Ian Bruce became interested in betting in 1987, when he landed a winning Yankee on his first attempt. That stroke of luck (and he admits that's exactly what it was) sparked an interest in understanding the strategies behind successful wagers. Over the years, he has become one of the UK's most prolific writers on betting and gaming, and is best known for his systematic approach to winning. Ian's career in the industry now spans over three decades. His favorite betting method is Dutching because, in his words, "It's the one I win with more often than not."
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Pavel dedicated seven years to working with Unibet, the flagship brand of Kindred, before joining SportsCasting.com in 2024. He holds an MBA in Marketing and, as a Senior Editor, ensures the accuracy and reliability of the site's content. Pavel is committed to promoting responsible gambling, stressing the importance of setting limits and making informed choices to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all.
All posts by pavelpudakovThe word acca in betting is short for accumulator. This is a single bet covering predictions for two or more sporting events, and all of your predictions must be correct for the bet to win. In this guide, the question of “What is an acca in betting?” is answered in detail. We’ll tell you how the acca bet works, why it’s so popular, and how to calculate acca returns. We’ll even provide you with some handy accumulator tips to help you improve your chances of winning.
Accumulator Bets and How They Work
Now that we’ve defined the acca bet meaning in short form let’s take a good look at how the bet works. As we said in our introduction, an accumulator bet is a single bet that covers predictions about two or more unrelated sporting events.
For example, you might make predictions about the outcome of a boxing match, the winner of a certain horse race, and the correct score in a football match. If your predictions are right in all three events, the accumulator bet would win. However, if one or more of your predictions prove incorrect, the bet would lose.
If all of your selections win, the odds of each selection will be multiplied together – not merely added – before being multiplied by your stake. This makes it possible to win much more from a successful accumulator (relative to your total outlay) than would be possible by making single bets on the same selections.
A regular accumulator wager costs just one bet no matter how many selections (commonly called “legs”) it contains. However, it’s also possible to place the bet each way (as in a horse racing accumulator), in which case the total cost will be two bets.
Accumulator bets are often named after the number of legs they contain, as in the table below:
Number of Legs Accumulator Name 2 Double 3 Treble 4 Fourfold 5 Fivefold 6 Sixfold 7 Sevenfold 8 Eightfold 9 Ninefold 10 Tenfold Accumulator Bet Example
The best way to understand an accumulator bet is to see it working in practice, so we’ll now take you through a real-world example. In the image below, you’ll see that we’ve predicted the outcome for each of seven English Premier League matches for a football accumulator. The odds for our selections range from 1.22 to 2.30, so it isn’t one of the most ambitious football accas by any means. Even so, if we were to stake just £5 on this accumulator, we would get a total return of £205.99 if all seven of our matches were to result as predicted.
If we were to bet £5 on each match individually with single win bets (which would cost a total outlay of £35), our maximum possible return would be £60.49. You can, therefore, see that an accumulator offers a lot more in the way of potential winnings relative to the total outlay. The football acca could give us £205.99 for an outlay of £5 (potential profit £200.99), while the single bets approach could give us £60.49 for an outlay of £35 (potential profit £25.49).
Of course, when making an accumulator bet, all seven of our matches must succeed for it to win. That isn’t the case when betting with singles. Even so, the appeal of accumulators is quite easy to see, especially if you’re looking for the chance to win a sizeable return for a relatively modest stake.
Advantages of Accumulator Betting
The accumulator is one of the most popular bets available at online betting sites, and that’s because it has an awful lot going for it. Here are some of the main advantages of acca betting for you to consider:
Potential Returns
As you’ve seen, accas can give you much bigger potential returns than single bets. You might not win as often with accumulators as you would with singles, but there’ll usually be much more cause for celebration when you do succeed. Just ask the chap who won £264,712 from a £50 football accumulator in 2023, and there are plenty of others like him!
Universal Application
Accumulator bets can include outcomes from any sport you can think of, so they can be used by anyone. You can either focus on making multiple predictions in a single sport, as with horse racing or football accumulators, or you can mix and match sporting events, as you prefer.
Time Flexibility
You don’t need all of your events to take place on the same day or even in the same week. You can just as easily make an accumulator bet that involves predictions scattered throughout the year. For example, you could predict the winner of the Australian Open tennis tournament in January, a team to reach the FA Cup Final in May and the winner of the Formula 1 Driver’s Championship in December. The bet would keep running until a loser occurs or – if there are no losers – until the final event is decided.
Set Your Own Risk Level
An accumulator can have as few as two legs or as many as 20, and sometimes more, if the bookmaker allows. That means you can adjust your accumulator bet to suit your taste for risk. The more legs you include in an acca, the less likely it is to win, but the more it might pay if you manage to succeed. You could, therefore, make a small acca with a decent chance of winning a modest payout or be more ambitious with a larger acca that could potentially change your life.
The Big Drawback of Accumulator Betting
While accumulator bets have a great deal going for them, they also have one big drawback, and that’s the fact that landing a winning accumulator is more challenging than landing a winning single bet. The more legs your accumulator has, the less likely it is to win. As we’ve said, even one losing selection causes the whole bet to fail, so even if you get nine out of ten legs correct, an incorrect tenth leg would see the bet lose. Remember this at all times, and keep your stakes to modest levels that reflect the risk you’re taking on.
