Accumulators, or parlays for you Yanks out there, are bets where you combine two or more selections to form one single bet. This bet will need all of the selections to win in order to gain a return, and if even one of them loses out you lose your entire bet. A win however will lend you pretty hefty return over simply betting every game as singles.
The allure of the accas are quite easy to see: by simply picking 5-7 safe games and risking a small sum of money you could potentially earn quite a big return. If you are even a bit riskier adding a couple of extra games, taking some tougher matches or adding a zero to your bet amount you could be looking at life changing money coming your way like this Chelsea fan.
But is accumulators the way to go if you want to strike it rich in sports betting? Is it really as simple as most people are trying to make it out to be? It is a difficult question to answer and fully depends on the utility function of the bettor in question and we will share some things you should be aware of before you decide what is the best to bet on in your situation.
You might have heard others tell this to you, or maybe it is news to you, but the fact is that accumulator bets are a bad proposition. If you are simply betting some random games without any analysis, but just putting together a string of “safe” bets (whatever that is) and hoping they will all come up your way is a recipe for burning money.
Let us explain why that is.
For this example we are going to assume that we are betting random games, i.e. games that are priced correctly at the bookmaker we use and added a vigorish. We are going to take a look at two games from the Europa League in football.
For our accumulator we have found that Liverpool to beat Besiktas at 1.57 odds and Roma to beat Feyenoord at 1.57 are the bets we want to make.
If we do some simple calculations we can find the implied win probabilities and expected values of these bets if we assume that the bookmaker has priced them relatively correctly. If you want to know how we calculate these things, check out our sports betting math article:
EV[Betting on Liverpool] = 0,6185 * ($5 * 0,57) + (1 - 0,6185) * (-$5) = -$0,145 EV[Betting on Roma] = 0,6191 * ($5 * 0,57) + (1 - 0,6191) * (-$5) = -$0,140 EV[Total] = -$0,285
By betting on these two games individually we will end up with a total negative expected value of -$0,285, not a great wager you might say.
EV[Accumulator bet] = 0,3829 * ($10 * 1,4649) + (1 - 0,3829) * (-$10) = -$0,562
The expected value of the accumulator bet if you wager the same total amount on the two wagers in unison is quite a bit worse. You are looking at almost double the expected loss on the same type of events by simple combining them in a different fashion.
Let us add 3 more “safe” matches in Villarreal, Sevilla and Wolfsburg:
EV[Accumulator bet] = 0,0768 * ($10 * 11,331) + (1 - 0,0768) * (-$10) = -$1,298
You can see that adding more games reduces your expected value quite dramatically. A bet which offers you -13% in expected return is quite bad.
So if you are simply stacking up random games and hoping to hit it big once in a while you should be aware that you are taking on massive negative value bets.
So now you know all about why accumulators only will exacerbate your already negative edge and leave you with even more negative expected value bets. It might seem that there are no way that betting on the accas can be good if you want to win in the long run, and that is partly true. In about 99.999% of the time accumulators are a bad way of betting.
But there are some times when it would make sense to make use of them and we shall delve into examples of those.
As you saw in our example above betting blindly on accumulators will make you increase the edge the bookmakers have on you, as well as decrease your chances of coming up a winner, not to mention that you are probably shrinking your bankroll at an even higher rate.
But if you happen to find bets that are positive expected value (that is more than one at the same time), then putting them together in a double can actually produce higher EV.
Let us assume you have handicapped the matches and believe that Liverpool’s (and Roma’s) chances of winning are about 65% and not a little less than 62% which is implied by the odds set. Then your expected value of the $5 bets would be:
EV[Betting on Liverpool] = 0,65 * ($5 * 0,57) + (1 - 0,65) * (-$5) = $0,1025 EV[Betting on Roma] = 0,65 * ($5 * 0,57) + (1 - 0,65) * (-$5) = $0,1025 EV[Total] = $0,205
Now if you would parlay these two into a double you would find an expected value of:
EV[Accumulator bet] = 0,4225 * ($10 * 1,4649) + (1 - 0,4225) * (-$10) = $0,4142
About double the EV you get by betting them as singles. Not bad.
Now the problem is obviously how you can find two (or more) good bets at the same time at the same bookmaker. It is not as easy as it seems. And even if you do it isn’t always the case that it is the bet(s) that will give you optimal bankroll growth if you care about that (hint: you should).
Another good reason people have for going for the big parlays rather than grinding it out with single bets is because they simply may not be winners in the long run, or maybe do not have the patience for it. If that is the case then you have a bigger chance of ending up with a big score by going for it big time rather than grinding it out over several months only to end up with the same result which you could have after a few weeks.
This means that you could potentially last a lot longer if you are careful with your money. If you deposit $1000 you can place a total of 100 different $10 accumulators, plenty of chances to hit a big one among those.
Alternatively you could grind it out with like $20 to maybe $50 bets, move up and down for some time, but not break out in any direction
So let us end this with the most common reason: they are fun as hell! I routinely make them, even though I am fully aware that they are quite the sucker bets. But I make sure that the bets are small and something I can afford to make.
It is common for me and my best mate to make some big wagers every NFL Sunday during the season, it has just become a part of our routine. Having some random wagers on things we “think” will happen makes it that much fun, and we laugh at how horrible the teams are if they lose our bet for us or we rejoice if we score big a weekend.
Whatever your reason is you should not have to excuse yourself for using your money as you see fit. As long as you are having fun, keep a separate bankroll, bet within your means and not use money you need in the near future then you are free to do as you want.
