The accumulator is one of many sports’ fans favourite types of bets. For one thing you get to cover a lot of bases with just one wager, but for another you increase the amount of profit that you can get with a small bet. I’ve talked about acca insurance elsewhere, including the basics of what an accumulator actually is, so I won’t go over the same ground here.
However I will tell you about what an accumulator bonus is and what the difference is between that and acca insurance. I’ll give you info about the major terms you should look out for and I’ll explain why not all acca bonuses are the same and how some bookies are better than others. Hopefully it will help you make good decisions about which offers to go for.
Best Acca Bonus Offers
What Is An Accumulator Bonus?
Put simply, Acca Insurance is where you get a free bet or the like if one leg of an accumulator lets you down. It’s a good way of protecting yourself at times when you take on a big acca but are unsure on the outcome of a couple of the legs.
Accumulator Bonuses also involve placing bets on the outcome of numerous different events, but if you get any of your selections wrong then you won’t get your money back or anything like that. Instead with an Accumulator Bonus you’ll get increased returns on the acca you’ve placed, commonly seeing larger returns the more legs that you put on.
I’ll try to explain that a little more simply. Let’s say you’ve placed £1 on a three-leg accumulator with odds of 30-1. Without any bonus you’ll win £30. However your favourite bookmaker is offering a 10% bonus on winnings; that means that you’ll get £33 into your account.
Higher Bet Returns
The key fact when it comes to accumulator bonuses is that the more legs you have in your acca the more of a bonus you’ll get in return. Of course the flip side of that is that the more folds you have selected the more chance there is that one of them won’t come off.
These numbers aren’t necessarily accurate, but here’s an example of what you could find on offer:
- Three Legs – 5% Bonus
- Four Legs – 10% Bonus
- Five Legs – 15% Bonus
- Six Legs – 20% Bonus
- Seven Legs – 25% Bonus
- Eight Legs – 30% Bonus
- Nine Legs – 40% Bonus
- Ten Legs – 50% Bonus
- Eleven Legs – 60% Bonus
- Twelve Legs – 70% Bonus
- Thirteen Legs – 80% Bonus
- Fourteen Legs – 90% Bonus
- Fifteen+ Legs – 100% Bonus
How Are Bonus Winnings Added?
This is something that changes from one bookie to the next and it’s also the key for what makes one acca bonus better than the other.
The most common thing for a bookmaker to do is to add your bonus as real cash, although some also issue winnings in free bets. Free bets are commonly single-use tokens where you won’t get your stake back with any winnings.
Another alternative is to give you your additional winnings as bonus funds. These funds can be used pretty much however you like, but you’ll have to roll them over a certain number of times before you’re able to withdraw them. You tend to get your stake back with winnings when it’s bonus funds. Keep your eyes out for any rules about minimum odds, though.
That is not an industry-wide scenario, however. Given that it’s such a competitive market some bookies try to make their offer more appealing by giving you your winnings as straight cash. You can withdraw it straight away or gamble with it on something else without having to roll it over or meet any particular criteria. You can see, then, why that would be more attractive to punters than free bets.
Common Terms To Be Aware Of
Other than whether or not your bonus winnings will be returned as a free bet or as cash, what else should you be looking out for when it comes to Accumulator Bonus offers?
The first thing you’ll want to keep an eye on is whether there’s a maximum stake you can put on. Bookies are happy to give you a decent return for your bet, especially if you’re placing a bet with something like fourteen folds and therefore increasing your chance of something going wrong. They don’t want to be in a position where their profits for the entire year can be wiped out with a simple bet, however! That’s why some will say that their bonus funds only apply to bet with a maximum stake of a given amount.
Equally a number of bookmakers have a maximum payout that you’ll want to look out for. The number varies from one bookie to another, but you may find that there’s a maximum return of £10,000, for example. Given that Accas with as many as fifteen legs can return in excess of £10,000 you may want to weigh up whether it might be worth forgoing the bonus funds and just taking your winnings outright.
Another thing that can vary from company to company is whether you can mix and match your sports. Are you allowed to have four football legs, six tennis legs and three rugby legs in the same acca? Or do all of your selections need to be from just one sport? Football is one of the most common sports to have accumulator bets placed on it and plenty of bookies do special offers just for the footie.
How about minimum odds? Bets that receive offers from bookies are often subject to minimum odds requirements and Accumulator Bonus deals are no different. There might be terms that say you need to have minimum odds on each leg or on the accumulator as a whole, but it’s common practice for bookies to ask for some form of minimum odds to be reached.
Cashing Out bets is a popular phenomenon nowadays and it’s even more prevalent with accumulators owing to the way things can change so quickly. Most bookmakers say that if you cash out your bet then you won’t get your Accumulator Bonus. Some allow you to partially cash out your bet and are willing to adjust the bonus funds you’re paid accordingly.
When To Use Accumulator Bonus Offers
If you’re placing an accumulator and feel confident about 90% of the bets you’re placing then you’ll probably want to go for Acca Insurance as the offer you take a bookie up on. If you’re fairly confident that you’ve nailed every single prediction you’ve made, however, then that’s where Accumulator Bonuses come in handy.
