In any walk of life, the idea that we should minimise our risk – while maximising our reward – is considered the smart way to go about your business.
But it’s true that some sports bettors renege on this philosophy in their betting, especially when the temptation to place an accumulator comes their way.
Whether it’s putting a handful of football teams on a coupon of a Saturday afternoon or perming together selections from today’s racing tips into an acca or multiple, the potential rewards for a winning accumulator speak for themselves.
But the risk? Well, as we know, bookmakers’ odds reflect the implied probability of an event occurring. And so the higher your odds, the less chance your bet has of landing – for context, a 100/1 shot has a 1% implied probability… any higher than that and your chances of winning become even slimmer.
But this isn’t a post denouncing those who like to place an acca – far from it. In fact, here are two different ways you can actually improve your multiples betting.
Maximising Your Edge
If you read around the subject of sports betting, you will from time to time have stumbled across the word ‘edge’.
While hard to quantify, an edge in betting is where you have an advantage – no matter how small – compared to the average punter. You may be knowledgeable about a niche football league or a particular racecourse, understanding which horses – like the veteran Stradivarius – have the stamina to power up an uphill finish, or who perform exceptionally well on sharper tracks.
Sagaro Stakes (G3)
3210m , 70.000
GBP, for 4yo+
🇬🇧AscotStradivarius
(IRE)
(7H Sea The Stars – Private Life, by Bering)
J
: Frankie Dettori
T : John & Thady Gosden
O
: B E Nielsen
🥈Ocean Wind
🥉Nayef
Road
📽️@AtTheRacespic.twitter.com/fTlcejJscD—
𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙𝙍𝙖𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙜 (@WorldRacing1) April
28, 2021
Maybe you have built a data-led model, bringing together several strands of statistics to create an insight that is unique to you.
Perhaps you are a diligent researcher, putting in the hard yards to know everything about a sporting event – maybe even things that the bookies themselves haven’t heard about yet.
So, if you bet on a single selection you would, more than likely, be taking a value position – if you find two, three or more of these and apply them together in an accumulator, then you are multiplying your edge too… something to ponder for those who write off accas as a complete impossibilities.
The Full Cover Bet
If you wager at slightly longer odds, have you considered the possibility of placing a ‘cover’ bet rather than an out-and-out accumulator?
What a story for Sam Waley-Cohen, who retires
as a #GrandNational
winner!He rode Noble Yeats, a 50-1 outsider, to
victory.— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) April
9, 2022
Most commonly deployed in horse racing, bet types like Lucky 15 and Yankee will reward you with a return even if one or more of your selections lets you down – helping you to ensure that your bankroll isn’t depleted too quickly, and buying you time in the hope that the next winner is just around the corner.
A cover bet requires you to stake all of the possible outcomes on your coupon. So, if we take a Lucky 15 as an example, we have four selections on our betslip and that requires us to place 15 bets as follows:
Four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a four-fold accumulator.
As you can see, we still have the acca element in place, but we can actually earn ‘consolation’ payouts if two or three of our picks win – we’ll even get a small return should only one of our selections prevail.
Some will try to convince you that accumulators are the bogeymen of betting, and it’s true that you multiply your risk with every extra selection you add to your coupon. But if your picks are well researched and have positive expectancy you are actually enhancing your position, and when applied via a cover bet like Lucky 15, we can potentially reduce our risk yet further.
