What is an Accumulator Bet?

| 09.11.15 | 0 Comments

Accumulator bets offer you a great way to strike it rich, giving you the opportunity to bet a relatively small amount of money on a selection of events with a single wager. How it works is quite simple.

– Choose the winners for a specific number of events.
– Choose your initial stake, for example £2, and place it on your first selection.
– In case that bet wins, the winning amount is automatically placed on your second selection, and so on.

The advantage of an accumulator is that if all bets win, the bettor’s one happy person, however, it takes only one bet to fail in order for them to lose it all. The disadvantage is that when you get to the final selection, your initial amount increases, which means your loss increases as well, however, keep in mind that you eventually only lose your initial amount of £2.

Types of Accumulator Bets

There different types of accumulator bets, depending on the number of selections:

Double accumulator is a single bet made on two selections.
Treble accumulator is a single bet made on three selections.
Fourfold accumulator is a single bet made on four different selections.
Fivefold accumulator is a single bet made on five different selections.
Sixfold accumulator is a single bet made on six different selections.

Don’t forget – In order for each accumulator bet to be successful, all of your selections must win!

Example of Four Single Bets vs a Fourfold Accumulator

Let’s look at an example of a fourfold accumulator with a £4 bet and what would happen if we bet on all four matches individually with a £1 stake.

You think Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham will all win their respective games. Below are the odds for that:

So if you place four individual bets and they all win you’ll win £6.90 and get your £4 back. If any one of them loses, you’ll still get your winnings from the other matches.

So for a £4 stake you can win over £120 with an accumulator.

However, don’t forget, all four results need to go your way or you will lose your initial £4 and all your theoretical winnings from the other games will disappear.

Most bookies will allow you to cash out early so in the above example, if Chelsea won their game and you no longer have confidence in Spurs, you can cash out and get a proportion of the winnings you have accumulated.

What is an Each-Way Accumulator?

There are two parts to an Each-Way Accumulator bet: Win and Place.

Win is when you place a bet for all selections to win first place.
Place is when you place a bet for all selections to win or finish in the second, third or fourth places.

In accumulator bet you can divide your stake each way, meaning you can bet on both Win and Place on the same bet.

In case all your selections win, both your Win and Place bets are paid out to you, however, if one Win bet fails, you will be paid only your Place bets, which are a fraction of the odds for the Win and are displayed to you the moment you place your bet.

Are Accumulator Bets Risky?

Well, not really for two simple reasons. Although winning all selections is unlikely; if you only speculate a small stake of your money, you really limit your risk while putting yourself in a position to achieve some great returns. Speculate to accumulate!

The second reason is that most bookmakers offer bettors the option of an early cashout, meaning you don’t have to wait for your bet to finish, and you can choose to cash out after the third, fourth or fifth selection, and take your winnings.

Ready to place your first accumulator bet? Get started by checking out our ranking of the Top 5 Sports Betting Sites where we provide in-depth reviews of the best online sportsbooks around.