What Is An Accumulator Bet?

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1. What Is A Football Accumulator?

Put simply a football accumulator is an individual bet composed of a number single bets……hence the term “accumulator”, because it’s an accumulation of single bets to into one larger bet.

Football accumulators go by a number of different names. You’ve likely heard them before. Terms such as footy accums, footy acca, acca bet, combo, multi bet and so on. By far the most popular abbreviation of the term is “acca”. In fact you’ll rarely hear anybody refer to their weekend footy acca as their “football accumulator”. It doesn’t roll off the tongue too easily does it?

What Is A ‘Fold’?

Each single selection in your acca bet can be referred to as a ‘fold’ (or sometimes a ‘leg’). Either way, they simply mean the same thing. For example, if your footy accumulator is made up of six selections, then it can be referred to as a “six fold acca” or a “six legged acca.”

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2. How Does A Football Accumulator Work?

So how does a football accumulator work? Let’s consider a simple example. Below is a four fold Premier League accumulator for an upcoming set of fixtures:

Fold	Selection
1	Man City to defeat Man United
2	Arsenal to defeat Southampton
3	Liverpool to defeat Leicester City
4	Chelsea to defeat Swansea

In this example we’ve selected four single bets that we combine to create one larger bet.

So how do you win footy accumulators?

Well that’s far easier to answer than it is to achieve.

To win a football accumulator, each of your single selections must be a winner. That’s right. If you placed an accumulator of four folds, each of your four individual bets must win for your footy acca to be successful.

So in our example above, each of Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea must win their matches for us to claim our winnings. If one of these clubs fails to win, then our footy acca is lost.

What Markets Can Be Included In An Accumulator?

It should also be noted at this point that footy accums don’t need to be based on match results as our example above shows. A football accumulator can be based on a range of bet types across multiple leagues and tournaments.

For example, it’s possible to create a footy acca that includes betting on Over 2.5 goals in an upcoming Premier League match, combined with the match result of a La Liga match along with the Asian handicap market in an upcoming Bundesliga match. The combinations available are virtually limitless.

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3. Why Bet On Footy Accumulators?

So you might be wondering, why would you bet on footy accums if you need a group of single bets to all win? That sounds difficult. Why wouldn’t you just bet on single bets?

Well it is true that winning footy accumulators consistently is difficult. But the reason why people like to bet on footy accas is because they offer far higher odds, with bigger payouts for a small investment.

Why?

Because with a football accumulator we are betting on a number of events to happen together, rather than a single event.

Think of it this way, if a team is a 50% chance to win a match, if we bet on that team, theoretically we have a 50% chance of winning that bet.

Now let’s say we are betting on four teams to win, each of them a 50% chance to win their match. What are the chances that they all win? Far less than 50%. In fact it’s 6.25%. And as with all betting, the more unlikely the event (I.e the lower the probability) the higher the odds.

It is this that attracts many to betting on footy accums, the potential for a big payout.

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4. How To Calculate Footy Accumulator Odds

So how do we calculate odds for a football accumulator? Let’s use our previous example. This time we will add the odds for each fold:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	Man City to defeat Man United	3.10
2	Arsenal to defeat Southampton	1.57
3	Liverpool to defeat Leicester City	1.66
4	Chelsea to defeat Swansea	1.60

Ok, so what will our odds be for this footy acca?

It’s fairly easy to calculate, especially with decimal odds. We simple multiply each of the odds into the next.

So in our example, the calculation would simply be:

It’s easy as that. The odds of our four fold footy acca is 12.927.

If we place £10 on this acca, if it were to win (I.e each of the teams in our acca were victorious in their matches) we would earn a return of £129.27. Once we subtract our stake of £10, it would leave us with a profit on our acca of £119.27.

So here you can see the appeal of betting on football accumulators. The promise of a big win, coupled with a small investment, attracts many football punters every week of the football season.

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5. How To Place A Footy Accumulator

Placing a football accumulator is typically a rather simple process, although that process will vary from bookmaker to bookmaker.

