Promoguy: How I Decide My Plays for FanDuel Parlay Insurance Promo & Thursday’s Bet

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FanDuel has brought back its March Madness parlay insurance promo where you can bet $25 on a 3-leg parlay, same game parlay, or SGP+ that's +400 or longer and get bonus bets back if 2/3 legs win. You can do one of these parlays each day, Thursday through Sunday.

The key to this promo is trying to figure out how to give ourselves the best chance at winning exactly 2/3 legs and capturing the insurance while minimizing the vig.

This is because in any insurance promo there are only two factors in the expected value:

1. The odds you get the insurance
2. The vig/EV of the bet itself

However, maximizing the insurance is much more important here, and I'll detail the math that shows why below.

This is different (and better) than last year's promo because there is no minimum odds requirement per leg and because it is a 3-leg parlay rather than a 4-leg parlay, giving us a much higher chance at insurance.

So with this in mind we have two priorities when deciding what to include in these parlays:

1. Maximizing the Insurance

The best way given these requirements to maximize our chance at insurance is by going with two massive favorites and then a big underdog.

If we chose three -140 lines we would have approximately a 42.5% chance to get exactly two wins. This scenario has us relatively evenly distributed with a 30.3% chance at one win, a 7% chance at zero wins, and a 19.8% chance at winning all three legs of the parlay (all of this assumes a vig-less world).

However, if we do two massive favorites (call them 95% chance to win each) and a +1000 leg (9% chance in a vig-less world) then our chances of capturing the insurance skyrocket to 82.91%.

That's largely driven by the 82% chance that the two 95% bets win and the 9% prob bet loses (.95.9510/11 = .8204). So you see, by implementing a strategy of two heavy favorites and one underdog, we are giving ourselves the best chance to secure the insurance.

2. Minimize the Vig

We want to minimize the vig with plays that are good relative to other books and we want to avoid same game parlays because FanDuel overcharges for correlation and has bad SGP pricing, especially for college sports.

If we find three lines that are the best prices on the market and basically fair to other (particularly "sharper") books than the vig will be around 0%. However, if we use lines that are not favorable vs. other books we can see the vig climb considerably — not that it could ever pale in comparison to the value of the insurance if we're able to execute priority No. 1 correctly.

Thursday's Play

Here's my first play on this promo, which comes out to +411 at time of publish. Make sure you opt-in on the promos page, or in the bet slip (you'll see a little tag that says tap to opt-in), and make sure it stays above +400.

• Louisiana +2.5 +400 vs Tenn.
• Kansas ML -8000 vs. Howard
• Alabama ML -10000 vs. Texas A&MCC

Pick: 3-leg parlay, +411

Click to autofill your bet slip with this parlay instantly!

I have fair odds for each leg at +415, -2500, -3000. The fair odds for this play are thus +453 and the vig is around 7.58%.

And the odds of us getting exactly two of three right are about 76.3% using these fair odds.

If we assume a 75% bonus bet conversion, the EV of this promo is .763 x .75 – .0758 = .49645 or almost 50%! So for every dollar wagered we can expect to profit about 50 cents in the long run.

If we used three legs at around -140 and assumed the vig was the same, we'd have EV of .425 x .75 – .0679 = .2508, or just 25.08%.

You also may be wondering why I went with a +400 longshot leg instead of a +1000 or longer bet. I could not find anything low vig enough where it made sense but may play longer than +400 type bets going forward.

You also may be wondering why we didn't do two big favorites and a longshot in our SGPs for the similar-style World Cup parlay promo.

Instead, we would do things like the parlay below at +430 — one "sure thing" at -7000, and two negatively correlated bets.

The purpose here was to create long odds with two negatively correlated bets that are incredibly likely to go 1-1 — not both lose and then have a third leg that's much safer. Ultimately in this screenshot we expect to end up with a -7000 leg to either end up with insurance or to win the bet (since the legs are -260 and +124 if they do not split they are more likely to have both won).

This was a slightly better way to do it on paper and it gave us favorable odds vs. other books due to FanDuel's favorable pricing.

We aren't going to go 6-0-2 on the March Madness promo again or even likely come close to how we did on the World Cup. But, we should have strong returns over time if we can get the EV to 50% on each day.

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