How to Hedge a Parlay Bet
Pretend you have a five-team parlay, and your last wager is on the Yankees to beat the Braves. Your parlay is $100 to win $10,000. So, put in $100 for Bet #1, put in +10000 for line #1, then finally put in the line on the Braves to beat the Yankees in line #2, let’s say they are +200. Click calculate.

The hedging calculator tells you to wager $3,366.67 on the Braves at +200 for a profit of $6,633.33 regardless if the Yankees or Braves win. This is because you would win $10,000 from your parlay if the Yankees won — less the $3,366.67 you wagered on the Braves — and you would win $6,733.33 if the Braves won, less the $100 you wagered on the parlay with the Yankees.

How to Hedge a Futures Bet
Let’s say you bet $100 at the start of the NFL season on the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl at odds of +700. If the Chiefs then made it into the Super Bowl, you could bet on the opposition winning the game to secure a guaranteed profit regardless of which team were to prevail. This hedging calculator tells you the ideal amount to wager in order to guarantee maximum profit either way.

In this example, you would put $100 for bet #1, which is your wager on the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl. The line you received on the Chiefs was +700, so plug +700 in the box labeled Line #1. Then, place the price of the Chiefs’ opponent, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who were +135 in the Super Bowl, in the box labeled Line #2.

Click Calculate and you discover that you should bet $340.43 on the Bucs to hedge your bet. Your total risk amount would therefore be $440.43, and you would be guaranteed a profit of $359.57, regardless of the result. That amounts to a profit of 81.6425%.

The examples used above are some very common ways to hedge a bet. A more advanced strategy is known as arbitrage. This form of hedge betting involves exploiting discrepancies on the odds available at different sportsbooks on the same game in order to guarantee a profit, such as the -150 and +155 example provided at the beginning of the page.

These opportunities do not appear on every game, but if you are sharp enough you will spot potential arbing prospects over the course of the season. You can then this calculator to find out if there is a chance of guaranteeing a profit.

When you have identified an opportunity on a game with a price discrepancy like in the example of an MLB team with -150 on one side and +155 on the opponent, you can guarantee a profit. This strategy requires a large bankroll as the profits are small on a game-by-game basis.

If such an arbitrage opportunity exists, our hedging calculator will tell you the ideal amount you should wager on the alternative outcomes in order to guarantee the maximum potential profit. It would be a painstaking process for you to work this out by yourself. Out hedging calculator makes the process of successful hedging bets simple, and it cuts out the potential for human error.

Online sportsbooks have many different reasons for offering different lines on the same game – they may have conflicting views of the strengths and weaknesses of each team, one site may be offering attractive odds in a bid to stand out from the crowd, or one sportsbook may simply be slow to respond to a shift in the market – and arbitrage bets are a lucrative way to capitalize on these differences.

Make sure to bookmark the free betting odds and lines page offered by Bookmakers Review to compare odds in real-time.