Despite differences, placing a footy acca typically involves selecting the teams (or outcomes) you want to bet on, as you would with any single bet. For example, below we can see the four folds of an acca in the Paddy Power bet slip below.

We can see our selections and the odds for each selection. Now we could just place single bets on each, by entering a stake into the Singles field but in this instance we want to create an Accumulator. So we enter our £10 stake into the Accumulator field. At the bottom of the bet slip we can see our returns should our acca be successful.

Like we say, the process of placing a football accumulator will vary from bookmaker to bookmaker but typically it involves:

• selecting the outcomes you want to bet on
• choosing to combine those selections as an accumulator

You’ll also see a range of other betting options such as Lucky 15, Yankee, Doubles and Trebles. We will discuss each of these options later in this article.

Correlated Markets

One point to make here briefly. Bookmakers will not allow you to create a footy accumulator out of what are known as “correlated markets”. What does this mean? Well it means that you can’t create an acca from two or more outcomes that are dependent on one another.

For example, you cannot create a footy acca of three selections that includes:

• Manchester United scoring the first goal
• Manchester United winning the first half
• Manchester United to win the match

It should be obvious why this is not allowed. Each of these markets is correlated with the other. Or in other words, they are not independent events. If Manchester United score the first goal they are more likely to lead at halftime. If Manchester United lead at halftime, they are more likely to win the match.

For an accumulator bet to be valid it must be composed of indepedent markets. If you try to create an acca of dependent markets, your bookmaker will not confirm the bet.

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6. Football Accumulator Tips: How To Improve Your Returns

So now that you understand what a football accumulator is, you’re no doubt looking for footy acca tips. How can you increase the number of accumulators you win? In this section we will share our top accumulator tips and show you how to improve your football accumulator betting.

6.1 Only Include Selections That Are Value Bets

Value betting is the key to all successful betting. But it is perhaps even more so when it comes to placing a football accumulator.

Why?

Firstly, let’s briefly discuss the concept of betting value. A value bet is when we believe the outcome has a higher probability of occurring than what the odds on offer suggest. The probability that the odds suggest is often referred to as the ‘implied probability’ and it is calculated as:

So when we determine that the probability of a given outcome is higher than the odds on offer suggest, it is a value bet. Just like we should only bet when there is value, we should only include selections in our footy accumulators that are value.

An Example

Let’s consider this further. We have our four fold Premier League weekend football accumulator discussed previously. We will assume that based on our research, each of these selections is a value bet.

Below we have each of our selections, the odds, the implied probability based on those odds and lastly, our own assessed probability of each outcome occurring:

Fold	Selection	Odds	Implied Probability	Our Assessed Probability
1	Man City to defeat Man United	3.10	32.3%	35.0%
2	Arsenal to defeat Southampton	1.57	63.7%	75.0%
3	Liverpool to defeat Leicester City	1.66	60.2%	70.0%
4	Chelsea to Swansea	1.60	62.5%	70.0%

We can see that on each occasion we believe the chances of each team winning is greater than the implied probability of the odds. For example we believe that Arsenal are a 75% chance of winning their match with Southampton while their odds, 1.57 reflect an implied probability of 63.7%.

So how much value is there in our acca?

Firstly we have to determine the probability of our acca winning. That is, the probability that all four teams will win their match.

To determine this we simply multiply our assessed probabilities into one another:

So based on our assessment, there is a 12.86% chance of our weekend football acca winning. So what is the value?

To calculate betting value, we complete the following calculation:

So in our example, the odds we were offered for our four fold multi were 12.927 and our assessed probability of our acca winning was 12.86% (or 0.1286).

What then is the value in our acca?

The value of each single bet is multiplied into the next, creating a huge value bet, in this case a whopping 66.24%.

When we look at the value of each individual bet, we can see how much our value has grown simply by multiplying our single bets into one accumulator.

