When signing up to bookmakers, Identity or KYC verification is something that you'll encounter often. It's completely normal and not something to be concerned about at all!

Sure, it can be a little bit of a pain to provide documents if you're asked to, but it's a minor inconvenience in your journey of beating the bookies after you <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">learn about Matched Betting</a>.

Plus, bookmakers will often verify you automatically, with no need for any further information.

In this article, you'll find out why bookies ask for ID and learn some top tips to help you speed up the process.

 What Is ID verification And Why Might You Be Asked For It?

KYC verification, which stands for "Know Your Customer", is the act of the bookmaker verifying that:

It really is as simple as that - they need to know that you are you!

But why are they asking for this information?

Well, it's actually part of a legal requirement that all bookies in the UK need to meet in order for that bookie to possess a UK gambling license.

Well, the good news here is that it's, a lot of the time, automatic, and you don't need to actually do anything.

Bookies can search against things like the electoral roll and gather the information they need to confirm your age.

You should then be able to deposit and bet, although you may be asked for further evidence of ID when you come to withdraw any funds or if you are looking to withdraw a large cash amount.

We'll now take a look at what you'll be asked for if you're required to manually verify your account at any stage.

Does Matched Betting Affect Your Credit Score?

Bookmakers don’t tend to perform credit checks.

Whilst some bookmakers may occasionally carry out something known as a soft credit check on you (this is very rare), this isn’t recorded and does not affect your credit score in any way.

While the actual documents you are asked to provide will vary from bookmaker to bookmaker, there are some staple things that they ask for. Note that you won't have to send off any original copies, a photo will do!

Now, these are the normal three you are likely to encounter, but don’t be surprised if you are asked for something else; it's down to the individual bookie terms, and they can sometimes be quite “quirky” - like being asked for a selfie with you holding your ID, for example!

Thanks for your email, please find attached requested proof of identification documents.

Don’t be alarmed by ID/KYC verification. It is, as we have seen, a completely normal and legal exercise that the bookie has to carry out.

If you follow the steps above, it should be a quick and easy process.

The time it takes is dependent on the bookie, but it's normally a fairly fast turnaround. They want to get you betting with them as quickly as possible, after all!

Now you know how to quickly deal with KYC requests, you can learn how to disguise yourself as a regular punter to help you <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/top-tips-to-avoid-being-gubbed">avoid being gubbed</a>.

Ollie

Do I Need ID For Matched Betting?

In psychology and philosophy, Gambler’s Fallacy describes the common, mistaken belief that if a particular chance event has happened less than would have been expected, it will be more likely to happen in the future.

Which sounds quite complicated. So, as an example to illustrate the idea, imagine you’ve flipped a coin nine times, and it’s been tails every single time so far. Surely the streak is bound to end soon, right? If you’d call heads, reasoning that it’s more likely to fall on heads after such a long run of tails, you’ve fallen prey to gambler’s fallacy.

It’s an incredibly common psychological phenomenon, partly because human brains are programmed to look for patterns in everything, including matters of pure chance. And over the course of history, gambler’s fallacy has been responsible for people losing truly vast amounts of money.

Read on to find out why humans are so susceptible to the fallacy, and how you can avoid falling for it.

A ‘fallacy’ is a philosophical term referring to a mistaken belief based on flawed reasoning - usually a belief that feels plausible or appears to be well-reasoned at first. Gambler’s fallacy can seem like common sense to a lot of people, and it can be difficult to convince them that it’s wrong, even when they understand the mathematics that underlies it.

In psychology, gambler’s fallacy has been studied extensively, and has been found to have effects far beyond the realm of gambling, with loan officers, umpires, stockbrokers and even judges at risk of making decisions influenced by this faulty reasoning.

It may seem obvious, but every coin toss - or other similar chance event - is completely independent of all other previous tosses of that coin. The chance of either heads or tails occurring will always be 50%, so long as it’s a fair coin.

