Asked as "What is the payout on a parlay?", the answer starts with one ticket. A parlay, called an accumulator in many places, joins several picks into one bet. Every leg has to win for the ticket to pay, and the odds of the legs multiply, so a small stake can return a large sum. What makes the format attractive is the same thing that makes it hard: each added leg lowers the chance that the whole bet lands.
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A parlay works by multiplication. Each leg carries its own odds, and the payout on a parlay is the stake times the decimal odds of every leg multiplied together. Three legs at 2.0 each turn one unit into eight. The same arithmetic runs the other way for the chance of winning: three picks that each land half the time win together only one time in eight, and the price offered usually pays less than that fair eight.
A push, where a spread or a total lands exactly on the line, does not win a parlay and does not lose it. Most books treat a pushed leg like a void one: it leaves the ticket, and the parlay pays on the legs that remain. To define a same game parlay simply: several picks from one match on one ticket. Because those picks are linked, the book prices the combination itself, and its margin on a same game ticket is usually wider.
Picks from one match are linked, so the book prices the combination as a whole and usually applies a wider margin than on separate games.
Most books drop that leg from the ticket, and the parlay pays at reduced odds on the legs that remain.
Yes. The same picks placed as single bets carry far less combined margin, which shows how much edge the accumulator hands the house.
The whole ticket is lost at once, whatever the results of the other selections turn out to be.