My First Acca

Had a bit of a break from bookie bashing over the past month or two and since then it looks like acca offers have become a hot topic. I’d never done one before so thought id give it a try yesterday. Thanks to all those who have helped out on the acca threads with spreadsheets, maths and strategy. All very helpful when you are trying to get your head around stuff. Would be great if all the info could be collated somewhere on the site along with some simple strategies. Anyway i thought id just share a couple of practical things i learned from my little trial.

Lessons i learned:

– If you want to lay every leg, make sure the game you are backing is available on the exchange. Im unable to get a Betfair account at the moment so am limited to markets available on Smarkets, Betdaq and Matchbook. I got a bit too focussed on finding low odds games that don’t overlap on Coral that i forgot to take note of the league i was betting on. Turns out that Smarkets don’t offer Lithuanian league football games, so one leg of my acca was not layable. It won, but it was risk i didn’t want.

– Keep a good record. There is quite a bit of data you need to keep track of on an acca so unless you want to be constantly revisiting websites to check details, you need to have it noted down and organised. This should go without saying for any kind of matched betting really.

– Have some kind of schedule to tell you when games start and finish and make sure you aren’t going to be tied up. I ended up having to put a band practice on hold for 20 mins while i checked results, did the calculations and got my lay bet down. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a hassle trying to do it all on my phone and the pressure of trying to rush it could have led to a costly mistake. This only applies if you are wanting to lay every leg.

In the end, I ended up making a decent profit from this and will definitely be doing it again.

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wottsy
4

April 28, 2016 at 10:34 am

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Dave_Jones 10 April 28, 2016 at 10:49 am

Congrats on a profitable first acca wottsy. I find the hassle and inconvenience of having to lay each leg too much trouble to tell you the truth. I therefore choose the first five legs with really low odds (it doesn’t matter if these games overlap because I’m not laying them) then I choose the final leg with much higher odds which starts after the other five games have all completed. Then if the first five legs have all been successful for me (I try to choose games where this happens around 70 to 80% of the time), I then use Matts risk free calculator to lay the final leg.

So far I have been very successful with this strategy however I suspect the bookies are well aware of this method and it wont be long before I loose more accounts.

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wottsy 4 April 28, 2016 at 11:14 am

Your method does sound like far less hassle. If you are coming out with good profit 80% of the time you have a long term goldmine. This may be a closely guarded secret, but what kind of criteria do you use to select games where there is a good chance of success? I know literally nothing about football so find it difficult to know whether the low low odd I’m seeing a really indicative of the teams chances in the match.

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The Minister 5 April 28, 2016 at 11:37 am

Good effort Wottsy. I’ve been making a start too.

1.3…76℅ chance of win…
1.2…83℅ chance… Etc…

There’s plenty decimal odds converter apps knocking about .

A thing I’d like to ask is what the in store offers are like.

I asked my dad to pop into the village bookies and case out the ACCA offers but he didn’t really know what I was on about so they just fobbed him off!

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The Minister 5 April 28, 2016 at 11:42 am

Regarding the low odds. I’m not an expert but Jeremy usbourne posted that the exchange odds are the best indicator that there is of a teams chances. At least available to us.

They often drop if its a popular favourite closer to the match, so that could distort it a bit.. similarly team news can influence things too.

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SammyR 1 April 28, 2016 at 2:21 pm

I am partway through my first ‘proper’ ACCA currently and what I have learnt is not to just go jumping in when you get an offer through and go and do one with an initial stake of £200!!

Picking KO times that don’t overlap is definitely essential if you want to lay and of course liquidity in Exchange

I have done a couple of v small (£5 risk free) ACCAs before and tended to stick to BTTS, a good alternative to 1X2

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78naD 4 April 28, 2016 at 3:08 pm

Sammy, you done an acca with a stake of 200? Why, when the max refund is 50?

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SammyR 1 April 28, 2016 at 4:15 pm

I had naively (aka stupidly) misunderstood what lays I’d need if my initial ACCA leg won. I didn’t expect the first leg of it to win but of course football is full of surprises! Luckily it has worked out well, but could’ve been a different story – lesson very definitely learnt for the future and I will be sticking to much lower stakes in future.

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78naD 4 April 28, 2016 at 4:23 pm

Stakes of 50 are fine, but 200 is a bit of a step, unless playing Will Hills and games of odds 1.01 etc.

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Dave_Jones 10 April 28, 2016 at 10:20 pm

I’m sorry wottsy I did not explain what I am doing very well. What I should have said is that two or more legs loose around 20 to 30% of the time, this does not mean that I am profitable 70 to 80% of the time. If I had something that good I don’t think I would be posting it on a public message board site lol.

If one of the first five legs looses then I don’t lay the sixth leg, but sometimes the sixth leg will go on and win and I will end up with the FB, this will mean I loose around 20% of my stake assuming 80% extraction of the FB.

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Dave_Jones 10 April 29, 2016 at 2:16 pm

I forgot to add wottsy, I agree with you that yes it would be very useful if all the acca info could be collated somewhere on the site along with some simple strategies.

The problem is though, that would be quite a lot of work for someone, and also the chances are the info would be copied and added to one of the pay for use sites.

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weenie 0 April 29, 2016 at 9:43 pm

The ironic thing is that when I was a mug punter, I did accas all the time and never won.

The last 3 accas I have done, all 5 (and one 6!) legs won, so I only made a small profit, compared to the £100+ I could have won from mug bets!

Ah well, such is life!

Perhaps I will throw in the odd mug acca punt!

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Dave_Jones 10 May 1, 2016 at 10:10 am

When you were mug puntting accas weenie were you going for the very low odds games that I assume your are going for now, or where you going for games that should your acca win you would make a lot of money?

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weenie 0 May 1, 2016 at 4:32 pm

@Dave_Jones

A bit of both, though more likely ones that would make me a lot of money!

Funnily enough, I got a £25 acca refund from BetVictor today on a five leg (one lost) acca – the first of many I hope!

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