What Is a Push in Betting? Stake Back and Parlays

The definition takes one sentence and every guide spends a page on it. The part that decides what lands in your account is the recalculation, and that is where the published rules stop agreeing with each other⁠.

§ ON THIS PAGE · 11 sections

A push is a settlement rule, not a scoreline

The trigger is written into the market rules as a property of the number, not of the sport⁠:

“In Point Spread (Handicap) & Total betting, where the index (value) of the market is a whole number, bets are void and will be refunded where the score lands on that number”

Note the word the rule uses for the outcome: void and refunded. "Push" is the customer-facing label for a specific way of arriving at a void, which is why your bet history may show it as push, tie, or void depending on the operator. The money is identical⁠.

The mechanism underneath is the handicap adjustment, and stating it as arithmetic makes the whole‑number case obvious⁠:

“Unless stated otherwise in any rules relating to specific sports, handicap markets are determined by adjusting the score of the selected team by the applicable handicap which is offered in respect of that team”

Apply the handicap to the score. If the adjusted margin is positive the bet wins, negative it loses, and exactly zero it pushes. A total works the same way against the posted number⁠.

Which lines can push, and which cannot

Scores in the major North American leagues are whole numbers, so any line carrying a half point removes the possibility entirely. That is a structural fact rather than a policy, and it is the fastest way to check a slip before you place it⁠.

“In the event of a tie, all money line wagers will be voided”

The last two rows are the ones people get wrong. A tie is a push only where the market gave you no way to bet on it. Where a draw is offered as a third selection and you backed a team instead, the draw is a losing result⁠, not a refund⁠.

The push resolution table

Nine rows, four different answers, and the difference between the second and the fifth is the whole stake. The rest of this page is those rows with the numbers filled in⁠.

A pushed leg inside a parlay

“If one or more selections in a parlay are void then the remaining selections will determine the outcome of the wager, with the odds re-calculated accordingly”

The rule is also written out explicitly for the push case rather than only for voids, which is worth knowing because the two arrive from different clauses⁠:

“and any such bet will be deemed an excluded leg for the purpose of any applicable parlay, which will be recalculated excluding that leg”

Put a number on it. A $100 three-leg parlay, every leg at -110, which is 1.9091 in decimal⁠:

One push costs $331.33 of return on a $100 ticket. That is more than three times the stake, and it is the single most useful number on this page, because it is the figure that decides whether a whole-number line was worth taking in the first place⁠.

Two things the recalculation does not do⁠.

It does not save a losing ticket. If one of the surviving legs loses, the parlay loses and the push is irrelevant⁠.

“If any selections lose, your bet loses”

It does not refund a parlay that shrinks to one leg. The last live selection is settled on its own price⁠, win or lose⁠.

“If all selections except one are void, the parlays will be settled as a straight at the applicable odds”

A three-leg parlay with two pushes is not a refund. It is a $100 straight bet at -110 that can still lose the whole stake⁠.

Teasers, where the same push produces the opposite answer

This is the rule that gets stated wrongly most often, usually as some version of "a two-leg bet pushes if one leg pushes and the other wins". The published rule splits by leg count, and it splits hard⁠:

“for two-team teasers the entire teaser is voided, for other teasers the wager is action and will be re-calculated removing the void or push legs”

A two-team teaser and a two-leg parlay containing the same two selections therefore settle differently on the same afternoon. The teaser refunds. The parlay pays out at the single price. Teaser pricing comes from a fixed payout chart rather than from multiplying leg prices, which is why the recalculated three-team teaser drops to the published two-team payout instead of to a product of odds. The point adjustments and the payout chart itself are a separate subject and are covered on the teaser page linked below⁠.

Same game parlays and bet builders

Same-game products are priced as one correlated unit, and the operators have landed on opposite defaults. One extends the ordinary parlay treatment⁠:

“The above also applies to all Same Game Parlay bets”

Another voids the whole ticket, and its rule names push alongside void in the same breath⁠:

“For all other markets, where a selection within a Bet Builder is void or push, the entire bet will also be void or push”

With one narrow carve‑out⁠:

“Pre-match Bet Builders on selected sports that contain player markets are automatically recalculated if a player market becomes void”

Three conditions have to hold for that exception: pre-match rather than in-play, an eligible sport, and a player market rather than a match market. On a $100 four-component builder at 1.80, 2.00, 1.50 and 1.25, the recalculating profile returns $337.50 and the whole-bet profile returns $100.00. Check which one your slip is under before you calculate anything⁠.

Four tied results that are not pushes

A tie in a three-way market. Covered above. If the draw was purchasable and you did not buy it⁠, it loses⁠.

A season win total landing on the number. Some markets convert ties into losses by rule rather than voiding them⁠.

“For the purposes of regular season win total markets, games that result in ties are to be treated as losses”

A split series, depending on how the market was offered. The same event produces a refund in one format and a winning bet in the other⁠.

