There are so many different offers and promotions put forward by bookmakers nowadays that it’s tricky to keep track of them all. From a guarantee that you’ll always get the best odds on UK and Irish horse racing through to a promise that certain bookmakers will not be beaten by rivals on certain bets, the power to get the best deals really is in the hands of the punter.
I’ve been taking some time to explain some of these offers in more detail on these pages and it’s now the turn of offers on accumulators to go under my microscope. For those that don’t know, I’ll very quickly explain what an accumulator is. Sometimes called an acca, this is a rolling bet made up of several individual wagers that only wins if all selections win. There are two different types of promotions offered regularly on accumulators, which I’ll look at individually now.
Current Offers
Place a pre-match or in-play football acca with five or more legs and if it wins you could receive a cash bonus up to 100%, and if just one leg loses, you could be refunded in cash up to £10. The potential acca bonus increase with added legs between 5% for 5-folds to 100% for 20-folds. Minimum odds of 1/2 per leg apply.
Place an accumulator on any sport and you could get a cash bonus of up to £10k. The bonus starts at 5% for trebles up to the maximum 100% bonus for bets with 15 legs or more. Minimum odds of 1/2 per leg apply.
Each day, three boosts will be available to use on horse racing accas with three or more legs. The bonus applied rises from 10% for winning trebles to 40% for winning horse racing bets with 7+ legs. Max stakes £20 applies.
Winning accas could have a 10% bonus applied as a free bet up to £50. This is available on bets with 3+ legs, each at odds of at least 3/10 (1.3). One per customer per day.
With Acca Rewards, you can chose to apply insurance or a winnings boosts to pre-match or in-play accumulators on a wide range of sports including football, tennis and American sports. Acca boosts are available for bets with 3+ legs with boosts ranging from 5% and 100% depending on the number of legs. Acca insurance is available of bets with 5+ legs and could refund losing accas with a free bet up to £10 if just one of the legs loses. Mimimum odds of 1/5 (1.2) per selection applies.
Place a football acca on selected markets such as the match winner and both teams to score and if only one leg loses, your stake could be returned as a free bet up to £10. You could also apply an acca boost where available on your betslip to enhance the odds offered. Applies to 5+ team accas. Minimum odds per selection of 1/10, minimum combined odds of 3/1.
Sports accas could get boosted winnings by up to 60% with The Pools. Trebles could get a 5% winnings boost, which rises with additional legs to 60% for winning bets with 15+ legs. Minimum odds of 1/5 (1.2) per selection apply. This is available on selected sports including football, tennis, darts, cricket, American football and basketball.
What Exactly Is Acca Insurance?
Accumulators are, as I’ve just explained, bets that involve several individual bets all rolled into one. If you place an acca you’re essentially saying that bet #1 will win, then bet #2 will win, then bet #3 will win and so on until all events that you’ve bet on have taken place and they have either won or lost. If they’ve won then you will be getting a payout. If even one of them loses, however, your entire bet falls apart.
Anyone who has ever placed any bets whatsoever knows that’s actually quite a tricky thing to master. After all, if it was easy to win bets bookmakers would be out of business and we’d all be wealthy. Trying to win an accumulator is even more complex. Those single bets that are tricky to win have suddenly become even more complicated as you need them all to win. How frustrating would it be, then, for just one of the selections in your acca to lose?
That’s where Acca Insurance comes in. The general idea is that you will get your stake back as a free bet if one of your selections loses. Obviously that’s nowhere near as good as if you’d won your accumulator, but it takes the sting off things and lets you have another go, which is significantly better than it just losing and there being nothing that you can do about.
Things To Look Out For
The first thing to be aware of when it comes to Acca Insurance is how many legs your accumulator needs to have in order to qualify. For the vast majority of bookies this is five selections at least, with the Acca Insurance covering any accumulator with five or more legs in it. This is also a good time to point out that you’ll sometimes see the events you’ve bet on referred to as ‘legs’, sometimes ‘selections’ and sometimes ‘folds’. It’s common, for example, for bookmakers to say their insurance applies to ‘Five-Fold Accas or greater’.
Because five is the minimum number of legs you’ll need to have in your accumulator in this example, you need to be aware of bets being made void. Say you’ve played a five-fold acca including a horse race and the horse you’ve bet on ends up being a non-runner. In that case your bet on it will be made void and the five-fold accumulator you’ve bet on will become a four-fold one, as rather than cancel the entire acca bookmakers normally just remove the part of the bet that was void.
Because your accumulator now contains just four selections it will no longer be covered by the offer and if a single leg of it loses you’ll lose your bet. There’s not much you can do about that, obviously, but it’s worth bearing in mind. The only thing you can do to mitigate the chance of this happening is ensure you only place six-fold accumulators, but even then there’s no guarantee – two legs of an acca have been known to have been made void before now.
As well as being a minimum number of legs, some bookmakers will also apply a maximum number to the offer. This is normally in the region of twenty legs, though plenty of bookmakers don’t limit the amount of selections you can have in an acca as long as it’s over five. It’s in their interest for you to place as many selections as possible, given that the more legs your accumulator has the more likely it is that you’ll lose your bet.
