matched betting – no lay acca tips and tricks

Apr17
by TFS on April 17, 2018 at 11:58 am
Posted In: Gambling, Matched Betting, Side Hustles / Business

*FANFARE*

It’s here! The long awaited No Lay Acca Guide!

With a great fixture list on this lovely Tuesday evening, I though I’d go above and beyond for you guys and get it out in time.

To be honest, I don’t think there is much in here that is revolutionary but hopefully it will give most people at least a couple of shortcuts and avoid some mistakes if they’ve never done it before and wanted to give it a crack.

I’m not going to literally do a step-by-step guide on how to do an accumulator because it’s horrendously easy. You just go onto OddsMonkey, select the bookie you want, then pick the matches on the list until you are happy with the odds and selections in there, and then offski to the bookmaker website and put the bet on. I am going to assume you are using the OddsMonkey website for choosing your Accas in this guide, because it is the best Matched Betting Software I’ve found out there. What’s more they don’t charge you extra for the extra features such as this No Lay Acca tool, whereas some of the other ones I’ve seen out there tend to do that. If you use one of the other ones, I am pretty sure the software is very similar and the tips below all still apply, so carry on reading either way! If you haven’t signed up to OddsMonkey yet you can do so here: Sign up to OddsMonkey (<– Referral link, OBVS)

Also, I am only going to focus on the “Acca insurance” type of offers here, which means that if one of the teams in the accumulator let’s you down you get a free bet. So, once your accumulator is settled, there are then 3 different outcomes:

  • All teams win: Yay! You make profit
  • More than 1 team loses: You lose your whole original stake
  • Exactly 1 team loses and the rest win: You get a free bet equivalent to your original stake. Go and place this free bet on a high odds close match (but not an arb. Never an arb 1) say a rating between 92% and 98% with odds of 5/1 or greater, this should get you about 75%+ of your original stake back.

The value in these offers is obviously where you get your money back if only one team loses. If you pick low odds teams then the likelihood of that triggering is actually quite high so you will find yourself effectively being able to place many £20 or £25 Accas while “only risking” about £4 or £5 quid. Obviously some will have 2 or more teams losing, and then you will lose your whole stake, but over time and given enough bets, you will eek out profit, I can almost guarantee it.

Anyway, so assuming you have the basics above locked down, here are my extra tips for trying to get more winners and less losers, which at the end of the day is where your real profit is going to come from.

 

1. Research really helps

Sorry if this is totally obvious, but I’ll say it anyway!

Spending 10 minutes per Acca and having a quick look at league tables and even recent form can, IMO, pay dividends.

Not all Odds On shots are created equal

Take a look at the two home teams below which have the same odds of 1.60:

Now let’s have a quick look at the league table of both. I quickly load up livescore.com and navigate to the desired country/league 2:

Now what team would you rather bet on? Cardiff in 2nd playing Birmingham in 22nd? Or Wigan in 3rd playing Scunthorpe in 5th? I mean, it’s a bit of a no brainer isn’t it? Yet this sort of thing crops up surprisingly often. You don’t have to know jack about football to be able to tell one bet is far better than the other.

Admittedly, not all are as obvious as this one, but it’s an easy way to wheedle out the really bad bets. If teams are close to each other in the league, especially after many games have been played, and they are well odds on, then something is amiss and you are probably best to just avoid that as a selection. Especially on weekends where there will be loads of other teams to fill in the gap. And obviously, often times the team that is the “bad bet” will just win anyway, but that definitely doesn’t mean it was a good bet in the first place.

Oh, and I guess you are wondering what the results were? Here you go:

Wigan Athletic 3 – 3 Scunthorpe United

Cardiff City 3 – 2 Birmingham City

Be careful as we approach the end of the season when teams are odds on and you are not sure why just from a quick glance at the League tables. Remember that a mid table team may have “nothing to play for” while the team 10 spots below them a few points from escaping relegation.Likewise avoid teams that have already won the league that are heavily odds on as they also now have “nothing to play for”. These sort of situations provide some anomalies so you’ll have to take this into account in April and May as the main leagues wrap up.