Below we can see each of our selections, the odds, our assessed probability and the betting value based on those odds and assessed probability. For example, based on odds of 3.10 and our assessed probability of 35%, our Man City selection has a value of 8.50%::

Fold	Selection	Odds	Our Assessed Probability	Value
1	Man City to defeat Man United	3.10	35.0%	8.50%
2	Arsenal to defeat Southampton	1.57	75.0%	17.75%
3	Liverpool to defeat Leicester City	1.66	70.0%	16.20%
4	Chelsea to Swansea	1.60	70.0%	12.00%

So while our selections present good value as single bets, combining them increases their value greatly.

6.2 Why Value Selections Are So Crucial

Bookmakers understand how combining single bets into one accumulator enhances the value, if each selection is a value bet. For example, bookmaker Pinnacle offers “parlays” (a parlay is simply another word an accumulator), but as Pinnacle deal primarily with serious bettors, they offer parlays at reduced odds on very limited and heavily restricted markets.

Now when it comes to your mainstream bookmakers such as Ladbrokes, William Hill and the like, they are happy to offer accumulators without reduced odds. Why? Because they simply don’t believe their customers are shrewd enough to win consistently betting on accumulators (and of course if any of their customers do, they may restrict their betting. Of course, there are ways of avoiding these restrictions).

Bookmakers Don’t Expect You To Understand Value

The point is, most bookmakers don’t anticipate their customers identifying true betting value. They expect their customers to bet haphazardly with little consistency and minimal structure. But most of all, bookmakers do not offer full value odds. They take a slice out of the odds they offer, in what is known as the bookmaker’s margin.

Let’s discuss this briefly before we proceed as it is important to understand. A bookmaker’s margin (or vig, juice, commission as it’s also known) is what reduces a bookmaker’s odds to less than true value. A bookmaker’s margin on a single bet is generally, depending on the market, between 3% and 5%. The lower the commission the better the odds for you.

You’ve no doubt seen it in betting markets yourself. Two teams in a head to head match-up. Team A is at odds of 1.90, Team B is also at odds of 1.90. Let’s say the bookmaker takes £1000 worth of bets on Team A, and £1000 worth of bets on Team B. Team A wins the match and the bookmaker pays £900 in profits to those who bet on Team A. Meanwhile, the £1000 they took on Team B is theirs to keep, leaving the bookmakers with a £100 take. A simple example yes.

So how does all this relate to betting of footy accas?

Well, just like value multiplies into itself, if we are not betting with value, the bookmaker margin multiplies into itself, creating an incredibly poor value bet. And this is why bookmakers love their customers placing football accas or acca bets of any kind. Because the average punter doesn’t understand how to correctly assess betting value and so time and time again, create accas of horrific value, leaving the bookmakers to clean up.

Back To Our Example

Let’s consider our four fold example again. Below we can see our four selections, the odds on offer and the “fair odds” for each, that is, odds without any bookmaker margin:

Fold	Selection	Odds	Fair Odds
1	Man City to defeat Man United	3.10	3.20
2	Arsenal to defeat Southampton	1.57	1.64
3	Liverpool to defeat Leicester City	1.66	1.70
4	Chelsea to Swansea	1.60	1.64

So as we saw previously, the odds we are getting on our weekend acca was 12.927. Now if we calculate the fair odds for our acca we get:

So here we can see how accas can prove to be horrible value if you include selections that are not value bets. We have been offered odds of 12.927 on a four fold acca that without a bookmaker margin would be odds of 14.63. So while the margin on each single bet may be around 5%, by combining each in our acca, we end up with a margin on our acca of almost 12%, making it an awful bet.

The more selections we add to our football accumulator, the greater the margin will be. For example, if we place a ten fold acca on Asian Handicaps, with each fold being odds of 1.90 at a margin of 5%, we would receive odds of 613.11.

Sounds like great odds.

But if we were being offered zero commission (fair odds) of 2.00 for each of our selections, we would be offered odds of 1024.0. Meaning that we are taking a commission all told of around 40%. To put that in perspective, if you were being offered odds with 40% commission on a 50-50 proposition such as the toss of a coin (heads or tails?), your odds would be in the range of 1.40. Would you even think of taking those odds? The answer should be a clear no.

