Betting on football accas is a massive part of many sports fans’ weekend or midweek action. Not only are they a great way to engage with a bunch of matches you might never normally pay any attention to, but they can also return big payouts if you’re lucky.
Here, we’ve compiled our top 10 golden rules for betting on football accas, which should help you when weighing up which bets to add to your acca:
- Only bet for fun and only bet what you can afford
- Never, ever bet on your team or your mates’ teams
- Don’t kick off a multiple with the 12:00 lunch time game
- Try and avoid betting on the FA cup
- Don’t ever place a four-fold acca
- When you have pennies left over always put it on a ridiculous acca
- Don’t ask the world if you should cashout
- DO throw in a late game or even a single Sunday game
- Don’t go chasing your bets during the running of the day
- Do some research and make informed betting decisions
Rule number 1: Only bet for fun and only bet what you can afford to lose
This cliche does the rounds, but it rings so very true. Gambling your salary away as soon as it drops in your bank is a serious problem.
Stick to a budget and work out what you can part with each month or each week with relative ease. If you have kids, a house, a husband or wife, consider their views on how much you gamble and how better the money could be spent.
Rule number 2: Resist the urge to bet on your team or your mates’ teams
When betting on football accas, it’s always tempting to throw in the team you support or your mate’s favourite side. These isolated scenarios will always you let you down if you consider them in an acca.
First of all ‘your’ team always lets you down, they’ve been doing it for years! You’ve got a comfortable home game against bottom of the league and an easy 4/5 on to bump up that five-fold and guess what? They only go and lose it.
The same applies to your mate’s team, who’ve been winning all season, but the day you whack them in your acca they let you down as well!
Rule number 3: Don’t kick off a multiple with the 12:00 lunch-time game
On a standard Saturday, it’s the first game of the day. Now imagine how you’d feel if you were bullish about your chances for the day and all your bets are ruined by that first game!
Unless you’re some kind of football betting guru then I’d avoid that game all together! Trust me, you don’t want to be sat in Wetherspoons with your slips on the table all voided by 14:45 – unbelievable Jeff!
Rule number 4: Avoid betting on the FA Cup and the League Cup for your own sanity
Far too many teams are up for beating the big guns in these cup matches and raise their games for one day of the year.
The team is probably languishing at the bottom of their own lower league, worst goal difference in the world. Yet they turn up to play a Premier League team in their double decker bus that they park in front of the goal for 90 minutes in what’s deemed as the performance of the year.
They’ll leave all their strikers at home and play for a 0-0 payday! What might look like an easy win, turns out to be a hard-fought draw, with two red cards and a manager being sent to the stands complaining about time-wasting.
Rule number 5: Don’t ever place a four-fold acca. Why bother?
Four-fold football accas are more risky than a treble and there’s no money back if one game lets you down.
Inevitably, almost always, it’s one game with one goal that lets an acca down. So if you push the boat out to a five-fold and bet with someone like William Hill or Betfair, you get those five-folds covered with some acca edge or acca insurance.
Those that bet on four-folds have likely picked out three odds-on winners like Man City, PSG & Barca all to win, stuck a fiver in the pot only to find it’s only paying out at evens. So they get greedy and shove another team in there to try and bump the price up a bit.
Rule number 6: When you have pennies left over always put it on a ridiculous acca
I admit this is an irresponsible suggestion so do take it with a pinch of salt! But if you have an odd number in your online betting wallet leftover, say from previous bets and winnings like £0.73, you can’t do much with that!
Dream big and pick out that ridiculous acca that might return half a million quid. In all seriousness, it’s very likely not to win and you will probably lose that money. But for the sake of 73p, which you can’t withdraw, It’s worth a special punt!
Rule number 7: Don’t ask the world if you should cash out
So your bets are coming in and you want to share it with everyone on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and so on. The instant that you even check that cash out amount, you’ve tempted fate and sharing it with the world is opening a can of worms.
You won’t look very smart if you cashed out and it wins big, and you’ll look even worse if you chance it and it loses all together. Plus you’ll get every man and his dog offering advice. It’s football, it’s gambling, and anything can happen.
Rule number 8: DO throw in a late game or even a single Sunday game into your football accas
So you know it’s alway one game that lets you down, one bet on one match! Well if that one match is out of sequence like the late game or a Sunday game, you can lay that bugger and virtually insure your acca.
Here’ how you protect a one game scenario: Let’s say you have a five-fold acca with one game being played at a later time, four of the games have come in for you and you’re waiting on the last result from the later game. In your mind you’re thinking “this is the game that will let me down”.
You can protect that opinion somewhat and this is where the Betfair exchange comes in handy. Log in and lay your team (that means back it to ‘not win’). By putting up some cash on the Betfair exchange, you’re basically opposing your bet and if they draw or lose, you should recoup some cash. If they win, then your acca is saved and you’re off to Benidorm with the family.
Rule number 9: Don’t go chasing your bets during the running of the day
If you’ve parked down in front of a TV at 3pm to watch Soccer Saturday, then you’ll likely have your football acca slips ready or your apps open to keep tabs on your bets.
It’s easy to start chasing results as you see them come in and you start putting counter bets on left right and centre.
Counter-bets should only be done if they absolutely guarantee you some profit when differing results unfold and there are ways of covering bets, laying results etc. But if you’re chasing your potential loses by placing more risky multiples or other bets, then in you’re in bad betty territory – don’t do it!
Rule number 10: Do some research, at least make informed betting decisions
When looking at placing football accas, there are a tonne of tipsters sites, social media tipping services and so on. Some of them are OK, I can’t say there are any stand out winning tipsters out there. Such is the nature of gambling, that you’re unlikely to find someone tipping up winners with every bet. Do some research and use tipsters to justify your own selections. But for your own interest here are some useful sources.
Footstats Form Guide is a decent resource for checking the in-form teams, based on a run of games. You can select unlimited games from this season or for example the last five games, the last 10 games, home, away, different leagues. I look to see the teams that are on a run or who have terrible away form and so on. Form is a useful indicator when it comes to compiling those accas.
Footy Accumulators on Twitter are fun to follow. The tips are 50/50 and in all fairness accas are the hardest to predict, but they offer some good banter, they actually reply to your mentions and they do a good job at being social, which is the whole point of being on a social network. And every so often they tip up a decent acca!
OptaJoe tweets stats-based information during and after UK football matches. Now it’s not the best resource for researching bets, because most of the information occurs after the event. But the useful snippets of information can be retained (if you have a good memory) for future use.