Football Accumulator Tips

Published: October 30, 2014
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Last Updated: January 8, 2024

What are Football Accumulators?

Once you become comfortable with betting on individual football matches, you may want to expand and try landing a larger profit. Accumulator bets are very popular with experienced gamblers because when they come in, they win big, and while your exposure is greater, you can help to minimise the risk in a number of ways. Our article goes through some tips for football accumulators to help you get the most out of them.

How do Accumulators work?

A football accumulator, or Acca bet involves staking on four or more different selections: For example, on any given weekend in the English Premier League, you may want to back Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool to win so you can place a four-fold bet on each team.

Your accumulator bet will pay out if all four sides go on to win, and it can prove to be a very lucrative gamble. Let’s say that each of those teams has a price of 2/1 and you stake a total of £10.00. If you win, your return is calculated as follows:

10 x 2/1 x 2/1 x 2/1 x 2/1 = £160.00 return, plus your initial £10.00 stake.

Remember, your accumulator doesn’t have to consist of four bets – you can stake on five, six, seven outcomes and more.

If you bet more or stake on longer odds, then the wins can go very high indeed, and the biggest of these frequently hit the headlines. In 2011, Steve Whiteley placed a £2 acca on six horse races at Exeter, and after the final selection landed, he walked away with a cool £1.45m.

The football markets provide more than their share of headline grabbing stories too, and in November 2013, Steve Richards won £38,000 for a £10.00 stake on 12 selections in the correct score markets.

There’s a lot of luck in big payouts like these and you can’t expect accumulator tips from online services to guarantee big winnings, but they can certainly give you some helpful pointers.

First of all, are there any downsides to this style of gambling?

The Disadvantages of Football Accumulators

The clear disadvantage with football acca betting is that just one of your selections can let you down if it doesn’t come in. Returning to our original football bet, if Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool were to win, it doesn’t mean anything if Manchester United were to lose their game.

Therefore, the rewards here are potentially higher but your risks are much greater at the same time. We know how the odds can be upset in any football match or in any side market and when that happens, you lose your entire stake.

Any number of factors can upset your bet, and Manchester United could look comfortable until they have a player sent off. Red cards are a part of football but sending offs have been known to frequently spoil what would otherwise have been a big win.

Injuries and loss of form are other factors that could see you out of pocket, so remember that your bet will be ruined by just one losing selection.

However, there is a slim chance you could grab yourself a consolation as a selection of bookies run accumulator promotions throughout the season. These would typically return your stake in the shape of a free bet if just one pick in five were to lose. It’s not as good as a win, but it can be a useful piece of insurance. As our first tip of the article, we recommend you look out for this kind of offer.

Accumulator bets are so popular that you can easily find other promotions during a season-long campaign. Certain bookies might give you a 10% bonus when a five-fold lands, so make sure you follow all the bookmakers on social media to keep abreast of the latest acca deals.

How Many Selections should you go For?

As we’ve seen, accumulator bets start at four selections and there is no upper limit. The choice of how many selections to choose is down to the individual, but there are certain things to consider when betting on football.
It’s obvious that five bets will bring you greater reward and that one extra win will increase your profit by a significant margin. However, it will also increase your risk, and while it’s tempting to go higher, is your last selection too much of a gamble?

Professional gamblers like to go for near certainties when staking a football accumulator. Therefore, the majority of their selections may well be at an odds-on price, and while the returns may not be as high, those four-folds, five-folds and six-folds will come in on a far more regular basis.

Our tip is that if you’re just starting out with this style of bet, it’s a good idea to keep it simple and to begin with a four-fold. That way you can get used to the gamble and hopefully earn some good profits in the meantime. If you lose your opening gambles, then you may lose confidence, but stick with it, and in time you’ll be happier with five folds, six folds and maybe more.

Your betting budget could also dictate how many bets you want to take. You could, for example, stake on a lower risk four-fold. Then in addition, a £10.00 stake on a high price seven-fold is worth considering (if you can afford to lose it), in the hope of landing a huge payout.

Which Accumulator Markets should you Choose?

Accumulator bets are available on any football market, so you could use our example and simply pick four winning teams over the course of a weekend’s fixtures. Alternatively, you could enter the first goalscorer market and select four or more players who you think will find the net first in their particular games.

In addition, you can use the anytime goalscorer market, both teams to score, total goals, winning margin, correct score and more. If the bookies are declaring a market for any football match, you can make an accumulator out of it.

Naturally, some football bets are more popular than others, and there are usually very good reasons for that. Both teams to score is one sector where you can win regularly just by studying results and predicting future outcomes.

Think about these…

Has a particular side got an attacking front line in front of a leaky defence?

Is a key defender out through injury making a team more vulnerable at the back?

