The Basics of Accumulators
Last week, we took a look at win bets where a single chosen selection is required to come first in its event to pay the win and for you to make a profit. The simplest type of accumulator comes form merging two win bets into a double bet. Both selections must win for the bet to be paid, although the rewards are much greater than if the selections had been placed separately.
For example, if we placed a £5 bet on Everton to beat Sunderland at 3/4 and also a £5 bet on Newcastle to beat West Brom at 7/5 then our overall profit if both selections were to win would be £10.75. If we had used the same £10 to place a ‘win double’ on Everton and Newcastle to both win, we would have received odds of 16/5 (3/4 multiplied by 7/5) meaning our overall profit would have been £32 nearly 3 times what we’d have profited using just the singles.
This process of just multiplying the stakes can be applied to any number of selections with three selections all winning accounting for a treble and then four-fold accumulators, five-fold accumulators, six-fold accumulators and so on. Just look what happens when you select 6 winners, all to win, and place just a £1 bet on it happening.
That’s odds of 593.76 or nearly 593/1 by picking just 6 winners all relying on another to happen. Well, OK, perhaps it’s not as easy as it sounds but there are a few other types of accumulator that can reduce your risk and increase your chance of profiting, so read on.
The Other Types of Accumulator Bets
Although choosing a number of selections to win can reap big rewards as we’ve just shown, it’s an all or nothing situation where one result can cost you the whole bet. A way to navigate around this is to place a full cover bet which involves placing multiple bets to cover all the combinations from your selections. Don’t worry, thanks to a range of accumulator types, this isn’t as complicated as it may sound. Below we’ll look at some of the most popular types:
What is a Trixie Bet?
A Trixie is made of three selections and four bets which cover all possible doubles and the treble, so a £10 Trixie would cost £40. So as an example, let’s say you wanted to back Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea to all win their match at the weekend, you’d have the following bets:
- Tottenham & Arsenal to win
- Tottenham & Chelsea to win
- Arsenal & Chelsea to win
- Tottenham, Arsenal & Chelsea to win
This is the simplest type of accumulator bet that involves covering yourself.
What is a Yankee Bet?
A Yankee adds one more selection into the mix (let’s say Liverpool in this case) and then backing all combinations aside from the singles resulting in 11 different bets:
- Tottenham & Arsenal to win
- Tottenham & Chelsea to win
- Tottenham & Liverpool to win
- Arsenal & Chelsea to win
- Arsenal & Liverpool to win
- Chelsea & Liverpool to win
- Tottenham, Arsenal & Chelsea to win
- Tottenham, Arsenal & Liverpool to win
- Tottenham, Chelsea & Liverpool to win
- Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea to win
- Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool to win
Rather than listing out every possibility, here’s a reference guide to other accumulator types following the same pattern as above by covering every possible combination aside from singles:
What is a Canadian Bet? Five selections made up of 26 separate bets.
What is a Heinz Bet? Six selections made up of 57 separate bets.
What is a Super Heinz Bet? Seven selections made up of 120 separate bets.
What is a Goliath Bet? Eight selections made up of 247 bets.
Yes, that’s a potential return of £34.179.37 from a bet not even totalling £25! These types of bets can certainly be good fun, especially with many selections and with such a small outlay.
If you are looking at selections with bigger odds then it may well pay to turn to the accumulator bets which include the covering of singles as well. They are worked out in exactly the same way as in the examples above but with the addition of a single bet on each selection so you can end up placing a lot of bets.
What is a Patent Bet?
A Patent is the smallest of these types of bets and involved 3 selections (Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham) but unlike the Trixie it is made up of seven bets thanks to the addition of 3 singles. So this time you would have:
- Tottenham to win
- Arsenal to win
- Chelsea to win
- Tottenham & Arsenal to win
- Tottenham & Chelsea to win
- Arsenal & Chelsea to win
- Tottenham, Arsenal & Chelsea to win
Again, without dragging this out, here are another three popular accumulators that involve covering every possible combination of bet from singles right through to the largest of accumulators.
What is a Lucky 15 Bet? Four selections made up of 15 bets
What is a Lucky 31 Bet? Five selections made up of 31 bets
What is a Lucky 63 Bet? Six selections made up of 63 bets
Next time you’re in a betting shop or online making money with the Betting Gods selections (sorry), take a look at the coupons which are made specifically with these bet types in mind. It’s a great way to cover a wealth of different bets whilst minimising your liability if a couple of selections should let you down.
Keep an eye out for more in our ‘Absolute Beginner’ series later this year and be sure to log on next week as we provide a brief history of the Cheltenham Festival!