It is also worth pointing out that if you haven’t got time to check anything, and there are a decent amount of fixtures on to quickly select an Acca that is in the right ball park, just go for it and trust the EV (Expected Value)! There is no point in not playing at all just because you haven’t got half an hour to spare checking each and every bet that has come up. The whole point is that EV is positive here, but I think you can actually beat EV by some margin with research and the other basic tips below.

A quick aside: There are so many of these “bad odds on shots” that come up I started to just lay them instead of putting them in my Accas, and have actually done alright out of it. Stats so far are 28 lays, 10 wins (i.e. the team lost), £431 staked and £176 profit for a ROI of 41%. My stakes have been pretty erratic though so if you did each lay to lose £10 (i.e. if the team you laid won, you would lose £10) then the ROI would have been 24%, so still pretty good. I also backed the opposite team a couple of times and it came in so made good profit on that in addition to the above! I wouldn’t advise anyone else do this of course but thought it was worth mentioning. I haven’t done any for a while as it does take extra time and effort and have been concentrating my efforts on the horse racing more at the moment, but I definitely will bear it in mind in the future if/when I get time. Really do need to stop laying PSG in French Ligue 1 though, when will I learn!? 🙂

 

 

2. Stick with home teams if possible

In case you didn’t know, home teams are far more likely to win than away teams. This is supposedly reflected in the odds, but backing heavily odds on teams away from home is not a very good betting strategy from what I’ve seen over the years, so I tend to avoid these unless I really have to or the team is one of the strongest teams about (e.g. Barcelona, PSG and Man City this season)

 

3. Stick to low odds where possible

Simply because the lower the odds, the more likely that all teams will win, and if they don’t then the more likely that only one team will have not won to trigger the Acca insurance. If there is a 1.5 shot at the top of the list, and a 1.25 shot lower down that is twice as likely to win, then I would normally always go for the 1.25 shot (as long as it means your accas fulfils all the other criteria needed – OddsMonkey will tell you if it hasn’t).

 

4. Don’t bother when there aren’t many fixtures on

There are a multitude of lessons in this point so pay attention:

See the big slump in my profit graph at the top of the post, that started around Christmas time and lasted until mid January? At least half of those losses is because I was stupid enough to continue playing when most leagues were taking their Xmas break, there were barely enough selections most days to make up an Acca, and I totally went against the basic principles of doing this. I was making all the rookie mistakes:

  • Putting in teams I’d never heard of from Tunisian Div 3 football
  • Putting in much higher odds than I would normally
  • Putting in teams that weren’t even coming up on the OddsMonkey Acca tool!?

Totally stupid, but as I had been on such a good run previously I guess I just fancied a punt to win a really big win for an Xmas treat (would have been more like a Christmas Miracle if it came in!).

Don’t be like me and succumb to stupidity/greed, stick to the basics and you won’t go far wrong. As you can see I soon learned my lesson and the profits started to go back up!

 

5. You don’t have to play every day

Even though most of these offers allow you to claim at least once per day, which first led me to believe that I had to do one Acca per day to milk the most out of it, I have changed my stance now and try to be more selective about my bets instead. At weekends when there is tonnes of footy it obviously makes sense to do at least one Acca that finishes Saturday, and one Sunday (per account) but during the week or when there are International breaks, and I guess over summer as well, I think you are best off placing less Accas. If an Acca spans the course of 2-3 days then that is no worries!

Update: Another important point bought up by reader markyboy in the comments is that the one per day rule counts for when the last bet in your Acca finishes. So you need to time your Accas to finish on different days, and definitely don’t do two that finish on one day as you may miss out on an insurance refund. There are however other offers that have unlimited refunds, so as always make sure you check the T&Cs of each individual offer.

 

6. All eggs in one basket or spread your bets around?

I can’t tell you which is best on this one and I think it is best for you to decide once you’ve done your research on any given fixture list (I do either or a combination of both depending on how I feel about my selections).