This seems logical enough, but people run into trouble when unusually long strings of one result come along. We all know that if you toss a fair coin enough times, the results will average out to being 50% heads and 50% tails. So, if you’ve had an unusually long run of, say, heads, it seems like common sense that you’ll have to get tails, to balance things out.

But this principle works best for extremely large numbers. If you tossed a coin a million times, the results probably wouldn’t be far off 50/50 between heads and tails, and if you tossed it a billion times, they’d be closer still.

But that doesn’t translate to smaller numbers. If you toss a coin only ten times, you can’t expect it to come up heads five times and tails five times (although this is, of course, one of the possibilities). In reality, clusters happen all the time, and have no effect on the likelihood of the next toss having a particular outcome.

When you think about it, it seems clear that the coin can’t have any kind of memory of what’s gone before. Every time you toss a coin, you start from scratch with a 50% chance of heads or tails, no matter the previous results.

Gambler’s Fallacy is also known as the ‘Monte Carlo Fallacy’, thanks to a famous game of roulette from 1913, which featured an incredible run of black - 26 times in a row - and which took place at the Casino de Monte Carlo in Monaco.

After the first ten spins resulted in black, gamblers started to reason (incorrectly) that the ball was due to land on red, and began betting ever-increasing amounts of money accordingly. But the ball kept on landing on black, and gamblers’ losses kept mounting. By the time the streak finally came to an end, bettors had lost millions of francs - and the Monte Carlo casino, meanwhile, had made an absolute fortune.

Hot hand fallacy is what you might call the opposite of gambler’s fallacy. Hot hand fallacy refers to the belief that, if a gambler has been enjoying a run of good luck, they’re more likely to keep on winning. This can result in gamblers continuing to bet after winning significant amounts of money, believing that they’re bound to keep on winning - which is how many people end up losing all their winnings, and more.

Based on the same principle as gambler’s fallacy, this refers to what a person might assume about past events, having seen only recent ones. For example, if someone rolled a pair of dice and got three double sixes in a row, an observer might assume that they had been rolling the dice for some time, because the outcome of a series of three double sixes is so unlikely.

In some circumstances, someone can draw conclusions from the results of chance events without it being a case of gambler’s fallacy.

For example, if someone observes a series of coin tosses, notices that tails is coming up more frequently than heads, and concludes that the coin could be biased and thus more likely to fall on tails in the future, that would not be a case of gambler’s fallacy. Their conclusion is based on the actual evidence available, rather than a gut feeling about luck or chance.

They might well be wrong that the coin is biased, but because they are reasoning based on empirical evidence rather than an incorrect instinct, this wouldn’t be considered an example of gambler’s fallacy.

There are also gambling-related situations where the probabilities of events occurring aren’t independent of each other, and therefore where gambler’s fallacy cannot apply.

Take, for example, a game where you bet on the next card to be drawn from a pack of cards. If an ace is drawn from the pack, without being replaced, then the chances of an ace being drawn again are lower, because there are fewer aces remaining in the pack. This is the principle that gamblers use for card-counting in casino games like blackjack.

How Do Betting Sites Take Advantage Of Gambler’s Fallacy?

Although a betting site can’t explicitly lie to its customers to encourage them to keep betting - so they won’t say, ‘keep going, the ball’s sure to land on red next!’ - they can take advantage of gambler’s fallacy in more subtle ways.

For example, in games with random jackpot wins, they might indicate how long it’s been since the jackpot was last won to encourage gamblers to keep playing - even though, if the jackpot winner is determined entirely by chance, you’re no more likely to hit it when it’s been six months since the last win than when it was last won only a day ago.

And in slots games, if a gambler comes close to hitting a bonus, for example getting two out of three ‘scatter’ symbols, the final line will usually slow down drastically to build the gambler’s anticipation and hopes. This enhances the feeling of, ‘I was so close!’ and makes the gambler more likely to feel that hitting the bonus is just round the corner.

Non-Gambling Examples Of Gambler’s Fallacy

Although it’s called ‘gambler’s fallacy’, the phenomenon is by no means restricted to gamblers.