There are lots of small details you need to look out for, such as named accumulator bets like Lucky 15s not counting and whether or not the individual company allows mix and match sports to be bet on, but normally these things are made very clear on the offers page. The real key thing you need to make sure you find out about is whether there are minimum odds for the selections within your accumulator. For example, a bookmaker might ask you to ensure each selection within your overall bet has minimum odds of 1/5 (1.2 in decimal).
It’s entirely possible that a bookie might limit how much of your stake they’ll issue as a free bet, too. A common figure in this region is about the £50 mark. That means you can place an accumulator with a stake of £200, say, but you’ll only get £50 back as a free bet. It’s normal for there to be a daily limit on the free bet, too. Once the free bet has been awarded there’ll be standard free bet rules and regulations to look out for, such as how long it’s valid for and whether there are restrictions on what you’re allowed to bet on.
What Exactly Is An Acca Bonus?
Acca Bonuses work in an entirely different way to Acca Insurance, in spite of the fact that they’re both valid on the same type of bet. A good rule of thumb is to think of it like this: Acca Insurance is all about protecting you from a leg of your accumulator going wrong, whilst Acca Bonuses are all about rewarding you for winning all of the legs you’ve bet on.
Acca Bonuses work like this: the more legs you have on a winning accumulator, the more bonus funds you’ll have added to your win. For example, an acca with five selections might receive a 10% bonus, one with six legs would get a 20% bonus all the way up to a 100% bonus for fourteen-fold or greater accumulators. That isn’t an industry standard, with each bookmaker offering something different, but it’s the simplest way I can think of to explain how the offer works.
Things To Look Out For
Does your bonus still apply if events are voided or postponed? As with Acca Insurance, there is normally a minimum number of selections that your bet needs to feature in order to qualify for the bonus funds. Again, this is often five but various companies will sometimes drop this down as low as three in order to win custom. If one of your selections becomes void, therefore, will you still have enough legs to receive the bonus funds?
The majority of bookmakers simply imagine for the purposes of your bet that selections that have become void or postponed were never wagered in the first place. As long as your bet meets the minimum requirements of selections it will pay out bonuses according to how many selections are valid. For example, say you placed a ten-fold accumulator and two selections are void and one has been postponed but the other seven win, you’ll receive the bonus associated with a seven-fold acca.
One of the big things that you’ll need to know is whether the accumulator bonus is being applied to specific sports or events or can be used on anything you wish to bet on. It’s not uncommon for bookies to specify that their Acca Bonus offer is only for Premier League games, say, or only for football matches. Some will say that you can choose selections from football, cricket, tennis and horse racing but that other sports, such as rugby or greyhound racing, won’t count. It can be complex so be sure to read the small print.
The majority of Acca Bonuses can be from numerous different sports but the bets must be placed before the bets get underway. That is to say, in-play bets can’t typically be added to an accumulator and still receive any bonus funds that might otherwise have been applicable. Likewise there will probably be a minimum odds requirement in order to qualify for the offer, much as with the Acca Insurance promotion.
Another key thing you’ll want to have a look at is whether the bonus funds are paid in real cash or free bets. Free bets are certainly the most common type of reward, but the most canny bookies know this and try to win customers by offering them their bonus funds will be paid directly into their account as cash. Obviously cash is much more preferable than bonus funds because you can withdraw it right away, rather than needing to turn it over by placing the free bets before being able to take it out of your account.
If you’re a high-roller then you might want to take a look at whether or not there’s a maximum amount that will be paid out as a bonus. Even if there is there will often be quite a high ceiling, such as £100,000 or the like, but even so this worth knowing about ahead of time. If a bookmaker allows partial cash out of an accumulator bet then they’ll often allow you to still claim bonus funds, except that it will be a percentage representative off how much of your bet you let run to its conclusion.
How To Claim
The development of online bookmakers has made the ability to make offers much easier for them, predominately because nobody has got to sit there and work out whether or not a bet is valid. Nowadays the computer does it all automatically for you, with Acca Bonus funds applied to your account within 24 hours of the bet being settled. If for some reason that doesn’t happen then it’s always worth getting in touch with the bookie and asking them why not. More often than not it’s just taking a bit of time to go through the system.
Acca Insurance v Acca Bonus
Given that there are two different offers that apply to the same type of bet it’s entirely fair for you to ask which one is the most fitting for you. Some of you will already know simply from reading what the two promotions give you, whilst for others it’s a more complicated question. In my opinion it depends entirely on the type of bet you’re placing and what you’re hoping to get from it. That is to say, whether you opt for Acca Insurance or an Acca Bonus will likely differ with almost every accumulator you place.
Ultimately everyone likes to get back more money than they thought they were going to, so you’re unlikely to go too far wrong if you regularly opt for an Acca Bonus. That said, if you know that the cumulative odds are relatively short and your not likely to win a huge heap of money then doubling it won’t make a huge difference. On the other hand if you’re concerned about one or two of the legs of your accumulator and unsure whether or not they’re going to come in then opting for cover by way of Acca Insurance will be a sensible move.
My rule of thumb is always to opt for a bookie that offers Acca Insurance when I’ve got less than ten selections in my accumulator. If I’ve got more than ten and the odds on my accumulator coming home are quite high then I’ll go with a bookmaker that will give me a decent Acca Bonus. The reason for this is simple: if you lose more than one leg of an accumulator then your Acca Insurance will most likely be useless. The more legs you have the more likely you are to lose more than one, yet if it comes home then an Acca Bonus will likely see you with a very healthy profit.