This guide walks through fundamental markets available at Onyx: what they are, how they settle, and everything in between. Examples use a 100 Onyx Cash-style stake so the math is easy to follow.
A straight is the simplest pick on the board: picking a single outcome, such as a Moneyline, Spread, or Total. We price most markets in American odds, which use a plus or minus sign in front of a number. Negative (-) odds mark the favorite and tell you how much you need to stake in order to win 100 Onyx Cash. Positive (+) odds mark the underdog and tell you how much you win on a 100 Onyx Cash stake. The larger the number after the sign, the wider the perceived gap between the two outcomes.
Example
-200 — stake 200 Onyx Cash to win 100 Onyx Cash (total return 300 Onyx Cash)
+200 — stake 100 Onyx Cash to win 200 Onyx Cash (total return 300 Onyx Cash)
A winning ticket always returns your original stake alongside the profit. Throughout this guide, "returns" means profit plus stake.
A parlay ties multiple selections together into a single wager with multiplied odds. Every leg has to win for the ticket to turn into Onyx Cash; one loss and the whole thing loses. That risk is the trade-off for the payout, which grows quickly as legs are added.
Example
You like four Moneyline favorites across a weekend slate and combine all four onto one ticket rather than picking them individually. A 50 Onyx Cash stake on that four-leg parlay could return several hundred Onyx Cash if all four win — but a single upset anywhere on the ticket loses the entire pick.
A Same Game Parlay, or SGP, lets you combine multiple outcomes from a single matchup onto one ticket. It is the market of choice when you have a strong read on how a specific event will unfold. On Onyx, you are not locked into the standard posted lines — you can dial a player number to the exact figure you want, then build around it.
Example — Basketball
Denver Moneyline
Devner’s starting point guard over 7.5 assists
Denver's starting center over 11.5 rebounds
Futures are stakes on outcomes decided well down the road: division and conference winners, championships, season win totals, and individual awards, for example. Because the result is usually weeks or months away, the odds are typically longer and the payouts are more sizable.
Example
Team to win the championship: +1200
A 100 Onyx Cash futures ticket at +1200 returns 1,300 Onyx Cash — 1,200 Onyx Cash in winnings plus your original 100 Onyx Cash stake — if that team lifts the trophy.
A teaser lets you move the Spread or Total in your favor across two or more eligible picks. The number of picks and teaser points you choose will determine your payout odds. Onyx currently offers teasers for NFL and NBA picks.
Every pick in a teaser must win for the teaser to be successful. If a pick results in a push, it will be removed and the odds will be recalculated over the remaining picks of the teaser.
A Round Robin takes three or more Onyx picks and automatically breaks them into every possible smaller parlay. Once the picks are in your slip on Onyx, choose the configure Round Robin option, and we build the combinations for you — labeled by 2's, by 3's and so on, indicating how many picks go into each parlay and how many parlays are being created.
You control two things:
Each parlay is staked separately. The amount you enter applies to every individual parlay, not to the Round Robin as a whole, making the total risk the per-parlay stake multiplied by the number of parlays created.
Important: Selections from the same event can be combined within a Round Robin. However, when you include multiple picks from the same event — a Spread and a Total, for instance — they do not count as separate picks in the Round Robin. Instead, they merge into a single pick in the form of a SGP, and the SGP’s odds are combined with the other picks to boost the price of any Round Robin combination it lands in.
Example — Three Selections
Selection A: Chicago +6
Selection B: New Orleans -8.5
Selection C: New York +11
As a traditional three-leg parlay, all three picks would need to win. Selecting a Round Robin by 2's instead creates every possible two-leg parlay from those picks, namely:
Parlay 1: A / B
Parlay 2: A / C
Parlay 3: B / C
If any two of the three picks win, at least one parlay wins, so a single miss no longer wipes out the entire ticket.