Multiple Betting

Accumulators

Placing several bets together as a bundle multiplies the odds and gives a good return, provided that they all come in. There is no upper limit to how many bets you could put together in what is termed an accumulator or “acca” in common parlance, but the more there are the greater the risk of failure. Thus it is mostly recommended by seasoned bettors to stick to small accumulators, perhaps even just doubles involving two bets, or three known as trebles, because there is a reasonably good chance if you research your bets thoroughly that they might all win.

If you are betting on a double as an example, with odds of 2.0 and 3.0 then you simply multiply these odds together to get the overall value of the odds you would receive on your combined bet which in this case would be 6.0. These kinds of odds would make good profits if you could consistently pick winners! Even better would be a treble combining three bets, and this is a popular type of bet. A variation of this is even better in my opinion, and that is the Trixie which is in effect a combination of three doubles plus a treble, and here you only need two out of the four bets to win in order to get a payout. If they all come off then you do really well!

So an accumulator could be a double, treble, Trixie, four fold, or five fold and so on, but there even some other more exotic types available. A Yankee is a combination of eleven bets based on a permutation of four selections, giving you six doubles, four trebles plus a four fold accumulator! Going one step further you can have a Lucky 15 type accumulator which is the same as a Yankee but with the addition of four single bets. A further permutation is called a “Patent” and involves seven bets with three selections: three singles, three doubles, plus a treble. These types of bets are heavily advertised by bookmakers because they sound very attractive to the customer, but in reality they come off for punters only rarely and so the bookies win rather than lose money overall.

The advantage of the “full cover” types of bets like the Trixie or Yankee is that you have several smaller bets within the whole and can therefore expect to get some sort of payout even if only some of the selections win – You do not need them all to win in order to get money back. So these kind of bets carry some insurance whilst, if the total of all contained bets should be successful you have a bigger win from the combined odds therein.

It is very easy to get carried away by the big returns possible with accumulators but you have to remember that they carry much higher risks of course. A reasonable approach might be to stick to short odds favourites in small combinations of two or three selections. This I believe gives a good balance between risk and reward.