Multis, sometimes referred to as parlays or accumulators, are a great way to turn a small investment into a big return. As the name suggests, a multi is short for “multiple bets” and it’s where you combine two or more sports betting events into a single bet. In order for a multi to get paid, all “legs” of the multi must be successful.

Let’s look at a simple example. Let’s consider three sports events – an AFL match, a tennis tournament and a horse race. We like the look of Hawthorn to beat Collingwood in the AFL, we’ll back Novak Djokovic to win Wimbledon and we’ll take a punt on Fawkner to win the Caulfield Cup. Let’s put $10 on each and see how they go:

$10 on Hawthorn @1.80 = $18 return ($8 profit)
$10 on Novak Djokovic @3.50 = $35 return ($25 profit)
$10 on Fawkner @12 = $120 return ($110 profit)

So our total profits, should all three win, is $143. This equates to odds of 4.77 for a $30 bet.

Now what if we combined them into a multi for the same $30 outlay?

$30 on Hawthorn + Djokovic + Fawkner @ $75.60 = $2,268 return ($2,238 profit)

Woah! That’s an enormous difference between winning $143 and $2,238 for the three same events!

So how does this work exactly? In the multi, the odds of the events are multiplied together (1.80 x 3.50 x 12 = 75.60) to produce the overall odds for the multi. Your bets are acting similar to compound interest as your winnings from each event are effectively rolled into the next to boost your potential payout significantly.

There are some great benefits of multis:

-          Bigger odds, means bigger payouts – As you can see above, if we bet on the above wagers individually, the maximum return we would get is $143. In our multi, we collected a staggering $2,238 profit for the same events.

-          Smaller investment – Since the returns are so huge, we can reduce our investment to realise the same amount of profits. If we only wanted to win the same $143 as the individual bets, we would’ve only had to risk $1.90 on the multi (at odds of 75.6) to win the same amount as the $30 risked in the individual bets.

However there are of course some cons to consider as well:

-          Increased risk – We require all legs of our multi to win in order to get paid, so if there is an upset result and we lose a leg, the entire multi is wiped out.

-          Frequency of losses – Due to the higher odds, multis won’t win as frequently as regular bets, which can be hard for some punters to handle emotionally. However when they win, they win big!

Multis are a lot of fun because you can choose any sporting event in the world to combine into your multi at any odds you like. You’ll soon see that a couple of value choices will blow out your odds to astronomic proportions.

Take a look at this example from the Mildura races on Tuesday July 15th in 2014 when Shane Cramp rode all eight winners. For just a $1 multi on all eight of Shane’s horses, you would’ve pocketed $762.89, even though five of the horses were odds-on and seven of them were short-priced favourites. Just one value pick bloated the multi to huge odds.

Betfair Australia also have a promotion running throughout the 2014 AFL Season to see who can become the “Multi King”. Each week, $1,000 in cash is given away to whoever can produce the biggest multi of the round such as this one which turned $10 into $833:

There have been many stories of punters who have turned a tiny investment into life-changing sums of money. The best way to do this is either to combine a lot of legs, or include a couple of value plays to boost your odds. For just a few bucks, it’s worth a shot right?