Laying an accumulator

Over the past few months, since late 2013, some bookies including Betfair’s Fixed Odds site have been offering refunds and bonuses if we bet an accumulator with them.

Those offers have varied between betting a double, up to a five timer.

In return for betting our multiple, bookies may offer a normal free bet, a percentage of added winnings, or even our stake refunded as a free bet if we hit a loser with our multiple bet.

All of those different type of offers can be traded to profit with zero or almost zero risk.

Follow this link to download the Lay Accumulator spreadsheet Lay_an_Accumulator

The file has locked cells, so only cells that require input will allow overtyping.

If the file opens as “Read only” or appears to be locked, just re-name the file and it should then work ok for you.

Strategy :-

Bet the qualifying bet or bets with the bookie and lay the other end of those in Betfair or Betdaq.

That may be several single bets, or a double, treble, etc. . . . Lay the same runners in Betfair or Betdaq.

As with normal free bet offers for single runners, we can trade accumulator offers to profit.

We can take exactly the same staking principles that we use for different types of bookie offer involving single runners, and apply those staking methods to our bookie accumulator refund offers.

The only difference is that more runners are involved.

See the NOTES tab in the Excel file for a written description of how to stake different bookie refund offers.

There is also a time element to consider.

If we can bet our runners or teams with time between events so that we can lay them one at a time.

The lay odds may get bigger or smaller whilst we wait for one event to finish before the next starts.

Bigger lay odds could give us a red trade, but we can avoid that by adjusting our lay stakes as events take place.

In my experience, overall profit from accumulator refunds can be smaller than we would expect from normal free bet offers, but acceptable.

Process.

Select runners or football teams with time between each so that we know the result of one selection before we lay the next.

Short odds may be best.

If our lay odds increase after we have placed our bookie bet we will have to use a smaller lay stake to keep our liabilities down which will reduce our profit.

Bigger odds usually prove more costly if they drift.

Big odds are ok for our first runner of course as we can place our bookie accumulator bet and place the first lay straight away, so we can look for an Arb or very close odds with our first runner.

Enter bet odds into the spreadsheet to see the potential bookie payout.

Enter lay odds, lay stakes in the “Matched” column, and a “One” against each runner to indicate a win.

Compare total potential lay liabilities with potential bookie bet winnings.

Reduce lay stakes to balance the liabilities with bet winnings.

We can now asses our potential win or lose profit.

When we are satisfied with that, go ahead and place the bookie bet and the first lay.

Hit a loser and that is end of trade.

We have a losing bet but a successful lay.

Hit a winner and we need to lay again.

Our 2nd lay stake recovers the lay liabilities from hitting that first winner, and also gives us profit if we hit a loser with our 2nd runner.

And so it goes on.

We either hit a loser at some point to exit our trade, or we hit all winners and hopefully have smaller lay liabilities than bet winnings.

Either way, we should have profit if our lay odds have not drifted dramatically.

Note that your bookie betslip for your accumulator will include the bet stake in the projected winnings.

Make sure that you deduct your bet stake from the betslip total before working out your lay staking.

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Selections with no time between events.

This type of trade carries risk.

Some bookie offers are for football matches that all kick off at the same time or almost the same time.

To trade an accumulator with no time between events, we need to lay “In Play”, and we need our teams to score goals.

The Excel file available here has a “Dutching” spreadsheet for trading accumulators with selections that all kick off at the same time.

If we have to select games that all kick off at the same time, we can Dutch our lay stakes.

We will need to place our lays “In Play” and we need goals to be scored so that we can then lay our selections at lower odds for guaranteed winnings.

If goals go against our selections and our teams then lose after we have layed them, that can be very good news, especially if 2 or more don’t win once we have placed our lays.

I don’t have a video for that at present, but I’ll put one together to describe the Dutching spreadsheet and how to avoid trouble in trading.

The following videos describe the spreadsheet and show 3 live trading examples.

Demo plus a free treble http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQQXPRh5L0

2 x £5 Free doubles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM4B3qp60cQ

How to lay bookie accumulator refund offers http://youtu.be/VBpepndVUDA

Links to Videos can be found on the NOTES tab of the excel file.

Tabs are at the bottom of your Excel screen once you open the file.