But let’s look at the case for both:

  • All eggs in one basket: If you have found 5 really strong bets, then why not just use them across as many Accas as you can? I’ve done this a few times with moderate success. If you do it this way your returns are going to be more spikey, or have more variance, because you will either lose all your Accas or win them all (or get the insurance) if you use exactly the same teams.
  • Spread your bets: This should in theory work better to smooth out your returns because you are giving yourself more chances to win. However you are also giving yourself more chances to lose 😉 . To be fair I normally do something more like this, because there is nothing worse than getting all of your Accas taken down by that “nailed on” 1.2 shot (see #7 below!). It also makes more sense to do this if you are not super confident on just 5 selections, or are really confident of say 7 or 8 selections. It obviously makes sense to mix and match selections over a few different Accas and bookies in this case.

 

7. Be prepared for bad beats

Annoying shit happens all the time when you are gambling and doing No Lay Accas is no different:

  • One team takes down all of your Accas, and it’s often the lowest price (i.e. the team that really should have won):

That’s about £180 profit down the drain then… Thanks Dinamo!!!

  • Late goals and other unlucky events during matches – Just be fully aware that many of these go in your favour and luck will balance out. Or better still don’t even look at what happened in the game, just take note of results and move on quickly!
  • Getting 12 out of 15 match results correct over 3 Accas, but one team losing in each one. This is infuriating and happens more often than you’d think. I don’t know how or why but if anyone has any tips on avoiding this one, let me know!? 🙂

 

8. Other small/specific tips

  • Beware teams with the same name: I didn’t back a team in French Ligue 2 because I couldn’t understand why they were odds on when they were like 10 places below the other team. Had I looked a bit closer I would have noticed that there were 2 teams from Ajaccio: AC Ajaccio, who are much better than GFC Ajaccio. It’s worth really paying attention to the names as there are a few leagues with many teams from one City in them.
  • Don’t watch your Accas in running: Unless you are a glutton for punishment or like the rush of gambling then it’s probably worth not watching the in running scores. If one of your teams goes 1-0 down early on you will probably spend the next 80 minutes a bit on edge, when the likelihood is they’ll come back and win anyway. Either way, I’d recommend just looking at the scores at the end of the day or the next morning. The negative hit if your Acca has lost this way is a short one, rather than stringing it out over 90 minutes or even the course of the day. Likewise if your teams have gone down by a goal and all end up winning anyway, there is the unnecessary anguish. I seriously need to follow this advice more often 😉
  • Check for bookie specific offers: I have been using William Hill for about 3 months and successfully using their Odds Boost on my Accas (You get one odds boost per day to use on any bet). This really juices the EV!!! It’s definitely worth trying out 3. Still, worth doing I think, no reason not to, as any account matched betting is going to get stuff removed sooner or later and 3 months seems like a good run with that.
  • A warning though if you try the same thing with Ladbrokes Odds Boost feature, they gubbed me pretty quickly, and took away the Acca insurance as well. So I would just stick to doing the normal Acca and not hitting “Boost” (luckily I had another Laddies account to work with 😉 !). Also you can use their boost on other bets of course, just don’t combine it with the Accas as that is what seemed to piss them off.

At the moment I’m making such good ground with my Ladbrokes and William Hill accounts I haven’t bothered checking out any of the other bookie’s Acca offers yet, and some of them look, to be blunt, crap, but as and when I find any others I will be sure to do an update on those as well.

 

That’s it! Hope you found it useful and if anyone has any other tips on Accas or other bookie offers, please let us all know in the comments section below!

And please do not forget to share this with all of your MB Friends! 🙂

Notes:

  1. An Arb is effectively anything with a rating over 100% on the OddsMonkey Odds Matcher tool ↩
  2. Note this was from about a month ago so the table will have changed since then, but I saved it as a good example of out of whack odds ↩
  3. If you can’t see the odds boost on desktop then try it on your mobile as sometimes it only appears on the mobile site ↩
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