Getting The Most Our Of An Accumulator Bonus
The main thing you’ll want to do if you want to take advantage of an accumulator bonus is to pick selections that are likely to win. That might seem obvious, but it’s worth bearing in mind that an acca bonus involves your bookmaker of choice paying you a bonus on your winnings, with 10% of nothing being nothing. The bigger your accumulator, the larger the bonus, which makes it tougher to win.
Keeping things simple is the key to taking advantage of an accumulator bonus, with acca insurance being the offer that you want to look to if you’re hoping to add a risky wager or two into the mix. Winning bets is hard at the best of times, of course, let alone when you’ve tied the outcome of several to each other’s success, but not taking unnecessary risks is the most important thing for acca bonus success.
The best thing to do is pick an acca without a specific offer in mind. Once you’ve selected your bet then go find the best deal that suits that specific acca. Do not place an acca or add legs to an acca just to claim the offer, otherwise you are simply playing into the hands of the bookie, increasing your risk and making it more likely you will lose.
Don’t Get Greedy
If you were to opt for an accumulator that had, say, eight legs and odds of 150/1 or so, a £10 bet would give you around £1,500 in winnings. Because it’s an eight-leg accumulator, the bonus would be 60% with most bookmakers, meaning that you’d get an additional amount in the region of £900 added to your winnings. That would mean that you could walk away with £2,400 or more in winnings, which is impressive.
Those sorts of numbers would be enough to make anyone get excited, but the reality is that in order to push things that high you’ll have had to add a few risky wagers to the acca. It’s difficult not to get greedy when you’re coming up with an accumulator at the best of times, let alone when there’s a bonus included that would see your winnings sky-rocket if all of your selections were to come in.
The problem is that bonuses count for nothing if you don’t get your acca selections right. Greed is the killer of most accumulators, with punters adding ‘just one more leg’ or opting for a slightly less realistic result. Seeing the odds move up each time you add a selection that you think might win can be intoxicating, but remember that the win here comes in the form of the bonus, not the ever-expanding odds.
Obviously some bookmakers add a minimum odds amount into their small print in order to stop punters from all opting for guaranteed wins to get the bonus. Whilst that obviously means that you need to think about your bets, it isn’t a challenge. Don’t add selections that have higher odds than the minimum requirement unless you’re supremely confident that they’re going to end up being winners.
Think About What You’re Betting On
It might seem obvious, but thinking about what it is that you’re adding to your accumulator is another surefire way of increasing the odds of success. Most bookmakers offer the acca bonus on a variety of sports, leagues and even markets. Just because that is the case, it doesn’t mean that you need to add things to your wager that you wouldn’t normally consider betting on.
In other words, if you’re a big football fan but never watch horse racing, why would you add a race taking place at Aintree Racecourse to your acca? Equally, if the only thing that you watch is the Premier League, don’t start adding Championship matches to your accumulator just to bump up the number of legs that you’re betting on. Bet on what you know and research it well before placing the wager.
This works even once you’ve opted for the event that you’re betting on. Most bookies will allow you to choose what it is that you’re adding to your acca, so make sure that you know the subject before you get too carried away. Rather than adding the full-time result from a load of different matches, for example, why not look at adding a chunk of selections from the match containing the team that you actually follow?
Look For The Bookies That Pay In Cash
We’ve mentioned this briefly elsewhere on this page, but different bookmakers will opt for different ways of paying out your bonus money. You are almost always going to be better off if you look out for one that is going to pay it in cash than via some other method, so make sure that that’s an option available to you. Even if you want to re-bet it, you can choose to do that with the cash that you’re paid.
On the other hand, if a bookie pays out bonus amounts in free bets then you’re locked-in to trying to win more bets in order to be able to withdraw it as cash. Why would you put yourself in a situation where you’re having to jump through hoops in order withdraw money that is yours in the first place? If a bookmaker is offering a bonus then that’s their choice, but making it tougher for you to get hold of said bonus isn’t fair.
Making Use Of Your Winnings
Let us presume, for a moment, that you’ve placed your accumulator, all of the legs have come in and you’ve been paid out both your winnings and the additional bonus amount. What do you do next? Obviously this is all about personal choice and you will know better than anyone else what plans you’ve got for your winnings, but it is definitely a good idea to have a sense of what your plan is before you’re paid out.
One way of operating, for example, would be to withdraw your winnings to your bank and then use your bonus payout as your new bankroll. If you’re going to opt for an approach like this then it’s really crucial that you don’t treat the bonus money as anything other than actual cash in your bankroll. Yes, it’s money that you wouldn’t have had if you’d placed your wager with a different bookmaker, but you should ignore that.
The second you start to treat money that you’ve won as some sort of unexpected surprise is the moment that you begin taking riskier bets and increase the likelihood that you’ll lose them. You’ve worked hard to win your accumulator and the associated bonus, so don’t then just throw away the extra cash with silly bets. Put just as much research and attention into the bet as with any other wager you’d place.
