Your accumulator
Lay plan
Place only the first lay now. Lay the next leg after the previous one wins, and if the lay odds have moved, type the real odds in and use the new stake. If a lay wins, the acca is dead and you stop.
A sequential lay calculator tells you how much to lay on each leg of an accumulator, one game at a time, so you end on the same figure whether the acca lands or dies on leg one. Take a £10 four-fold at 2.1, 1.8, 2.5 and 1.65, lay odds a touch higher, 2% commission. The free calculator above says lay £8.77 on leg 1 first. Every outcome then finishes at −£1.41, and the most you ever have tied up is a £64.42 liability on the last leg.
That’s the whole trick. You never lay the full acca in one go (most exchanges don’t offer that market anyway). You lay leg 1. If it loses, your bookie bet is dead but the lay pays, and you’re done. If it wins, you move on and lay leg 2 with a bigger stake, and so on.
How the sequential lay calculator works
It works backwards from the last leg. The final lay has to cover the whole acca payout, so
Last lay = stake × (acca odds − 1 + q) ÷ (lay odds − commission) Each earlier lay = next lay × (1 − commission) ÷ (its lay odds − commission)
q is 1 for a qualifying bet (your own money) and 0 for a free bet where the stake isn’t returned. Those stakes make every branch of the tree pay the same. It’s the same sum as a normal lay, just chained.
Things that catch people out
- Odds move. The plan assumes today’s lay odds for every leg. When leg 2 kicks off, the price may be different. Type the real lay odds in before you place each lay, and the remaining stakes update. Your locked-in figure shifts a few pence either way.
- Kick-off order. Put the legs in the order they start. If two games overlap, you can’t lay them one after the other, so pick legs with clear gaps.
- Liability grows. The last lay is the big one. Check you’ll have it in your exchange account before you start.
- Free bet accas keep around 60 to 75% of the free bet’s value when the legs are odds-on to evens, more with bigger prices.
For a single bet, the lay calculator is quicker. To compare whole offers, use the matched betting calculator, and the acca calculator checks what the bookie will actually pay.
Acca lay calculator: laying every leg
An acca lay is just a sequential lay. You can’t lay a four-fold as one bet on most exchanges, so you lay leg 1 before it kicks off. If it loses, the acca is dead and the lay wins, and you’re done. If it wins, you lay leg 2 with the bigger stake the calculator shows, and so on. Each lay is sized so every outcome ends on roughly the same figure. Laying every leg at once before the first game starts doesn’t lock in a fixed result and ties up far more liability, which is why one leg at a time is the standard way.
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