Above all, look for previous results and see how many times this would have come in over the course of a season. If a team would have given you a profit here in the past, it’s more likely that they will do so again in the future.
Similarly, the over 2.5 goal bet is vastly popular amongst those looking to place a football accumulator. With only three goals needed for this to come in, it’s a regular payer even if the prices are almost always odds on.

In fact, some bookmakers even have dedicated coupons for the two markets that we’ve mentioned, just because they attract a high level of stakes. Feel free to use these or simply make your own selections in a standard online betting slip.

From here, you could move on to a medium risk gamble such as the anytime goalscorer market. Prices here can vary greatly and while an in-form striker might have an odds-on figure next to his name, midfielders and defenders can attract some very tempting prices.

Do your research here and look at players who take the set pieces and are dangerous from free kicks. A team’s penalty taker may not always play up front – Steven Gerard at Liverpool and Leighton Baines of Everton are two good examples – and while they might attract longer odds, they have a better chance of scoring at any stage in the ninety minutes.

The anytime market is less of a risk than the first goalscorer betting, where odds will typically start at around 5/1 for the centre forwards. These can increase up to 50/1 and beyond for some players and while some punters have had their successes here, the exposure is greater and wins are obviously rare.

But perhaps the most unpredictable market is the correct score bet, where it’s hard enough to get one winner, let alone four or more. However it can be done and Steve Richards’ £38,000 win came when he correctly guessed the score in twelve football matches.

Our overall tip here would probably be to go with the both teams to score or over/under 2.5 goals bets.

How to Win Football Accumulator Bets

As with any bet, the more you study form, the more likely you are to be successful and to turn a regular profit over the course of the season. However, with so much more at stake from an accumulator bet, your research becomes vital.

Take time to look at recent results and compare form for the games you’re going to bet on. You’ll need to be up to speed with the news too in case there are any injuries or suspensions that could affect your pick’s chances of getting a profit.

There are systems out there but none are fool-proof, and some are more successful than others. Mathematical probability is one way of tackling a football accumulator bet, and here is one example of how this might work.

The most popular football scoreline is 2-1 to whichever side is deemed to be the stronger, and statistically this drops in more often than any other outcome. So you could look through the fixture list and take a 2-1 correct score on four or more games, but a win here will remain rare.

Alternatively, some systems suggest that you look for four away sides with odds on prices for the win. On any given weekend there are only a handful of away teams strong enough to be given an odds-on figure, and over a course of a season, you may find that they all come in on your slip and give you a decent profit on an accumulator bet.

If you are new to accumulators then you could try a dummy run first before you actually part with any money. Our tip would be to make four or more selections from that weekend’s coupon and write them down on a piece of paper. You can also work out how much you are set to win by noting the odds and working them out by hand, or alternatively there are a number of online calculators around that can do this for you.

When you’re ready to begin, it’s a good idea not to go for high-risk markets such as correct score or first goalscorer before you’ve placed a few bets. They might land you an outstanding profit but they stand a much higher chance of losing and that could easily dissuade you from coming back to this most lucrative of markets.

Instead, look at a bet such as both teams to score, where the odds very rarely climb above even money. Wins in markets such as this and in the over 2.5 goals betting are more common amongst the professionals, and if you can get one or two early wins, then they will give you confidence even if they’re only small ones.

In time you’ll feel happier to get more involved with this type of bet and when you gain that confidence, you can look at different football markets which can potentially yield some higher returns.

It’s also important to stay emotionally detached from your bet. This means not including the team you support in your accumulator. You will overestimate the likelihood of your team doing well, and this poses obvious risks to you winning. Taking just one selection to fail, you wouldn’t want your accumulator to lose just because you wanted your team on the list! Another important point related to this is: don’t include markets just to boost the odds of your accumulator. You shouldn’t focus on how much you will win from your bet, but on making it win! Adding extra selections because they have good odds could be setting yourself up for failure. High odds mean lower probability, so they are only going to lower the chance that your accumulator will win.

If you’ve read carefully, our accumulator tips have highlighted three key choices when placing a bet:

  • How many bets should you go for?
  • How much are you prepared to put down?
  • What selections should you stake on?

Ultimately, the choice is completely yours, but if you’re serious about profiting from your gambling strategy, you should really consider using high paying accas which can land some serious profits when they drop in.

Final Football Accumulator Tips Advice

As any failed selection can stop you winning, the following football accumulator tips should be equally followed to give you the best chances.

  • Don’t include a team or player just because you like them.
  • Start with four-fold selections for better probability of winning.
  • The Over 2.5 goals market is always good.
  • …As is the both teams to score market.
  • Remember to always keep up with the news and statistics of the games.

If any of these tips helped you out, let us know!