/LeBron James to score 20+ points/Over 224 total points‘.
As all of these bets happen at the same time, and Betfair doesn’t have markets for all of them, we have no option but to take a No Lay approach.
However, there are ways to reduce variance (the swings between losing and winning runs).
The easiest way is just by picking selections at low odds. Most SGM promos only require you to pick 3 legs, so if you go for very low odds selections it will be unusual for you to lose more than one of them.
If you want to take things further you could look for combinations of bets that guarantee at least one of them win.
For example, in an AFL game i could select Team A to win in the match odds market, and also select Team B +20.5 points in the handicap market. There is no way that both of these bets can lose. One of them is guaranteed to win, and if Team A win by 20 points or less they will both win.
It is worth noting that when you choose legs that are connected in this way it will alter the multi odds. SGM odds are calculated differently when one leg has an impact on the other and, as a result, you will not be able to use our multi-matchers to calculate expected value.
In some limited cases it may be possible to remove variance completely by using the SGM Hack method, but this comes with its own risks and is not our preferred approach.
For a live example of an SGM – with unconnected legs – you can watch this video tutorial.
SGMs are very popular with bookies right now. This is due to the fact that most punters will only place one classic multi per week, but with SGMs they might place one per game.
As a result there are loads of SGM promos available every week, which means loads of opportunities for us to profit.
Enhanced Odds Multis
Probably 90%+ of all multi promos fall into the ‘Classic’ or ‘SGM’ category, but there is one other category worth mentioning. Enhanced odds multis.
These can come in a couple of different forms. ‘Double winnings’ and ‘Pre-selected’.
Pre-selected multis are ones where the bookie chooses which games are included. It might be something along the lines of “Man City, Liverpool, and Spurs all to win at enhanced odds of $4.20”.
Often these ‘enhanced’ odds don’t offer much value at all. You can check this by looking at the lay odds for each team on Betfair and multiplying them together to get the true odds.
If there is value, you may be forced to take a ‘no lay’ approach because the games overlap. If not you can look at sequential laying.
‘Double Winnings’ multis aren’t common. Ladbrokes is the only bookie that has them regularly, and in most cases they apply to SGMs.
To maximise their value you should keep the multi odds as low as possible, but above any minimum odds required to qualify.
If the promo applies to a classic multi you can choose games that do not overlap and then sequentially lay. You may even be able to overlay and lock-in a guaranteed profit depending on the odds available.
For SGM double winnings promos a ‘no lay’ approach is best.
Multi-ply Your Profits
Multi promos are a great way for intermediate and advanced matched bettors to extract extra value from bookies, while also blending in with mug punters.
If you aren’t taking advantage of them already, give them a go soon.