How to Make an Accumulator Bet Online
Placing an accumulator bet online is just as easy as placing a win single. Of course, it might take you a bit longer to pick several bet accumulator selections instead of just one, but the process itself isn’t at all complicated, as you’ll see from the following step-by-step guide:
Make Your Selections
Begin by visiting your chosen bookmaker and logging into your account. You should then explore the betting markets that you are interested in to find outcomes that you’d like to include in your accumulator. Simply click the odds of a selection to add it to your betting slip. Below, you’ll see that we’ve selected five outcomes across a variety of sports.
Enter Your Stake
When you’ve added your selections, scroll down the betslip until you come to the accumulator option, and then add your desired stake for the bet. In the above example, you’ll see that we’ve opted to bet £5 on our fivefold accumulator. Note that the potential returns for a successful bet will be displayed automatically. In this case, our fivefold could give us £543.08 in Total Returns.Check and Place the Bet
Now check that you haven’t made any mistakes when adding your selections and that you’ve entered your desired stake into the accumulator option. If something is amiss, you can either correct the error or – if you’ve made multiple errors – you can clear the bet slip and start over. Assuming that everything is fine, all you have to do is click the Place Bet button. Your stake will be deducted from your account at that point, and any winnings due will be credited to your account when all of your selected events have been decided.
How to Calculate Accumulator Bet Returns
You’ve seen that most bookmakers will automatically show your expected Total Return figure when you enter your desired stake on the betting slip. Even so, it’s good to understand how to calculate accumulator bet returns for yourself should you ever want to do that. The process isn’t difficult for regular win accumulators. All you have to do is multiply the decimal odds together and then multiply the result by your stake.
For example, let’s imagine that we want to make a fourfold accumulator bet. Our selections will be at odds of 2.50, 1.75, 3.50 and 2.00. We will stake £5 on the bet. With those figures, our calculation would be:
(2.50 x 1.75 x 3.50 x 2.00) x £5
= 30.62 x £5
= £153.10
Our £5 bet, if successful, would therefore return £153.10, giving us a profit of £148.10.
For each-way accumulator bets, the calculations are a bit more involved, and mistakes are easier to make. We would therefore recommend using an accumulator bet calculator to work out your expected returns for each-way wagers.
Acca Insurance
Some bookmakers like to be nice to their accumulator bettors by offering something called Acca Insurance. The exact name of this varies from bookie to bookie (it’s Acca Edge at Betfair), but it’s basically designed to make things a bit less disappointing if just one of your selections lets you down.
When you accept Acca Insurance (the option will be on the betting slip if available), you will get a slightly lower payout for a winning accumulator, but if just one leg lets you down, you’ll get your stake back. Whether you get your stake back in cash or as a free bet will depend on your bookie. Also note that other terms and conditions for Acca Insurance deals can differ, so be sure to read the small print before deciding whether or not to use it.
Acca Boosts
Many online betting sites also like to offer Acca Boost deals. These will boost the payout of a winning accumulator bet by a certain percentage, up to a stated maximum value. The percentage that is applied to the winning bet will usually depend on the number of legs that are involved. The more legs there are in the bet, the bigger the boost percentage will be if you win. Again, terms vary, so do check them out before betting.
Accumulator Betting Tips
Now that we’ve explained What is acca in betting? we think it would be useful to provide some acca tips on how to use them most effectively. Below are some of our best accumulator tips, including football acca tips and horse racing accumulator tips:
1. Pick the Strongest Contenders
Our first tip is to focus on only the strongest contenders for your accumulator bets. Those might be offered at short odds that you’d normally overlook when singles betting, but they can be very useful in an accumulator. For example, five selections at decimal odds of just 1.25 each would give you a combined return of 3.05 in an accumulator.
2. Don’t Get Greedy
It’s always tempting to add legs to an accumulator to try and chase an even bigger potential payout. We would advise against this. Landing a winning fivefold that pays combined odds of 3.05 is a much better outcome than having a losing tenfold at combined odds of 305, so don’t get greedy and be realistic when deciding on how many selections to include in your bet.
3. Use the Form, Luke
Some bettors rely totally on the bookmaker’s odds when adding selections to an accumulator bet. While the bookies certainly do their homework when setting their odds, you shouldn’t neglect to look into things for yourself. Take a look at the form of the horses, football teams and whatever other competitors you’re thinking of betting on. If the form convinces you that the selection is a solid one, go ahead and include it. But if you can’t make a good case for a selection based on its past form, give it a miss. Bookies can and do get things wrong.
4. Bet Each Way on Horses
When making accumulator bets at horse racing betting sites, consider betting each way. This approach will cost you two bets instead of just one, but an each-way betting accumulator will give you a return even if one or two of your horses only manage to get a place in their races.
5. Major in Singles
While accumulator bets have the potential to provide relatively big wins, they shouldn’t form the core of your daily betting activities. Make win or each-way single bets your main focus, and view accumulators as something that can – if you’re lucky – provide some icing on the cake if all of your selections are successful.
Conclusion
Whether you came here wondering What is an acca bet? or you were looking for acca tips or an explanation of odds accumulator calculations, we hope that this guide has been insightful. Accumulator bets are popular not only at football betting sites, but across all sports, and they can certainly add an extra element of excitement to your betting hobby. Use them wisely and good with your selections!
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