Accumulator Bet

An accumulator or ‘acca’ is the most popular football bet around and it’s not difficult to understand why. For just a tiny stake, commonly around £1, you could potentially win thousands depending on the odds of your combined selections. The idea of winning thousands from a small stake just by picking some football teams to win is just too tempting a proposition to ignore, so people generally don’t. However, this ‘get rich quick’ scheme sounds a lot easier than it actually is as football can be very unpredictable at times.

The truth is, the bookmakers love it when we place accumulators because they very rarely win. Picking 6 or 7 teams to win giving you odds of 1000/1 is all good in theory but the odds are 1000/1 for a reason, mainly because you will often be let down by 1 or 2 teams, if not more. This is a big reason why bookmakers advertise accumulator bets pretty much all the time because they want you to place those kind of bets. You’ll struggle to find a well known bookmaker who doesn’t have some sort of accumulator promotion running such as giving you your money back if one team lets you down. If you think about it, if these type of bets favoured the bettor somewhat then you wouldn’t see any promotion promoting the bet as the bookie wouldn’t want to be paying out £1,000’s on a regular basis.

The general advice is to avoid this type of bet if you are a serious bettor because of their low win rate and the fact you could potentially wait years for your win. However, if you are looking for a bit of fun for a relatively low stake they suddenly become a great option.

Accumulator bets can also be known as a 4-Fold, 5-Fold, 6-Fold etc. The number basically represents the amount of selections you choose. The more selections you choose, the higher the odds you will receive. The higher the odds, the less chance you have of winning the bet. The below image is an example of a 4-Fold accumulator taken from Bet365. The 4 selections give the odds of 13.79. So a £10 bet would return £137.90.

As stated above, accumulators generally start from 4 selections and can involve as many as 14 selections on most sites, sometimes even more. There are other options available which aren’t reliant on every selection winning which you may also want to consider. Let’s take a look…

Trixie – 3 Selections | 4 bets
A trixie bet should give you the highest win-rate but also the lowest return on average as the bet will pay out on 3 double combinations and 1 treble combination.

Yankee – 4 Selections | 11 bets
With a yankee bet you will have stakes on 6 double combinations, 4 treble combinations and 1 4-fold.

Heinz – 6 Selections | 57 bets
A heinz bet splits the accumulator into 57 different bets. You will be paid out on 15 double combinations, 20 treble combinations, 15 4-fold combinations, 6 5-fold combinations and 1 6-fold.

Whichever variation of an accumulator you decide to use your chances of a big win are still small but at least you don’t necessarily need a full house to yield a profit. Remember, an accumulator bet shouldn’t be used as a way to earn a regular income. Consider the bet as fun way to gamble with a very low stake that you can afford to lose.