The financial industry can be particularly susceptible to gambler’s fallacy, with investors and traders frequently acting on the assumption that a certain stock must be ‘due’ to go up having been down previously, or vice versa. There will of course be other factors affecting the value of the stock, but financial decisions based purely on the idea that a trend in one direction must follow a trend in the other can have a dramatic impact on the world of finance.

People are also susceptible to gambler’s fallacy when it comes to predicting the gender of a child. If a couple has had several boys already, for example, they might expect to have a girl next. This phenomenon was described as long ago as 1796 by the French philosopher and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace.

He observed men who hoped for a son becoming extremely anxious when they noticed a larger number of boys than girls being born in a particular month, believing that the chances of their baby being a girl were greater, to balance out the boys that had come before.

Studies have also found that decision makers can be subject to gambler’s fallacy in some pretty high-powered situations. Asylum judges, for example, are less likely to approve an asylum claim if they have granted the two previous claims as well. In baseball, meanwhile, umpires are less likely to call a strike (when the ball was within the fair hitting zone for the batter, and the batter failed to hit it) if the previous two balls had been strikes.

How To Avoid Falling Prey To Gambler’s Fallacy

If you gamble regularly, it’s important to be aware of gambler’s fallacy to avoid being duped by it, but even if you stick to Matched Betting (which isn’t the same thing as gambling - to find out more check out our <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">guide to Matched Betting</a>) you still need to be conscious of it.

It’s surprisingly difficult to overcome the instinctive belief in gambler’s fallacy, even for people who understand the mathematics involved and the nature of probability.

Psychologists have found that the best way to resist the fallacy is to treat each event as if it is a beginning, rather than a continuation of prior events. For example, if as a matched bettor you’re given 10 free spins by a bookie, and don’t win on any of them, you might be tempted to keep trying with actual money, because surely you’re due a win after 10 successive failures.

However, as we’ve learnt in this article, this simply isn’t the case - your chances are no different from your very first spin, and you’d be much wiser not to risk your own money.

Similarly, if you place several matched bets and have a run of wins at the bookmaker, you might think it’s worth placing a couple of unmatched bets for real, as clearly you’re on a winning streak. But this would be an example of the hot hand fallacy, and again you’d be much wiser to stick to your usual Matched Betting, with its smaller, <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/is-matched-betting-risk-free">guaranteed profits</a>.

Now that you understand how gambler’s fallacy works and why humans are so susceptible to it, you might feel confident that you won’t fall for it. However, that doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to become complacent.

It’s surprisingly difficult to identify one’s own flawed thinking, so, especially when Matched Betting or making any sort of financial decision, you should be careful to examine your own thoughts and instincts objectively.

It’s also a good idea to be open to criticism from others, because people are often much better at spotting fallacies in others than in themselves. If someone points out that your reasoning might be flawed, listen to them! They might not turn out to be right, but you’ll be better off for having taken the time to consider the way you’re thinking, and whether it’s as rational as you believe.

Stephanie Sorrell

What Is Gambler's Fallacy?

A Forecast bet is another form of multiple bet that requires bettors to predict the top two finishers in an event.

It’s a very popular bet within the horse racing industry.

Predicting the top two finishers and their order is no easy task which is why the potential rewards from Forecast bets can be very substantial.

In this article, you’ll learn how a Forecast bet works, how to place one, the different Forecast <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/types-of-bets">bet variations</a> and how to calculate potential returns.

By placing a Forecast bet , you are effectively placing two bets rolled into one. With a Straight Forecast, you need to bet on which horse will finish first and which one will finish second.&nbsp; A Forecast bet can only be placed on one race and can’t be spread across different races.

Similar to a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-tricast-bet">Tricast bet</a>, you only pay the total stake that you put on the Straight Forecast bet. Your stake doesn’t multiply as it would if you were to do a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-trixie-bet">Trixie bet</a>.

Forecast bets can be placed on any race that has a minimum of three runners.

If there are non-runners and there are less than three competitors, your Forecast bet will be voided.

