How To Make Accumulator Bets and Calculate Returns
An accumulator bet combines four or more selections into a single wager, and it only becomes successful if all the picks within it win. The allure of accas is that they can take a small stake and turn it into a big profit.
But there are always two sides to a coin and with accas, it is that they are tough to win. But that doesn’t stop punters from exploring today’s football betting odds and looking for opportunities to build one.
How does a punter go about building accumulator bets and what are the benefits and risks of this betting strategy?
The Selections
To make an accumulator bet you need four different selections from different events. It is possible to say, pick the winner of the FA Cup, the Premier League Winners, the Rugby World Cup winners, and the winner of Wimbledon in an acca, as different sports can be mixed.
More common though is picking the outcomes of at least four different football matches, or maybe four Both Teams To Score options from different fixtures, or maybe horse racing winners on the same day.
Just make the selections and add them to your betting slip. Avoid betting on too many selections or too high of odds. The more selections or higher odds you add to your accumulator bet, the harder it becomes to win.
Select The Acca
The Bet Slip at your online bookmaker is where the magic happens. When you add several selections to your slip, it will automatically give you options about multiples and accas. If you have four selections in the slip, it will provide options to combine selections into doubles, for example.
Simply select the acca option which will include your single selections into one bet. You would still have the option to play the same picks as win singles if desired.
The Stake
Decide how much you want to stake on your accumulator bet. For an accumulator, you are placing just one stake that covers the entire bet. So it’s not like a Lucky 15 for example, when a $1 stake turns into $15 because of the 15 individual bets created.
An acca is just one set stake no matter how many selections are added, and that’s what makes them popular. It could be as little as a 0.50p wager on a sixfold acca that will still have the ability to return a large profit. The accumulator odds that you are given will depend on the individual quotes of the selections.
Use bonuses or promotions offered by bookmakers or betting sites that enhance your accumulator bets. For example, some bookmakers may offer acca insurance (refund if one selection loses) or acca boost (increased payout if all selections win).
The Wait
Then the waiting part of an accumulator happens. This is where the excitement and tension can rise. If all of your selections win, then you will receive the payout of your accumulator bet but if just one of those picks loses, the stake is gone.
How to Calculate the Potential Returns
It’s a simple calculation to figure out how much your acca bet is going to be worth. You can use a bet calculator, or just use the bet slip at a betting site to quickly see the potential returns.
– Total odds = Odds1 x Odds2 x Odds3 x … x Odds
– Potential returns = Stake x Total odds
Benefits and Risks of Accumulator Bets
The main benefit of accumulator bets is that a small stake can get you a big return. For example, if you bet £1 on an accumulator with four selections at odds of 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0, you would get back £120 if all of them win (2 x 3 x 4 x 5 cumulative odds).
But looking at it another way, how often would you convince yourself to take a 120/1 betting option? Probably not that often, so it’s a good way to assess the risk of an acca. In further comparison, even for a 12/1 pick in football betting markets you would be looking at a risky market like a First Goalscorer selection or a Correct Score pick.
So the main risk of accumulator bets is that they are very hard to win. The more selections you add to your accumulator bet, the lower the probability of winning it becomes. For four selections at odds of 2.0 each, the probability of the acca winning is only 6.25%. Flip that, and it means you will lose 93.75% of the time.
There’s also the factor of luck in an acca compared to a single bet. Of course, a dodgy penalty kick awarded in a single match can ruin even a single bet. But with more games collated into an acca, that’s a lot more real-life variables you are putting into the hat, hoping that everything goes your way.
But without a doubt, accumulators are fun, but perhaps not the sort of bet that is to be taken too seriously at the end of the day.