Permutations or Perms Betting Term Meaning

The dictionary defines the word ‘permutation’ as one of several ways in which a set number of things can be arranged or ordered. As a betting term, permutations means much that exact same thing.

Permutations are the different wagers you can create from an initial set of selections. The more selections you have, the more possible permutations there will be. Let’s take these three matches from the English Premier League as an example:

All possible permutations of those three selections would therefore be:

If you were to place all of those wagers, it is what’s known as a Patent bet. This is a full-coverage bet, meaning that it covers all possible permutations of our three initial selections. 

The plus side of covering more permutations is that your profit will increase dramatically as the number of correct selections increases. Let’s say you stake £10 per wager on your Patent bet above (£70 total, as there are seven individual wagers). The payouts would be as follows:

Only West Ham wins

West Ham and Liverpool win

West Ham, Liverpool, and Leicester win 

The downside of more permutations is that you have to pay a higher total stake, and one loss can severely cut your profits, as you can see in the example above. 

With those same three selections, you could choose to place a combination bet with fewer permutations, such as a Trixie. It would be formed like this:

If you placed the same £70 total stake on your Trixie bet. This works out at £17.50 per wager, due to the fact that there are only four selections in a Trixie, compared to seven in a Patent. The same outcomes as above would now give you:

As you can see, fewer permutations mean a bigger profit, but also a bigger potential loss. Adding more permutations to your bet is almost like buying insurance against a losing selection.