What a round robin is
A round robin takes a list of picks and bets every smaller parlay you can make from them. Pick four teams, choose “by 2s”, and you get six 2-leg parlays: AB, AC, AD, BC, BD and CD. Each one is its own bet at the same stake.
The appeal: one loser doesn’t sink everything. If three of your four picks win, three of those six parlays still cash.
How many bets it makes
The number of parlays is the number of ways to choose the size from your picks:
| Picks | By 2s | By 3s | By 4s | All sizes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | 1 | – | 4 |
| 4 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 11 |
| 5 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 26 |
| 6 | 15 | 20 | 15 | 57 |
| 8 | 28 | 56 | 70 | 247 |
Your total stake is the number of parlays times the stake on each, so it climbs quickly. Four picks by 2s at 10 each is 60 in total.
How the payouts work
Each parlay pays like any other parlay: its stake times the decimal odds of its legs multiplied together. Only the parlays where every leg wins pay out. The table under the calculator works out every case, from all picks winning down to the fewest that still return something. When the result depends on which picks lose, it shows the range from your shortest prices winning to your longest.
Round robin or straight parlay?
A single parlay pays the most when everything hits and nothing otherwise. A round robin pays less at the top but softens a bad beat. The more picks and the more sizes you add, the bigger the total stake, so check the “guaranteed profit with” line before you commit. Real tickets show why: see how often parlays hit by number of legs.