Also, if there is only one competitor that finishes a race, no Forecast dividend will be declared.

Should this happen and you had the winner in your Forecast, your bet will settle as a winning single using a starting price.&nbsp; Any other Forecast bets will be void.

There are three main types of Forecast bets that are the most popular: Straight Forecast, Reverse Forecast and Combination Forecast.

There’s also other variations of Forecast bets available to bettors: Straight Forecast Double, Straight Forecast Treble, Reverse Forecast Double, Reverse Forecast Treble, Combination Forecast Double and Combination Forecast Treble.

These variations are more suited to experienced bettors so novice bettors should probably avoid pacing these until they are confident in what they are doing.

Let’s cover off the main Forecast Bets and then some of the less popular Forecast combinations:

The same as the Reverse Forecast Double but this time the total stake is multiplied by eight and there are eight permutations as follows:

Let’s have a look at the mechanics of the Forecast bets and how to place them at the bookies.

The Straight Forecast is one of the simpler multiple bets to place where you need to pick the first two finishers in the race, in the correct order.

Looking at the 4.40pm at Chepstow, you’ve done your research and the analysis suggests the clear favourite is going to be tough to beat.

However, the form of another horse catches your eye and it has one of your favourite jockeys riding it so you’re quite confident it will be in the mix at the end of the race.

Based on your research, you decide to back Hey Big Spender at odds of 2.75 (7/4) to win and Desert Footsteps at odds of 7 (6/1) to finish second. So, how do you place the bet.

First thing to do is find the Forecast market. With Bet365 there is a separate tab for Forecast bets (highlighted below).

Simply then click on your first and second choices and click Add to Bet Slip.

Once you have clicked Add to Bet Slip, you are shown the below details where you enter your stake and then Place Bet.&nbsp; It’s at this point that you’ll see the potential returns based on your stake.

It’s worth noting that the layout can differ from bookie to bookie but the Forecast bet option will be there.&nbsp; Some bookies will show the normal racecard and when you pick two selections, the Forecast option appears in the betslip.

Based on the same race, with a Reverse Forecast bet you are still choosing Hey Big Spender and Desert Footsteps.&nbsp; This time you are choosing them to both finish in the top two but in either order.

So, this time instead of choosing first and second, you need to click both horses in the ‘Any’ column and click Add to Bet Slip as before.

After you click Add to Bet Slip, you will notice there is a slight difference to the layout.

First thing you will notice is your stake is doubled and there are no odds showing. If you click on the ‘Show Odds’ link highlighted, you will be given a breakdown of your potential returns from the two winning combinations available.

Please Note – The bet slip says Combination Forecast.&nbsp; Whilst technically it is a bet with a combination, it is actually a Reverse Forecast.&nbsp; Most bookies will display it as a Reverse Forecast in their betslips.

Sticking with the 4.40pm Chepstow race, how do you place a Combination Forecast bet? Pretty much the same as the Reverse Forecast but this time you are going to choose three horses.

Remember though, this time your stakes are multiplied by six due to the combination of bets you are covering. You’ll need 2 out of three horses selected to finish first and second in any order to get any returns.

As with the Reverse Forecast, by clicking on the ‘Show Odds’ link in your betslip, you are presented with details of what combinations can provide you with returns. These can be seen below:

This isn’t as straight forward as you might think as not all bookies offer fixed price odds on Forecast bets and those that do use computer generated algorithms.

A lot of them use the Starting Price (SP) which means any dividends aren’t declared until after the race finishes.

Therefore, bettors don’t know what returns they might expect if they’re successful.

This is often the case with some other multiple bet types and in particular, <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-trixie-bet">Trixie Bet </a>calculations are seriously complex and computer generated.

You can learn a bit more about the SP in our <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-does-sp-mean-in-horse-racing">Starting Price article</a>.

Whilst Bet365 are very good at providing odds so we can see our returns, it’s not always possible to know so let’s cover the basics of the three main forecast bets using our example from the 4.40pm at Chepstow:

Quite a few of the Bookies offer their own calculators for Forecast bets.&nbsp;

What Sports Can You Use A Forecast Bet On?

