Pushes, Voids and Dead Heats: What Happens to Your Stake

Caesars Sportsbook’s house rules say that when a parlay selection becomes a void or push, the number of selections is reduced by the number of voids or pushes, and the odds payout is recalculated from the remaining open picks. Fanatics Pennsylvania takes a different slice of the same problem: in a two-way market, one selection must win, and a tie sends every wager to a push settlement.

That split, between treating a tie as a non-event and treating it as a dead heat that slices the stake, is what most bettors confront only after a race or game has ended exactly level. The exact result depends on which book accepted the bet and what the house-rule text says for that market.

Push and void

The clearest push language in the retrieved house rules comes from Fanatics Pennsylvania. In rules dated 2025–12–24, the book says a two-way market requires one selection to win; if the event is a tie, all wagers are settled as a push. That matters for head-to-head markets where no draw price is offered.

Caesars Sportsbook’s help pages treat void and push almost identically inside a parlay. If a selection is listed as void or push, the number of selections is reduced and the odds payout is recalculated using the revised open selections. Caesars’ Iowa retail and mobile house rules, posted in 2026–09–20, say the same thing in slightly different words: a pushed, voided or cancelled selection automatically recalculates the potential payout based on the remaining valid picks.

Caesars puts a voided selection alongside a cancelled one in the same rule, so a voided leg is handled like a cancellation in that book. A push is the tie result itself. Either way, in parlay handling the leg stops counting.

Hard Rock Bristol’s house rules set the boundary on the other side. If participants’ finishing positions cannot be separated in an event, the dead-heat rule applies. That is not a push. It is a stake-reduction calculation.

Dead heat on straight bets

DraftKings’ glossary defines a dead heat as two or more participants finishing with the same result, and says the bet is settled under dead-heat reduction rules for that event. Fanatics Sportsbook’s Ohio rules add the trigger: when there are more winners than expected and no tie-break exists, bets are settled as a dead heat, with stakes divided by the number of winners.

The formula Fanatics publishes is: original stake multiplied by the number of expected winners divided by the number of actual winners, then multiplied by the original odds. A bettor who expected two winners but gets three does not automatically lose half the stake. The stake is cut to two-thirds, full odds are paid on that reduced amount, and the remainder of the stake is lost.

Caesars’ Iowa rules describe the same mechanism from the stake side. The money wagered on a selection is divided by the number of selections or competitors involved in the dead heat, full odds are paid to the divided stake, and the rest of the stake is lost. DraftKings says it more compactly: the wager amount is divided proportionally between the number of winners in the event.

That proportional split is the concrete rule a bettor needs. A dead heat is not a simple half-stake refund. It depends on how many expected winners the market assumed and how many actual winners crossed the line together.

Parlay effects

Parlay settlement takes two paths. A push or void removes a leg; a dead heat shrinks the stake on that leg.

Caesars Sportsbook reduces the number of selections by the number of pushes or voids, then recalculates the payout from the remaining valid picks. A four-leg parlay with one push becomes a three-leg payout, not a four-leg price with one leg ignored. Fanatics Tennessee says that if one or more legs of a parlay are affected by a dead heat, the original parlay stake is reduced accordingly.

Fanatics also states the baseline: for a parlay to win, all selections must win, and if any selection loses, the entire bet is a loser. DraftKings uses the same baseline in its glossary: for a parlay bet to win, all outcomes within the parlay must be selected correctly.

The difference between a void and a dead heat shows up here. A void takes the leg out of the count. A dead heat keeps the leg but forces the stake reduction from the formula. A book that treats a two-way market tie as a push in Pennsylvania can treat a dead heat in Ohio under the expected-versus-actual winners calculation. The market and the bet type control which path applies.

Edge cases and what the books actually say

The most common error is treating push and dead heat as interchangeable. Fanatics Pennsylvania is explicit that a two-way market tie is a push. Hard Rock Bristol says finishing positions that cannot be separated go to the dead-heat rule. One takes the leg out of the parlay; the other reduces the stake before odds are applied.

DraftKings’ glossary and Hard Rock Bristol both route inseparable finishing positions to dead-heat reduction rules, but the exact numerical treatment sits in the event-specific rules. Fanatics publishes the formula, which lets a bettor check the math. Caesars describes the same split in its Iowa rules.

The practical consequence is that no single universal rule settles every tie. A bettor who sees “push” in the house rules should check whether the book removes the leg or settles the market as a pushed two-way tie. A bettor who sees “dead heat” should ask how many expected winners the market included and how many actual winners the book will divide the stake by. The answer is in the wording, not in the word.