So the first of our football accumulator tips is this. Only include selections in your footy accas that are genuine value as by doing so you enhance the value of each selection. Do not include selections that are not value, as you will only create an acca of horrific value.

How can you identify value football bets?

To learn how to identify value bets in football, please read our How To Bet On Football guide.

Where can you find value tips to add to your football accumulator?

That’s easy. Throughout the football season you can find the best free football acca tips on the bettingexpert football tips page. Here you can find some of the best football tipsters on the web, with tips posted across dozens of leagues. Simply find a selection of the best tips and create your footy acca from those individual tips.

6.3 Treat Your Football Accumulator Like Any Other Bet

As with all sports betting, it’s not about how many football accumulators you win. While footy accums may be composed of a number of single bets, at the end of the day, a footy acca is a single bet itself.

And just like any kind of bet, the number of bets you win is irrelevant. What is relevant is the nature of the returns from your winnings bets, and are the returns from your winnings bets exceeding the stakes lost from your losing bets.

So the second of our football accumulator tips is this. Think of footy accas as a bet on a heavy heavy underdog. An individual team at odds of 13.00 to win a football match is exactly the same, in terms of probability, as a fourfold footy accumulator priced at the same odds of 13.00. In fact, considering bookmaker margins being multiplied, the individual bet on at team at odds of 13.00 is far more likely to happen than a fourfold acca at the same odds.

And just as we would if we were betting on unlikely teams to win football matches, we need to be patient and consistent with out acca betting. Just because your acca for this weekend’s football is composed of six short priced favourites, combining for a price of 5.00, doesn’t mean it’s any more likely to win than a team priced at the same odds to win a match.

6.4 Don’t Fall Into The Short Odds Trap

Many punters who enjoy a weekend football accumulator will often fall into the trap of creating an acca composed of a number of short priced favourites.

Now if you truly believe there is betting value in each selection, then that’s fine. But the reality is, many casual punters create this kind of acca believing, with some sort of misguided logic, that because the acca is made up of short odds favourites, it’s more likely to win.

For example, let’s say we create the following twelve team footy acca with the odds of each listed:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	Chelsea to defeat Burnley	1.20
2	Man City to defeat Sunderland	1.15
3	Arsenal to defeat Hull	1.25
4	PSG to defeat Metz	1.15
5	Bayern to defeat Schalke	1.10
6	Juventus to defeat Sassuolo	1.20
7	Roma to defeat Sampdoria	1.30
8	Napoli to defeat Bologna	1.25
9	Barcelona to defeat Alaves	1.05
10	Real Madrid to defeat Osasuna	1.10
11	Atletico Madrid to defeat Dijon	1.20
12	Celtic to defeat Inverness	1.15

Our odds for such an accumulator would be 6.78.

Now many punters look at this and think, well, each of these selections is near on certain to happen and will place a lazy £100 on it. But again, the reality is that it is still a bet at odds of 6.78, regardless of how likely each selection may appear to be.

Further, as discussed previously, by creating a football accumulator such as this, with twelve folds and no consideration for genuine value, just taking selections merely because they are at short odds, you’re only multiplying the bookmaker’s margin with each selection you add. At fair odds, such a twelve fold acca would be in the range of 8.37, but with bookmaker margins taken into account, you’re only getting odds, as stated earlier, of 6.78.

An Alternative Approach

But more to the point, this twelve told acca at odds of 6.78 is a single bet just like any other. It just happens to composed of selections at very short odds.

So rather than creating a twelve fold acca of short priced but poor value selections such as this, you’re better off for example, refining the list to three true value selections and creating an acca of Asian Handicap bets. For example you could bet:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	Bayern -1.5 vs Schalke	1.89
2	PSG -1.5 vs Metz	1.83
3	Barcelona -3 vs Alaves	1.93

In this instance your three fold acca will be at odds of 6.68. You’ve selected what you consider to be true value bets, therefore multiplying the value. And at the very worst, you are only multiplying the bookmaker margin three times rather than by twelve in the case of our twelve fold acca above.

