A straight bet is one wager on one outcome, settled on that result alone. You pick a side, a team or a total, and the bet wins, loses or pushes on its own, with nothing else attached to it.
The term exists to tell it apart from the bets that tie several picks together: parlays, teasers and round robins.
The three common kinds
Point spread. You bet a team to win by more than the spread, or to lose by less. Our point spread guide explains the line.
Moneyline. You bet a team to win the game outright, at a price. See our moneyline guide.
Total. You bet the combined score to go over or under a number. Our over/under guide covers it.
A player prop or a futures bet is a straight bet too, as long as it stands alone.
What -110 means on a straight bet
FanDuel’s house rules, as filed with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, use -110 as their example of a point spread price: “-110 means a player must bet $110 for every $100 they wish to win.”
So a winning $110 bet returns $210: the $110 stake plus $100 profit. A losing one costs the $110.
To break even at that price you need to win 52.38% of your bets, because 110 divided by 210 is 0.5238. Win exactly half and you lose money: two bets, one win and one loss, take $220 in stakes and return $210, a $10 loss. That gap is the book’s margin.
What happens on a push or a void
A straight bet that lands exactly on the number is a push, and the stake comes back. FanDuel’s rule for spreads and totals: where the line is a whole number, “bets are void and will be refunded where the score lands on that number.”
A void works the same way. Caesars’ house rules say that when a selection is made void, “for straight wagers the money wagered will be returned.”
Straight bet vs parlay, teaser and round robin
| Bet | Picks | How it settles | Payout, using -110 picks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight bet | One | On its own result | $100 profit on $110 |
| Parlay | Two or more, in one bet | Every pick must win | Two picks: about $264 profit on $100 |
| Teaser | Two or more, with the spreads or totals moved in your favor | Every pick must win | From the book’s fixed chart, not from the picks’ prices |
| Round robin | Three or more picks, split into smaller parlays of a chosen size | Each parlay settles on its own | Each two-pick parlay: about $264 profit on $100 |
The parlay figure is arithmetic: -110 is 1.9091 in decimal odds, and 1.9091 times 1.9091 is 3.6446, so $100 returns $364.46, a profit of $264.46. FanDuel’s rules say parlay odds “will be calculated based on the prices of the individual selections”, and teaser odds “are derived from a fixed payout chart.”
The difference that matters is what one bad result does. A losing straight bet loses that bet and nothing else. A losing leg sinks a whole parlay or teaser, and in a round robin it sinks every parlay it is part of. Caesars’ rules also show how close the two are: when one leg of a two-leg parlay is void, the bet becomes a straight wager on the other.
Our guides to the parlay, the teaser and the round robin work through each one with real prices.
Straight bets at the racetrack
At the track the phrase means something narrower. Win, place and show are called the straight wagers, set against exotic bets such as the exacta and trifecta. The guide to wager types on IndianaHarness.com calls them “the basic or ‘straight’ wagers” and defines them this way:
- Win: your horse must finish first.
- Place: your horse must finish first or second.
- Show: your horse must finish first, second or third.
Our horse racing betting guide covers those bets and the exotics in full. Away from the track, a straight bet is any single bet that stands on its own result.