Forecast bets can be used in many sports but are mainly used in horse racing and greyhound racing.&nbsp; As mentioned, due to the size of the races with horses and the complexity of the maths, a lot of Forecast bets don’t offer fixed odds.&nbsp;

Other sports however, tend to offer fixed odds for Forecast and <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-tricast-bet">Tricast bets</a>.&nbsp; Here’s some of the sports you can place Forecast bets on:

Advantages &amp; Disadvantages Of Forecast Bets

Forecast bets aren’t for the faint hearted.&nbsp; To stand any chance of success with them, you need to do some research and understand what you are doing.

They aren’t recommended for novice bettors.&nbsp; However, once you understand them, they can be a great source of fun and potentially very rewarding.

Whilst there are some professional gamblers who have success by targeting certain races for Forecast betting, they aren’t considered to be a reliable way to make long term profits.

This is evident in the high odds offered by the bookies to land a result.

Paul Trevor

What Is A Forecast Bet

Kelly criterion is&nbsp;a mathematical formula that gives a stake size that will maximise the expected growth rate of your bankroll.

When using methods such as the&nbsp;<a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting strategy</a>, you'll be laying off your bookmaker bets at an exchange to often guarantee a profit from offers, hence the name Matched&nbsp;Betting.

Ordinarily there's rarely a need to think about how big your stakes should be.

After all, you're balancing it out with the exchange lay anyway, so your risk is minimal. Moreover, most of the offers where you're laying your bets will have a set stake size in order to qualify for the promotion (e.g. Bet £20 Get £10 Free Bet).

This all changes completely when you delve into the world of value betting.&nbsp;For example, if you go for a "No Lay" strategy for <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/extra-place-offers">Extra Place offers</a>, or you know a bookmaker has a selection that is overpriced and you can't/won't lay it.

Here, since you're not balancing out your bets with an exchange lay, the amount you stake on the bet is very important. You don't want to stake so much that you risk rapidly losing your whole <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/matched-betting-bankroll">betting bankroll</a> (and thus don't have the money to take advantage of future profitable bets). But at the same time, you don't want your bet sizing to be so small that you're not gaining as much value from your bets.

This is where the Kelly criterion comes in.&nbsp;It takes into account all the important things: the size of your bankroll, the payout if you win, the loss if you lose, and the probabilities of these outcomes happening.

Within the Settings of the <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/extra-place-master">Extra Place Master&nbsp;</a>(when you have No Lay mode selected), you'll see the option to fill in your bankroll amount and also select Kelly staking.

And that's all the hard work done for you in terms of calculating how much you should stake!

Now when you load up the calculator for a selection, it'll give you the recommended stake based on your bankroll and all the other important information specific to that bet.

Before we go into how the Kelly stake amount is derived, it needs to be said that the stake the Kelly formula gives is often pretty brutal. That's to say that the stake that's optimal for growing your bankroll is bigger and therefore riskier than is really necessary.

This is why Outplayed's software defaults to fractional Kelly stakes. It simply takes the optimal stake that the Kelly formula would give and then divides it. The recommended amount is 0.25 (i.e. the stake that will be recommended by the software is a quarter of the optimal Kelly stake).

This will give a much more sensible and balanced stake amount.

So are you throwing away value by not betting with the fully optimal stake amount?

Well, yeah, some.. But the upside is you can stake a much smaller amount and still achieve a similar value in terms of bankroll growth rate. This means much calmer downswings to your bankroll and a much smaller chance of having the doomsday scenario of losing your entire bankroll.

Let's take a look at an example bet with the following info:

The Kelly Criterion maths (which we'll go into more detail with later) gives the optimal stake to maximise the expected bankroll growth as £62.50. This is the stake where the growth rate peaks on the graph below (the green point). It gives an expected bankroll growth rate of 0.74%.

