| Betting has become a big part of British culture with an increase in the number of bets taken year in year out. Bookies have been around for a long time, but the last ten years have seen the meteoric rise of online gambling. What this website strives to achieve is to educate you on the ins and outs of football gambling and warn you of the dangers of online betting, with the goal of stopping you from losing money when betting. This article will look at the problems with a football accumulator and why it is such a hard system to make money from.
In any betting shop in the UK, you will find many different ways to bet on football, however recently they have started to push gimmicky bets like football pundits ‘sure shots!’. This is a ploy by bookies to use well known football pundits such as Lee Dixon and Iain Wright, who try and predict what is going to happen in certain matches so that you, the customer, are lured into following the advice of these so called experts in the belief that their insider’s knowledge of football means their predictions will be right. However this is often not the case.
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Man City to win the Carling Cup & Europa League 17/1 |
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Chelsea to win the FA Cup & Champions League 51/1 |
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Tottenham to win the Premier League & FA Cup 101/1 |
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Taken from a bookies’ information slip on Thursday the 18th of February Lee Dixon went for
Hamburg to beat P.S.V Athletic Bilbao to beat Anderlecht
Roma to beat Panathinaikos Fulham to beat Shakhtar Donetsk
On the same day (Thursday the 18th) Iain Wright went for
Liverpool to beat Unirea Urziceni Fulham to beat Shakhtar Donetsk
Athletic Bilbao to beat Anderlecht FC Copenhagen to beat Marseille
Lee Dixon got just one match correct, while Iain Wright did not much better, guessing two results correctly. They are professional football pundits and even they can’t get it correct! This highlights the problems with accumulators, as even the experts have difficulty getting it right. To strengthen this argument on why a football accumulator is very difficult to make money on, below is another example of gimmicky bets taken on Thursday the 25th of February.
The football pundit Ally McCoist went for the following teams;
Valencia to beat Bruges Sporting Lisbon to beat Everton
Salzburg to beat Standard Liege Hapoel Tel Aviv to beat Rubin Kazan
On the same day (Thursday the 25th) Lee Dixon went for the following teams;
Everton to beat Sporting Lisbon Juventus to beat Ajax
Rubin Kazan to beat Hapoel Tel Aviv Villarreal to beat Wolfsburg
The above two examples are matches from the EUROPA league, which is the secondary European competition for teams that were runners up, in their respective leagues, or top 6 finishers in the major leagues such as England, Spain and Italy play against each other for prestige, money and recognition. Once again the football pundits were not successful in their predictions as Lee Dixon got the Everton and Juventus result wrong and Ally Mcoist got the Salzburg and Hapoel Tel Aviv match predictions incorrect. So again the experts failed to predict the perfect football accumulator. It must also be noted that these are examples of small football accumulators, as normal Saturday match-day accumulators involve correctly guessing the results of 10 or more matches. This should show you, the potential gambler, to be careful with how you spend your money on gambling, as in our opinion accumulators are not the way forward when betting on football or sport in general.
However, as with many things, different people have different preferences. Some of you may like to bet on the odd football accumulator now and then, so it would be wrong not to give you advice on that. There are three key points;
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Never include a team that you know nothing about
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Never include the team you support as your bet is not logical, it is swayed towards your team
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Always be disciplined when picing the teams, make your selection on merit and work out your potential returns later
As we have said earlier, there are many problems with accumulators, and in previous articles we have likened accumulators to a game of roulette, in that it is just pure luck. However if that is what you the gambler are into then just make your selections "blind" so don't even consider the potential winnings when placing a bet. Do not get sucked in by lucrative offers that bookies make like "guessing the scores" of matches. This is referred to in the UK as score-cast. This is something we do not recommend. The bookies know that a football accumulator is the type betting that attracts punters that like big odds, where there chances of success are small, but the rewards from winning are big. The bookies know this and will offer an incentive to make the potential customer bet so his chances of winning decrease dramatically. Resist the temptation to be influenced.
Other factors can also influence the outcome of different ways to gamble. In January 2008 Arsenal lost to Burnley at the Emirates stadium in the FA Cup and at the time Burley were 11/1 to win the match. Many punters will have put Arsenal to win on their football accumulator only to have it ruined by what was seen as a sure win. That is why if you bet on accumulator's it is best not to include teams that are playing in either the FA Cup or the Carling Cup, as these often produce upsets which can see big teams lose to smaller teams due to them playing weaker sides in order to prioritise other cups or focus on the league. Again, another problem with accumulators has been highlighted showing why this form of betting is so difficult.
Certain bookmakers in the last few years have come up with different ways to make punters spend more money. In the last five years there has been an increase in people betting on the first goal scorer in matches. This is high risk type of bet to take up, as there are too many variables, but let us look, for example, at the 7th of March 2010 when Chelsea played Stoke.
Chelsea to win 2/7 Draw between the two teams 9/2 Stoke to win 9/1
Stoke at this point in the season were doing okay, and were no way considered a weak side, and there was an outside chance that they could sneak a win. If you had put them to win, you would be looking at a 9/1 win ratio. However if you put one of their top strikers James Beattie to score first, so your bet would be;
Stoke to beat Chelsea, James Beattie to score 1st goal.The odds would go from 9/1 to 27/1. This has similarities to a football accumulator as the more you bet on, the higher the return, but again a serious decrease in the likelihood of you winning the bet. Many people enjoy the first goal scorer bet as this means when watching the match it adds further interest and excitement. Our websites advice would be that if you like betting this way, then do your research of both teams thoroughly before placing the bet, and keep your fingers crossed for luck!
Ian Ryan is the footballbettingtips.co.uk webmaster and has designed this site to help you make money. Gamble responsibly and learn from the information displayed regarding football gambling. Knowledge is power , so read the information and put it into practise when you next bet.
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