“If two-way betting is available, bets on that market will be void if the teams split the series”

A dead heat. Two selections tied for a win is not a push and does not return the stake in full. The stake is split, and the losing portion is lost⁠.

“Where two or more selections tie as winner the stake will be divided equally between the number of tied selections and the reduced stake will be settled at the full odds, the remaining portion of the stake will be settled as a losing bet”

Inside a parlay, a dead heat behaves differently again: it reduces the stake applied rather than removing the leg⁠.

“Where a selection within a parlay is subject to a dead heat the stake applied will be reduced in accordance with the rules set out in this section”

So three tied outcomes on the same ticket can produce three different treatments: a push removes the leg, a dead heat reduces the stake, and a three‑way draw loses it⁠.

What a push actually costs

On a single, nothing. You get the stake back and pay no juice, which makes a whole-number line a small free option compared with laying the extra half point⁠.

On anything multi-leg the cost is real and it is not the stake. It is the return you gave up, and it scales with the number of legs. Three useful comparisons on $100 at ‑110 legs⁠:

The longer the ticket, the more a single whole-number line costs you when it lands. There is also a promotional cost that is easy to miss, because it does not depend on how the other legs finish⁠:

“For Odds Boosts applied to parlay bets, if any selection within the bet is void, the entire Odds Boost will be void, regardless of the outcome of the remaining selections”

If a boost was the reason you took the parlay, a single pushed leg removes the reason while leaving you holding the underlying bet at ordinary prices. Treat a boosted ticket containing a whole-number line as a ticket whose edge can disappear without a single result going against you⁠.

For your own records, keep pushes as a third column. A 4-2-1 week is not a 4-2 week, and a bettor who pushes often on whole-number spreads is telling you something about line selection rather than about handicapping⁠.

Ownership boundary

This page owns the push itself: the whole-number trigger, the multi-leg recalculation and the tied results that do not push⁠. Neighbouring subjects⁠:

• Moneyline betting rules owns draw and overtime treatment sport by sport⁠.
• Asian handicap betting and over/under football betting own quarter-line and goal‑line settlement in football⁠.
• Void bet rules owns voids that arrive from abandonment, non-participation and pricing errors rather than from the line⁠.
• Dead heat betting rules owns the tied winner calculation⁠.

Evidence manifest4 primary sources mapped to this guideView sources

Each source below is retained with the claims it supports. Operator sources describe published terms, not independent first‑hand performance⁠.

1. FanDuel Sportsbook House Rules ↗ (opens in a new tab)
   • In Point Spread (Handicap) & Total betting, where the index (value) of the market is a whole number, bets are void and will be refunded where the score lands on that number
   • In the event of a tie, all money line wagers will be voided
   • If one or more selections in a parlay are void then the remaining selections will determine the outcome of the wager, with the odds re-calculated accordingly
   • If all selections except one are void, the parlays will be settled as a straight at the applicable odds
   • The above also applies to all Same Game Parlay bets
   • for two-team teasers the entire teaser is voided, for other teasers the wager is action and will be re-calculated removing the void or push legs
   • For Odds Boosts applied to parlay bets, if any selection within the bet is void, the entire Odds Boost will be void, regardless of the outcome of the remaining selections
   • For the purposes of regular season win total markets, games that result in ties are to be treated as losses
   • If two-way betting is available, bets on that market will be void if the teams split the series
   • Where two or more selections tie as winner the stake will be divided equally between the number of tied selections and the reduced stake will be settled at the full odds, the remaining portion of the stake will be settled as a losing bet
   • and any such bet will be deemed an excluded leg for the purpose of any applicable parlay, which will be recalculated excluding that leg
   • Where a selection within a parlay is subject to a dead heat the stake applied will be reduced in accordance with the rules set out in this section
2. bet365 help centre, How are different types of bets settled? ↗ (opens in a new tab)
   • If your selection is void, you receive your stake back
   • If a selection is settled as void, your bet is settled on the remaining selections
   • If any selections lose, your bet loses
3. bet365 help centre, What is a Bet Builder? ↗ (opens in a new tab)
   • For all other markets, where a selection within a Bet Builder is void or push, the entire bet will also be void or push
   • Pre-match Bet Builders on selected sports that contain player markets are automatically recalculated if a player market becomes void
4. Betfair Sportsbook, General Sports Betting Rules ↗ (opens in a new tab)
   • Unless stated otherwise in any rules relating to specific sports, handicap markets are determined by adjusting the score of the selected team by the applicable handicap which is offered in respect of that team
   • For example, if Team A + 10 is selected, 10 points will, for settlement purposes, be added to the score of Team A
   • If any selection in any leg is a non-runner or otherwise void under the Sportsbook Rules (e.g. an abandoned match) then all bets on that individual leg will be void and the Fixed Odds Multiple bet shall be adjusted accordingly. For example a treble including one void leg will become a double.
   • Where a blatant error is made in handicap set up i.e. handicap reads as - instead of + and vice versa, on any of our events, either in Live Betting or before the start, - we reserve the right to settle bets at the correct handicap at the time at which the bet was placed

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