Easy Acca Guide – How To Place Accumulator Bets

Easy to follow guide for placing your first football accumulator on 4 selections.

Our easy-to-follow Acca guide walks you through the process of placing your first accumulator bet online. We also provide tips and advice for avoiding common mistakes.

I did say the guide was easy to follow, but I didn't say it was short! Stick with it; you'll find everything you need to know about making Acca (Accumulator) bets. 

All you need to do is follow our step-by-step instructions.

Step 1: Where To Bet?

If you have access to an online bookmaker, that's great. If you don't, try either Paddy Power or Boylesports. Both offer promotional deals for new customers and give enhanced benefits on football accumulators. 

Nothing stops you from joining multiple bookmakers and checking which offers the best deals and odds. Of course, you can join any bookmaker; this guide isn't dependent on you being a member of any particular site.

Step 2: Who To Bet On?

This guide explains the 'four-fold' football accumulator, the smallest Acca you can do. Essentially, you'll be predicting the outcome of four matches. Decide if each game will be a home win, an away win, or a draw.

You can pick any football match your bookmaker is quoting odds on.

However, the most popular games with fans are Premier League or top European fixtures. Nevertheless, you're not restricted to those leagues. 

Good value can be found in the lower divisions, too. But stick to leagues where you know the teams and their abilities.

Most punters select games that are due to be played within a few hours of each other. Nothing stops you from choosing games that take place weeks or months apart. Just be aware that your money will be tied up longer.

Make Your Selection

Now, the difficult part – making your selections! It's worth studying trends and form before making your selections. 

To help you do this, I've listed websites you will find helpful: SoccerStats is a free collection of footballing stats covering all the critical data. 

Football365 is another site with a lot of information on trends & stats. 

Many bookies websites also offer head-to-head stats on individual games. Fixtures can be found on the bookmakers' sites, but if you want a list of games that will be shown live on TV, try this Live Football on TV Guide.

Home and Away

Remember to bet with your head and not your heart. Stay objective. We know you love your team, but if they're bottom of the table with no fit strikers, are they likely to win away at Man City?

Don't discount home advantage. In the Premier League season 22/23, home teams won 48% of the time. Away teams triumphed in 29% of matches, and 23% of games ended in a draw.

One of the biggest mistakes I see new punters making is overestimating top teams' away form. 

For example, Man City lost 5 games in the 22/23 Premier League campaign. 4 of those defeats came on the road.

Winning on the road is still challenging, even for the best teams. Don't worry; there are options for accumulator insurance that can reduce the risk of one team letting you down.

Step 3: Placing The Acca

You've done your research and picked your selections… now you need to place the accumulator bet.

Login to your bookmakers' website and navigate to the football section. 

Here, you'll see a list of fixtures with odds boxes next to the team names. Usually, three boxes – Home, Draw, and Away. Just click on the odds box to select that option.

Below is an illustration of how to do this at Paddy Power.

Step 4: How Do I Win?

A fourfold accumulator is won when your four predictions come in. If you've selected four home wins and all the home teams win, you've won! 

If one or more teams lose, the bet is dead. Your stake is now in the hands of the bookies 🙁 .

The mechanics of the accumulator bet are both simple and complicated.

You get bigger odds as your small stake grows with each win. If £1 is bet on a team at odds of 10/1 and that team wins, then you've got £10 riding on the next game instead of £1.

If the second team wins, you've got more money on the third game, and finally, the whole lot is placed on the last game, giving you a potentially massive return. With the accumulator bet, this all happens automatically.

It's no different than walking into the bookies on Friday and placing a £1 bet on Wrexham F.C. You return to them on Saturday and put the Wrexham winnings on Arsenal. You return on Sunday and place the Arsenal winnings on Chelsea.

Making those bets separately or as an accumulator is the same thing, but of course, the benefit of doing it as an accumulator is it saves you all that walking! 

And more importantly, the games can take place simultaneously, and you still get the multiplier benefit.