So the third our football accumulator tips is this. Just because your acca consists of a lengthy list of short priced favourites, doesn’t make it any more likely to occur than other bet at the same odds.

6.5 Select Bookmakers That Consistently Offer The Best Odds

This may sound obvious, but it’s particularly important when it comes to betting on football accumulators.

Why?

With single bets you can pick and choose, shop around for the best odds to take across a range of bookmakers. However with footy accums you can only create your acca with selections from one bookmaker.

So for example, if we want to bet on Chelsea to defeat Southampton, we could choose from literally dozens of bookmakers to get the best price on Chelsea. However, if we want to create an acca with Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and West Ham, we need to take each of those selections with the one bookmaker.

So the fourth of our football accumulator tips, is this. Determine which markets and leagues you most like to create accas from and then select a bookmaker or bookmakers, that offer the best odds for those markets and/or leagues.

For example, you may enjoy creating footy accums from Over/Under goal totals in the Premier League. In this instance, you should look for bookmakers that offer the highest odds across the board in those particular markets.

On the other hand, you may like creating footy accas for Asian Handicaps in the Bundesliga. In this case, seek out a bookmaker that offers the best odds on these markets.

You get the point. While we can shop around for the best odds across a range of bookmakers when placing single bets, when creating accas we are a touch more restricted.

Find The Best Odds Available At Smartbets

To find the bookmaker offering the best odds on your preferred leagues and markets, please consult odds comparison site Smartbets.

6.6 Understand Football Accumulator Rules

The fifth of our football accumulator tips, is this. Make sure you understand the rules before you place your accas. Bookmakers deal with certain results differently and each can impact your football accumulators.

For example, if you created an acca that included an Asian Handicap selection of Chelsea -1 goal, and Chelsea win the match by exactly 1 goal, in the case of a single bet, your stake would be refunded.

But what happens in the case of your acca? Does this result destroy any chance of your acca winning?

Well, typically, the answer is no. What would normally happen is that this selection would merely be voided from your acca.

So let’s say your had this four fold acca:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	Chelsea -1	1.92
2	Liverpool to win	1.77
3	Man United to win	1.55
4	Crystal Palace/Sunderland to draw	3.20

Your odds for this acca would be 16.86.

Now let’s say each of your selections was a winner, all except Chelsea who won by a single goal.

Well in this instance, you acca would still be successful but at reduced odds. Why? Because Chelsea’s one goal victory would void your Asian Handicap selection of Chelsea -1. So in this example you acca simple becomes:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	Chelsea -1	VOIDED
2	Liverpool to win	1.77
3	Man United to win	1.55
4	Crystal Palace/Sunderland to draw	3.20

The odds of your winning acca would then be 8.78.

The point is, be aware of how certain results may impact your accumulator.

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7. Football Accumulator Calculator

There are a number of football accumulator calculators available on the internet. While it’s great to have a go-to accumulator calculator online, wouldn’t it be better to have one you can download and use whenever you like online or off?

While we call it our football accumulator calculator, you can use it to calculate accumulator odds for any sport.

How does our accumulator calculator work?

When you open our accumulator bet calculator, this is what you’ll see:

To the left of spreadsheet we can see the list of purple fields. This is where you enter the odds for each fold (leg) of your football accumulator.

In this example, we are placing a fivefold accumulator. We enter our odds for each.

We can see at the bottom of our list of odds are the calculated odds for our fivefold accumulator, in this case our accumulator odds calculator has determined the odds of our acca to be 18.11.

This calculation is simply based on the formula we discussed earlier, where each fold of our acca is calculated into the next. The accumulator odds calculator in our spreadsheet does the calculation for us. In this case:

2.00 x 1.85 x 1.50 x 2.25 x 1.45 = 18.11

To the right of our odds we see a list of blue fields. Here we enter our assessed probability for each fold.

