Saturday 3pm, four teams on the slip: evens, 6/4, 4/6 and 2/1. Put a fiver on and the acca calculator says the odds are 24/1. That’s £125 back if they all come in.
And they won’t, most weeks. The bookie’s own prices put the chance of that four-fold at 4%, and that’s before you take out their margin. That’s not a reason to stop. It just helps to know the size of the dream you’re buying.
Using the acca calculator
Add a row per selection, up to 20. Type the odds however your bookie shows them: 6/4, 1.91, evens. Set each leg’s result as it finishes:
- Won / pending: counts at full odds.
- Lost: the acca’s done. The calculator will tell you, in case you were hoping.
- Void: postponed match, non-runner. The leg counts as 1.0 and the rest carry on.
Void the 6/4 in the example and it becomes a treble at 9/1: £50 back instead of £125.
Acca boosts
Most UK bookies boost accas by a percentage of the winnings, usually more the more legs you add. Put the boost in the box. A 10% boost on the example takes the profit from £120 to £132, so £137 back. Useful, but read the small print. Boosts often need a minimum number of legs and minimum odds per leg, and some are paid as a free bet instead of cash.
The maths
Acca odds = odds₁ × odds₂ × … × oddsₙ (decimal) Return = stake × acca odds
2.0 × 2.5 × 1.67 × 3.0 = 25.0, which is 24/1 in fractional. Each leg has the bookie’s margin baked in, and the margins multiply too. Four legs at a 5% margin each is roughly 20% against you on the whole bet. That’s why the seventh and eighth legs feel cheap but aren’t.
Worried about one leg letting you down? A Yankee or Lucky 15 covers four picks with doubles and trebles too. In North America the same bet is called a parlay.
Accas are cheap thrills on purpose. Keep the stake small. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.