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MULTIPLES BETTING at BETFAIR - TACTICS AND ADVICE

An article from Betfair Betting Exchange for Best Ten Gaming Sites

Doing it the Betfair way

An accumulator (in old-school bookie terminology) or multiple (as it is in the modern-day Betfair era) is an ideal way to achieve big returns for small stakes. If that’s your game then the Multiples section should be your first port of call.

Winning doubles, trebles, four-folds and bigger have been the holy grail of the small stakes punters since the dawn of the bookmaker. But don’t count on paying off your mortgage overnight just yet. There is a logical reason for small stakes to return big dividends; the chances of collecting are greatly decreased.

An accumulator/multiple does what it says on the tin. Take two or more selections, combine the odds, and if they all win, you win. For example: if you fancy Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal all to win at odds of 2.0, 1.8 and 1.5 respectively, then the price for your accumulator will be: 2.0 x 1.8 x 1.5 = 5.4. Note that the prices quoted on the Multiples product will be slightly shorter than the odds that you will be offered on Betfair’s exchange, though they are still likely to be greater than what your regular high street bookie will give you.

And unlike your regular fixed-odds operator, Betfair allows you to combine both backs and lays in your Multiple. So if you’re from the red half of Merseyside you can have a double on the opening day of the season by backing Liverpool to beat Tottenham and laying Everton at home to Arsenal. That way it will be twice as sweet when Torres bags the winner at Anfield and Moyes is bemoaning his side’s lack of luck at Goodison Park.

Goals, Goals, Goals

Betfair also offers you the opportunity to have multiple bets on the Over/Under 2.5 goals market. Combine two, three, four, five or more Over/Under 2.5 selections and if your predicted goal feasts or famines oblige, you’re in the money.

An accumulator on over 2.5 goals is also one of the few betting areas where you can potentially count your winnings before the end of a game. If you’ve had a treble on Bolton, Wigan and Sunderland all to have over 2.5 goals in their respective games, and each side is leading 2-1 with 30 minutes to go, you can begin planning on how you will spend your winnings safe in the knowledge your bet is in the bag.

Or you could do the opposite and hope for a miserable day of Premier League action by having a treble in which all selections are under 2.5 goals. Or mix and match and go “overs” on some and “unders” on others. The choice is…yours.

Vital Statistics

A popular approach amongst punters is to back all of the Big Four to win (whenever they’re not playing each other). But is this a profitable tactic? Throughout the 2008/09 season the big four played independently of each other in 24 sets of fixtures with all four winning just eight times, a 33% strike rate. And in the 2007/08 season there was a six out of 23, 26% strike rate.

So looking at the data from the last two seasons, you should be looking for a Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal four-fold to pay at an average price of 3.35 just to break even over the season.

It is also worth noting that in the 2008/09 season only three of those eight occurrences came before the month of April; maybe this is a bet for the latter stage of the season when the big teams really press home the advantages of their big squads.

Top Tips

Don’t become a cliché. Drinking establishments up and down the country are littered with bitter old men lamenting their weekend accumulator that got away. Invariably you will hear that they had four or five winners on the Saturday and were just waiting for their ‘sure thing’ to win on the Sunday.

Should you find yourself waiting for one result to bag that elusive accumulator, take the sensible option and lay that selection. Given that your Multiple is likely to pay out at a big price, you don’t want to end up with nothing should the last leg not win. At the very least lay the final selection for the value of your stake on the Multiple. Or if you want to ensure you walk away with a profit, lay it for more, particularly if it’s an odds-on shot.

If the final selection on your Multiple doesn’t win you collect on your lay of it on the exchange. If it does win you can look forward to a nice payout courtesy of your original Multiple. Albeit minus the liability of your lay on the exchange.