Please note that if you enter a probability that is lower than the probability implied in the odds of one of your folds, you will get the following error message.

In this example, Leg 1 is at odds of 2.00, but we have assessed the probability of this fold being a winner is only 40%. This is not a value bet and as the error message suggests, you should exclude this selection from your acca.

Correcting our error we enter our assessed probabilities for each fold.

At the bottom of our list of probabilities, we can see the combined probability for our accumulator based on our probabilities. In this example, there is a 7.28% chance that our acca will be successful.

Once we have determined that each of our selections is a value bet, we can see the value of our accumulator calculated and displayed in green. In this example, given our odds of 18.11 and our assessed probability of 7.28%, our accumulator has a value of 31.75%.

If you want to take your accumulator betting to the next level, our football accumulator calculator also determines the perfect stake for your bet based on your betting bankroll and your preferred Kelly Stake percentage. To learn more please read our guides to bankroll management and the Kelly Criterion.

If on the other hand you’re a casual football punter, you can disregard the suggested betting stake. So long as your acca is comprised of value bets, you’re good to go.

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8. How To ‘Cash Out’ Your Accumulator

A number of bookmakers now offer you the ability to Cash Out of your footy accumulator early. These bookmakers include but are not limited to:

• Betfair Sportsbook
• William Hill
• Ladbrokes
• Coral
• Paddy Power

What is Cash Out?

Cashing Out involves closing a bet early so as to take a certain positive return or to limit your losses. Punters typically cash out of single bets.

For example, you place a £20 bet on Manchester United to win a match at odds of 1.50. The match begins and after 75 minutes of play United lead 1-0. You will then have the choice to let the result play out to full-time and in so doing claim all of your profit if Manchester United maintains their lead and wins the match. Or you have the choice to take a certain profit at that stage of the match based on current in-play odds.

Cashing Out An Acca

When it comes to accumulators Cash Out works by offering you the chance to take a profit as each fold in your acca is played out. For example, you have placed the following football accumulator with a stake of £20:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	West Brom to defeat Southampton	2.50
2	Chelsea to defeat Sunderland	1.25
3	Man City to defeat Everton	1.50
4	Arsenal to defeat Hull	1.45

Odds: 6.80

Profit if this acca is successful: £116.

The first two folds are played on the Saturday afternoon, the third fold on the Saturday night, while the Arsenal vs Hull match is scheduled for Sunday.

At the conclusion of the Saturday games, your acca looks like this:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	West Brom to defeat Southampton	WON
2	Chelsea to defeat Sunderland	WON
3	Man City to defeat Everton	WON
4	Arsenal to defeat Hull	Current Odds 1.45

So far so good. Each of your opening three folds have been successful. Now you only need Arsenal to defeat Hull and you’ll claim your winnings.

How to calculate Acca Cash Out profit

Your bookmaker now gives you the chance to Cash Out of your accumulator. How are acca cash out profits calculated?

It’s fairly simple and involves the following calculation:

So in our example we had the following accumulator before kickoff of the first match:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	West Brom to defeat Southampton	2.50
2	Chelsea to defeat Sunderland	1.25
3	Man City to defeat Everton	1.50
4	Arsenal to defeat Hull	1.45

Odds: 6.80

Profit if this acca is successful: £116.

Now to calculate our Cash Out profit heading into the fourth fold for Arsenal to defeat Hull, we simply divide our pre-kick off acca odds of 6.80 by the current odds of our remaining fold, which is Arsenal still at odds of 1.45:

So heading into the final match of your fourfold accumulator, your bookmaker should be offering you a profit of £73.80 on your acca.

How to calculate Acca Cash Out profit in-play

But you can also Cash Out while the fourth fold is in play. In this example, let’s say that Arsenal lead 1-0 and their in-play odds have dropped to 1.15. What should our Cash Out odds be then?

