Accumulator Bet Calculator – How to Work Out an Accumulator Bet
Our accumulator bet calculator makes light work of calculating the returns you can expect from your acca wagers. It can handle anything from a fairly modest fourfold to a much more ambitious accumulator of up to 20 legs. And it doesn’t matter if you bet to win or each way because our calculator can handle both just as easily. It’s also free to use at any time and for any sport you care to bet on.
What is an Accumulator Bet?
An accumulator bet (also known as an acca for short) is a single wager on four or more events. Each selection you include is referred to as a ‘leg’ of the bet. The accumulator is a bet that you can make on any sport or mixture of sports with virtually all betting sites in the UK.
There are two types of accumulator bet, and those are win-only and each way. A win-only accumulator requires all of your legs to win, and even a single losing leg will cause the whole bet to fail. For example, if you select one dog in each of the first five races at a meeting when betting on greyhound racing, all five must win their races. If the first four greyhounds win and the fifth dog finishes in second place, the win accumulator bet will lose.
An each-way accumulator is designed to make such outcomes more favourable to the bettor. It is actually two bets in one. The first is a win-only accumulator that works as just described. The other is a bet that all of your legs will get a place. If all legs win, both parts of the each-way accumulator bet will pay out. If one or more legs lose, but all are placed, only the place part of the bet will succeed. And if one or more legs fail to either win or place, both parts of the bet will also fail.
Why Bet Accumulators?
The main reason why people like to bet accumulators is because they make it possible to land big wins from relatively small stakes. The odds for each leg of your bet are multiplied together and then multiplied by your stake. That means the total payout for a winning accumulator can be far higher than it would be if you were to bet on singles.
For example, if you were to bet £2 on each of five horses at odds of 2/1 and they all won, each of your bets would give you a £6 return. That would give you £30 in total for a £10 outlay. But if you were to bet the same £10 on a win accumulator and all five horses won, the bet would return a much bigger £2,430. If you were to bet just £2, it would still return an impressive £486.
The potential payout for an accumulator depends on your stake, the number of legs you include and the odds of each leg. In 2023, one Betfair customer landed a payout of £264,712 after staking £50 on a successful 13-leg football accumulator. And that’s not the biggest accumulator success story by any means.
Another reason why people bet accumulators is to make selections with particularly short odds more viable for betting purposes. Betting on a selection at odds of 1/5 isn’t very attractive to anyone. After all, a £10 bet would return just £12 for a £2 profit. But put five such selections into a £10 accumulator and if they all succeed the return would be a much healthier £24.88.
How to Use Our Accumulator Bet Calculator
Our accumulator bet calculator will obviously help you to figure out the returns of a bet you’ve already made. But you can also use it to give you the potential payout of a bet before you make it. Either way, all you have to do to use the odds calculator is follow the simple steps outlined below:
Select Accumulator Bet Mode
Start by tapping the Accumulator button at the top of the app. This will set it to function as an accumulator odds calculator. You can use it for any sport, so you won’t need to worry about having a separate football accumulator bet calculator, horse bet accumulator calculator and so on.Select Win or Each Way
Our bet accumulator calculator is set to figure out win accumulator bets by default. If you want to use it as an each way accumulator bet calculator simply toggle the Each Way selector to Yes.Enter Your Stake
The Unit Stake field is where you should enter your stake for the bet. If you have bet – or intend to bet – £5 to win or £5 each way, enter the number 5. When Each Way has been selected, the unit stake will be doubled because there are actually two bets involved, so a total of 10 would be shown in the Total Stake window.Select the Type
You now need to tell the free bet accumulator calculator the number of legs that are in your bet. This can be done by using the pulldown menu in the Type area. Our acca calc can figure out any accumulator up to 20 legs, so it can accommodate even the most ambitious bettors.Select the Odds Format
Depending on the bookmaker you use and the sport you bet on, you might want to enter your betting odds in fractional, decimal or American format. This acca calculator will accept any of those, so select your preferred option in the Odds Format area.Enter the Odds
You can now enter the odds for each leg of your bet in the format you have just selected. Take care to be accurate, and double-check your entries to make sure you haven’t made any typos.Select the Place Term
If you are using the bet calculator for each way accumulator wagers, you will need to select the place term for each leg via the Place Term menu. All betting markets display their place terms clearly, so refer to those and choose the appropriate fraction (such as 1/4 or 1/5) from the menu.Select the Result
Go to the Result menu for each leg of your bet and select Won, Placed, Dead Heat, Lost or Void, as appropriate. If any leg has been affected by a Rule 4 deduction, select the size of that deduction via the Rule 4 menu.Calculate
Our bet accumulator calculator now has all the data it requires to figure out your wager. Press Calculate and it will run through the numbers to provide you with the Total Return and Total Profit for the bet.
How Our Accumulator Calculator Works
For those of you who are wondering how our accumulator odds calculator works, we can best explain it by telling you how to calculate accumulator returns for yourself. As you’d expect, there’s quite a bit of arithmetic involved, so brace yourself.
Win Accumulator Bet Calculation
The formula that is needed to calculate the total return for a win-only accumulator bet is:
M x S
Where M is the result of the decimal odds of all legs being multiplied together and S is your stake.
For example, let’s say that you’re a fan of footy accumulators and you’ve bet £5 on a fourfold accumulator at odds of 1.80, 2.10, 1.60 and 2.25. Unless you use a football acca calculator you would first need to find the value of M by multiplying those odds together, as follows:
1.80 x 2.10 x 1.60 x 2.25 = 13.608
And now that you know the value of M, you can multiply it by your stake.
13.608 x 5 = £68.04
So the total return of your bet, if it wins, will be £68.04.
Each-Way Accumulator Bet Calculation
For an each-way accumulator, you first need to calculate the win part of the bet as we explained a moment ago. You then need to use the following formula to calculate the place part of the bet:
FM x S
Where FM is the applicable fraction of the odds of each leg, in decimal form, multiplied together, and S is your stake.
For example, let’s imagine that you’re a fan of betting on horse racing and you want to calculate the place return for a £5 accumulator bet on four races. The win odds of your selectons are 2.50, 3.50, 5.00 and 3.50, all of which have place terms of 1/5 the odds. Applying the place terms, the decimal odds for the places would be 1.30, 1.50, 1.80 and 1.50. You would then calculate the value of FM by multiplying those figures together:
1.30 x 1.50 x 1.80 x 1.50 = 5.265
And now that you know that FM = 5.265 you can multiply it by your £5 stake:
5.265 x 5 = £26.32
The return from this place part of an each-way accumulator bet would therefore be £26.32.
As you can imagine, the calculations required for accumulators with even more legs, or with legs that are subject to Rule 4 deductions, are even more involved. That’s why we always recommend using our win or each way bet accumulator calculator to do the work for you. But at least you now know how it works when you hit the Calculate button.
Other Free Bet Calculators
The accumulator bet calculator that we’ve discussed here is just one of many that you can use to make your sports betting life easier. We have win-only and each way bet calculator apps for doubles, trebles, Lucky 15s and more. Head over to our Free Bet Calculator page for further information and the full list of available apps.
FAQ
What is an accumulator bet?
How are accumulator bets calculated?
Are accumulator bets worth it?
How many bets are in a 4 horse accumulator?
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