Acca tips
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Accumulators are very popular with recreational bettors because they provide the potential for big profit from a small stake. In turn, this popularity creates demand for accumulator tips, and there are many online subscription-based services that provide accumulator tips for football, horse racing and other sports. Every individual selection in an accumulator must win for the bet to pay out, and the odds for each outcome or ‘leg’ are multiplied, to calculate the return. Accumulators consist of four selections or more.
With multiples featuring a large number of selections, multiple selections at long odds, or placed with a high-value stake, the combined odds of your accumulator can sometimes exceed your bookmaker’s maximum win limits – though this is usually a six figure sum. Nonetheless, it’s worth checking your bookmaker’s win limit so as not to add unnecessary risk.
What Is An Accumulator?
An accumulator combines a number of selections in a one bet. These bets can be win or each-way. Whilst they are very popular with punters, bookmakers like taking these bets too, because all the selections must win or the bet loses – and often at long combined odds, since the odds of each selection is multiplied, they can be very difficult to land. Here is an example of the profit from an accumulator:
Horse 1 – 2/1
Horse 2 – Evens (1/1)
Horse 3 – 3/1
Horse 4 – 1/2
The calculation for a £10 bet is as follows. The + 1 for each sum indicates one stake unit (in decimal odds this is already included, i.e. 2/1 would be represented as 3.0):
(2 + 1) multiplied by (1 + 1) multiplied by (3 + 1) multiplied by (0.5 + 1) minus 1 (stake unit) multiplied by £10 (stake) = £260
Accumulator tips
Many subscription-based accumulator tipping services are available online, most commonly (in the UK & Ireland) for horse racing or football. They typically cost about £10-£20 each month, sometimes with a discount if you pay for a year upfront. As commonly advertised by many of these subscription services, one winning bet to advised stakes can cover the annual cost of subscription.
Assess your tipsters
The best accumulator tips should be proofed for at least three months. Potential buyers can look at past results, known as a tipster’s ‘profit and loss’ or P&L, and decide if an investment in their accumulator tips is worthwhile.
The reason for this is that whilst losing or winning ‘streaks’ do happen, or at least appear to happen, the results are balanced out over a sustained period of time. Thus a good tipster whose knowledge, research and advice is worth paying for in the long run may have a bad week or month, and likewise a poor-quality tipster may have a run of good results in the short-term.
Popular Accumulator Tips
Horse racing and football are the most popular sports for accumulator tips. In racing, the tips identify winning or placed horses in a number of races. Bets may combine the winners of races on different tracks or even countries, on the Flat and over jumps, though professional tipsters may have more niche knowledge of a certain type of race.
With 28 races over four days at the Cheltenham Festival, and 30 races over five days at Royal Ascot, these two blue-riband events for the jumps and Flat respectively create huge demand for ante-post accas, both win and each-way. You can find Timeform’s latest tips for the Cheltenham Festival here and for Royal Ascot here.
The most sought-after football accumulator tips in the UK are for match-winners in the English Premier League, which lasts from August until May. Summertime betting is boosted every two years during the World Cup or European Championships, or Euros, in turn. Bettors can easily combine a number of teams in the group stages or knockout rounds, where games are often played back-to-back or simultaneously. The selections can also be based on subscription accumulator tips.
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Things to look out for
Enhanced Accas
Bookmakers encourage their customers to place accumulator bets because overall they are profitable wagers for the operator. Many offer promotions related to accas that are based on accumulator tips.
For some offers, bettors get improved odds for winning accas, proportionate to the number of selections in the accumulator. For example, with some bookmakers, a winning four-fold can earn a 5% odds boost, whilst getting all results correct in a 15-team or horse accumulator creates an acca boost of 100%. Like all bets, bookmakers limit the profits from enhanced accas, so you should be aware of these limits when placing the bet in order to avoid unnecessary risk.
Other points to be aware of are that often only the win part of an each way accumulator is boosted when all the selections win, and that, generally speaking, cashed out bets do not qualify for enhanced acca boosts.
Acca Insurance
Another concession related to accumulators is acca insurance. This often applies to football accumulators with five selections or more. If one selection does not win, bookmakers refund the stake, usually in the form of a free bet. These offers apply to selected football leagues and competitions, and the qualifying market is usually the match result after 90 minutes. Generally, results after extra time and penalties do not count for the purposes of accumulators and acca insurance.
Other types of multiple bets
System Bets
Instead of a straight accumulator, some accumulator tips might advise you to put your outcomes in a system bet. System bets differ from accas because every selection does not have to win for a bet to return profit. Like an accumulator though, a system bet can combine outcomes in horse racing, football and other sports in a number of permutations.
For example, you might be advised to back four selections with a Yankee bet, which combines six doubles, four trebles and one accumulator in all possible combinations between those four outcomes. If the first leg is not successful, the remaining three selections are still combined in three doubles and one treble. And even if two legs are unsuccessful, the other two can still combine to make a return in a double. A Lucky 15 is a Yankee that also includes the four singles, making 15 bets in all – so you only need one outcome to win to get a return. This would make the bet a profitable one if that selection landed at 15/1 or more. In fact, some bookmakers pay double the odds for one winner, if you only land one of your four or more selections.
Custom Bets
One of the recent developments in sports betting, particularly football betting, is the option to create custom bets from multiple outcomes in the same match – often known as same-game-multis. Typically, players create their own acca from up to six outcomes during a football match. This type of bet creates a demand for a variety of accumulator tips.
The bet may combine a range of outcomes including:
• match winner or winning margin
• number of goals scored
• number of corners, bookings, throw-ins, shots or goal kicks
• player markets including players to score, to be booked, or to have a certain number of shots or make a certain number of tackles
• ‘booking points’ – generally 10 points for a booking and 25 for a red (second yellow cards are not counted)
Seeing as some of the outcomes of the accumulator tips markets are related, the bookmaker adjusts the odds downwards accordingly. Hence, unlike most accumulators, the combined odds of a same-game-multi may not equal the direct multiple of the odds of the individual outcomes involved. Customers create the bet and are offered odds which they can accept or reject. The multiple is not usually available in the standard betting.