To calculate our profit while the fourth fold is in play we simply use the same formula as if we were calculating our profit prior to the fourth fold kicking off, using instead this time the current in-play odds of 1.15:

So with Arsenal leading 1-0 and their current in-play odds at 1.15, we should be offered a cash out profit of £98.20.

How to calculate Acca Cash Out profit with multiple folds still to play or in-play

What if we wanted to cash out our acca early with two or more folds still to play.

Again, let’s say we have the following footy acca:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	West Brom to defeat Southampton	2.50
2	Chelsea to defeat Sunderland	1.25
3	Man City to defeat Everton	1.50
4	Arsenal to defeat Hull	1.45

Odds: 6.80

Profit if this acca is successful: £116.

Now let’s say that the first two folds on the Saturday afternoon have been winners and we want to cash out before the Manchester City and Arsenal matches have concluded. Let’s say there has been some injury news relating to both clubs and their odds heading into their matches have changed as a result. The current odds for each are:

Fold	Selection	Odds
1	West Brom to defeat Southampton	WON
2	Chelsea to defeat Sunderland	WON
3	Man City to defeat Everton	Current odds 1.60
4	Arsenal to defeat Hull	Current odds 1.35

In this example, Manchester City’s odds have drifted to 1.60 pre-match while Arsenal’s have shortened to 1.35.

To calculate our current cash out profit, again we use the following formula:

But in this case the ‘Current odds of our remaining folds’ is comprised of two folds rather than one.

To calculate the current odds of remaining folds across two or more folds, we simply multiply them into each other.

So in this example we multiple the current odds for Manchester City to win (1.60) with Arsenal’s current odds to win (1.35):

So the current odds of our remaining two folds is 2.16. We now plug that figure into our formula:

So with two folds still to play on our four fold accumulator, we should be offered a Cash Out profit of £42.96.

A Note About Using Cash Out

One of the chief criticisms about using Cash Out for accas or for any single bet, is that bookmakers rarely offer you full value. So while your Cash Out profit should be for example let’s say, £80, your bookmaker will likely offer you something in the range of £75.

Cash Out can be a great way taking advantage from your accumulators while they are still in-running, but make sure you are getting some value before you decide to pull the pin. While it may seem like a great way to mitigate risk, the best value move is often to simply hold on to your acca to the very end.

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9. What Is Acca Insurance?

Possibly the most popular form of bookmaker promotion is what is known as the Acca Insurance offer. How does Acca Insurance work?

Acca Insurance involves a bookmaker offering you a refund on accumulators of a given length should only one fold let you down. For example, let’s say we placed the following accumulator:

Fold	Selection	Result
1	Chelsea/Manchester United Over 2.5 goals	WON
2	Arsenal/West Ham Both Teams To Score	LOST
3	Manchester City to defeat Sunderland	WON
4	Bayern Munich -1.5 Asian handicap	WON
5	Juventus/Roman Under 2.5 goals	WON
6	PSG/Lyon Under 2.5 goals	WON

In this example, each of our folds except Fold 2 were winners. If you were betting with Acca Insurance, your stake would be refunded up to a maximum refund.

Most Acca Insurance offers involve a minimum number of folds, typically five or six, as well as minimum odds for each fold, total acca minimum odds and a maximum refund, typically £25 but can be as high as £50.

Further, it often involves folds relating to specific leagues or bet types. For example, some insurance offers are only for accas composed of matches in the major European football leagues while other insurance offers are limited to accas featuring match result 1X2 bets.

The following bookmakers currently offer a variation of Acca Insurance:

• William Hill
• Winner Sports
• Ladbrokes
• Coral
• Stan James
• Sportingbet
• Boylesports

To see full details of each please refer to our comprehensive Free Bets listing.

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10. What Is An Acca Bonus?

An Acca Bonus involves a bookmaker offering you a bonus on top of your winning acca profits.

The lesson here is, if you are keen to bet on football accas, or accumulators for any sport, be sure to bet with a bookmaker that offers you a bonus on all winning accas.

