How to properly play multiples?

Every punter at least once has seen a story about a record-breaking payout of a tiny investment. These type of stories are usually posted on the bookmakers' websites and official social media accounts. Such inspirational stories motivate bettors to try their luck, and maybe one day find themselves featured in a similar post.

Mainly popular among recreational bettors, let's find out if professional punters are right about opting out on this type of bet and are multiples really profitable?

Some bettors use multiples in the following way. Whenever they have a bet they want to place, they are looking for another one with high chances of winning to pair it with. Such an approach allows punters to increase the profitability of a bet while not taking that much of a risk.

However, some tipsters overestimate their chances quite often. They forget to accurately assess the risk that they take, sometimes incorrectly comprehending the likelihood of the event. Let's assume that you are pairing your desired bet with a 90% probable one. This is a really high probability, to be honest, but still, there is a 10% chance of things to go the other way. Many would say that such possibility of failure is almost irrelevant, but in reality, it would bring your (let's assume) 50% winning chances down to 45%.

Another common way of playing accumulators is placing all of your selection on the favourites, let's say in one particular playing day. Just to show you an example, let's assume that all of our favourites have around the 90% chance of winning (still, bear in mind, they have a 10% of losing). When playing such a bet, punters partially forget about the fact that in order for the acca bet to win, all of its selection must win too. The key word here is "all".

Even if your selected favourites are really odds-on, the chances of all of them actually winning are lower than you can imagine, around 35%. Yes, it is not a mistake.

To make it a little bit more simple, let's assume that we are placing a 10-folder with each backed-up team having a 90% chance of winning. That will convert into a 1.11 (11/100) odds of each selection, which will further give us the following outcome:

1.11^10 = 2.8394

The number that we got is representing the total odds of our imaginary 10-fold accumulator bet. The total odds of 2.8 (2.8394) also represent a 35.5% winning chances. Just for comparison purposes, if your favourites are only 80% likely to win, with the same accumulator bet, your chances of landing the whole acca are barely 11% (10.74%).

The moral of the story is the following, even if your "sure" candidates have high chances of winning, there possibility of them losing is not as irrelevant as you think.

Which type of bet is better? Single or Multiple?

We have already mentioned that professional bettors do not really approve betting on multiples. The traditional acca betting you place small amounts in hopes to receive big payouts. You're mainly betting on the underdogs and pray they will make it this time. Another way to do it is to go with 50/50 wagers, which a real prayer. Nothing can help you there, and you end up taking just a pure gamble. While having such a high unlikeliness, the thing that attracts tipsters is a chance for a massive return.

Professionals do not use such strategies as they are not leading to a constant and steady profit-making, rather just fun and a one-hitter win. The unpredictability of such a gamble is incredibly high.

Punters who place multiples are usually not the ones with the biggest bankrolls and, therefore, are limited in their actions. This is not a case of professional bettors, who would instead prefer placing a single bet with a much higher stake.

We have made enough statements about such betting style being rather unprofitable and risky. Still, there are those who are betting in that way and make more profits than they would have done placing singles. 

Which type of bet is better? Single or Multiple?

To do so, you have to know all of the ins and outs of accumulator betting and understand how they really work. First of all, let's take a look at accas' pros and cons:

Cons

• Higher bookmaker's margin imposed per selection
• Lower limits than on singles
• All of the selection must win in order for your multiple to land

Pros

• Higher payouts
• Combining bets at current prices
• Possibility of mixing up specific bet types (round-robin)
• Gaining the edge

For those who do not know, there is something like full cover permutation bets. You can find more information about those in our betting dictionary. We would like to discuss one of those permutations bets and how it can help you be more profitable while betting on multiples.

A so-called round-robin bet gives you a possibility to back up all the outcome options in the selected events. For example, let's say that you are looking to place a bet on 4 different teams/players. To help the round-robin do its job, you have to do the following:

• Place a multiple bet with all four teams/players
• Place four bets without one teams/players (4 bets including 3 out 4 teams/players)
• Place six bets without two teams/players (6 bets including 2 out 4 teams/players)

After doing so, you will gain the edge over the bookmaker's limitations. Even if each selection from your accumulator is being capped at €/£20, you still will end up with a €/£140 placed on your team/player, in contrast to a max of €/£40, in case of a separate single. That is a brief explanation of how it should work, the rest is for you.