The following bookmakers offer a variation of an Acca Bonus:

• Unibet

Again, for full details please refer to our comprehensive Free Bets listing.

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11. Accumulator Bet Types

When placing an accumulator at your preferred bookmaker, you will notice a range of options available to you. Most bookmakers allow you the opportunity to compile a number of selections into an array of accumulator bets. Of these, the following twelve options are the most common and most popular:

Double Bet

A Double bet is an accumulator bet simply composed of a mere two selections.

Treble Bet

A Treble bet is similar to a Double bet, but is an accumulator bet composed of three selections.

Trixie Bet

A Trixie bet is an array of accumulator bets composed of three selections. Each of these three selections are matched with one another so as to create a total of four accumulator bets composed of three doubles and one treble.

Patent Bet

A Patent bet is an array of accumulator and single bets composed of three selections. Each of these three selections are taken as single bets plus matched with one another to create a total of seven bets, composed of three singles, three doubles and one treble.

Yankee Bet

A Yankee bet is an array of accumulator bets composed of four selections. Each of these selections are matched with one another to create eleven accumulator bets, composed of six doubles, four trebles and one fourfold accumulator.

Lucky 15 Bet

A Lucky 15 bet is an array of accumulator and single bets composed of four selections. Each selection is taken as a single bet as well as matched with the others to create fifteen bets composed of four singles, six doubles, four trebles and one fourfold.

Super Yankee Bet

A Super Yankee bet (sometimes also referred to as a ‘Canadian’) is an array of accumulator bets composed of five selections. Each of these selections are matched with the others to create a total of 26 accumulator bets, composed of ten doubles, ten trebles, five fourfolds and one fivefold.

Lucky 31 Bet

A Lucky 31 bet is an array of accumulator and single bets composed of five selections. Each of these selections is taken as a single bet as well as matched with one another to create a total of 31 bets, composed of five singles, ten doubles, ten trebles, five fourfolds and one fivefold accumulator bet.

Heinz Bet

A Heinz bet is an array of accumulator bets composed of six selections. Each of these selections are matched with one another to create a total of 57 accumulator bets, composed of 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 fourfolds, 6 fivefolds and one six fold accumulator.

Lucky 63 Bet

A Lucky 63 bet is an array of accumulator and single bets composed of six selections. Each of these six selections are taken as single bets as well as matched with one another to create a total of 63 bets, composed of six singles, 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 fourfolds, six fivefolds and one sixfold accumulator bet.

Super Heinz Bet

A Super Heinz bet is an array of accumulator bets composed of seven selections. Each of these selections are matched with one another to create a total of 120 accumulator bets, composed of 21 doubles, 35 trebles, 35 fourfolds, 21 fivefolds, 7 sixfolds and one sevenfold accumulator bet.

Goliath Bet

A Goliath bet is an array of accumulator bets composed of eight selections. Each of these selections is combined with the others to create 28 doubles, 56 trebles, 70 fourfolds, 56 fivefolds, 28 sixfolds, 8 sevenfolds and one eightfold accumulator bet.

Accumulator Bet Quick Reference Guide

Below we’ve created a table displaying the number of selections required for each accumulator bet types and the number of individual accumulator bets for each. For example, a Yankee is composed of four selections that combine to create six doubles, four trebles and one fourfold acca.

Bet	Selections	Singles	Doubles	Trebles	4Folds	5Folds	6Folds	7Folds	8Folds
Double	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Treble	3	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
Trixie	3	0	3	1	0	0	0	0	0
Patent	3	3	3	1	0	0	0	0	0
Yankee	4	0	6	4	1	0	0	0	0
L15	4	4	6	4	1	0	0	0	0
SYankee	5	0	10	10	5	1	0	0	0
L31	5	5	10	10	5	1	0	0	0
Heinz	6	0	15	20	15	6	1	0	0
L63	6	6	15	20	15	6	1	0	0
SHeinz	7	0	21	35	35	21	7	1	0
Goliath	8	0	28	56	70	56	28	8	1

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