The orange and yellow points show what happens to the growth rate if you go for a much smaller stake of £30 or £15. The £30 stake gives a growth rate of 0.55%, and the £15 stake gives 0.32%.

They do indeed lead to a lower average growth than a £62.50 stake, but are much less risky since they require a much smaller chunk of your bankroll.

The graph also shows that betting more than £62.50 in our example is completely redundant. The growth rate will only get further away from the maximum of 0.74%, and so you'll be taking on more risk for less reward.

Outplayed makes life nice and easy in terms of the <a href="https://outplayed.com/calculators/kelly-criterion-calculator">Kelly calculations</a>. But let's take more of an in depth look at how the stake amount is calculated and how it can apply to other betting situations.

When I say a "standard bet", I mean one that can only have two outcomes: win or lose. Also, in the event of a loss, you'd lose the full stake amount (there's no partial money back going on here).

The formula to work out the optimal Kelly stake (S) is as follows:

This can look a little complicated at first, so let's go through it step by step with an example to show how you take all the information and calculate the stake size. I'll use the same example as the section above:

This would be a great value bet to place if the bookie was offering odds of 5.0, but you believed that the true chance of that bet winning was more like 25%.

Step 1: Subtract 1 from the odds. 5 - 1 = 4

Step 2: Multiply this by the probability of the bet winning. 4 x 0.25 = 1

Step 3: Subtract the probability of the bet losing. 1 - 0.75 = 0.25

Step 4: Multiply by the bankroll amount. 0.25 x £1,000 = £250

Step 5: Divide this by the "odds - 1". £250 / 4 = £62.50

So we now know that the stake size that maximises the expected long term bankroll growth is £62.50. You can now apply the fractional Kelly as mentioned in the previous section.

It'd be as simple as taking the £62.50 and dividing it by 4 (or whatever other fraction you deem sensible). £15.62 is the new stake amount after doing this. It'd be a good idea to round this up/down to £15 or £20 so you don't stand out like a sore thumb to the bookie.

Each way bets work a little differently to your usual bet. They're essentially two bets in one. One of these bets on the selection to win, and the other bet on the selection to place (e.g. finish 1st - 4th).

This leads to three possible payouts instead of the standard bet, which gave two:

This third scenario throws a real spanner in the works when it comes to calculating the Kelly stake. Showing where this comes from and going into detail goes beyond the scope of this article.&nbsp;

It is very much the same concept though:&nbsp;finding the stake value that maximises the expected bankroll growth rate.&nbsp;

You don't actually need to know any of this to apply it to your betting. Outplayed's software instantly does all of these calculations for you and lets you know this stake amount when doing your each-way value betting.

The Kelly criterion formula is a great advanced concept for value bettors. It gives the stake that optimises your long-term expected bankroll growth. And after all, that's the main thing you're after!

When using Kelly stakes for betting purposes, the optimal stake can often be quite large, so using 50% or 25% of this amount can be an ideal balance of risk and growth.

It's nice to know where the numbers come from, but you don't need to do all the painstaking maths yourself. Outplayed will do this for you on our value betting software, so you'll always be using sensible stakes for your bankroll amount.

Kelly Criterion Betting System: Optimising Bet Stake Sizes

Every so often, you see a report in the news of a lucky gambler who’s managed to win a truly astonishing sum of money, often from a surprisingly tiny stake.

Everybody loves that kind of story.

The average newspaper reader loves to hear about someone as normal as them winning a life-changing sum, and to imagine that they might one day do the same. Newspapers love to write about it, because all those average readers will want to buy their paper to read the story.

And bookies, though they might not be thrilled about having to pay out all that cash, love the opportunity to draw in new hopeful gamblers with tales of colossal riches.

We’ll cover some of the biggest wins in history here, but don’t forget that for every fantastically lucky winner there will have been hundreds or thousands of people who made no return at all on a similar bet.

Bookies like to talk about the customers who make hundreds of thousands in winnings, but we know that bookies make millions a year in profit despite those winnings, and their profits have to come from somewhere!

An <a href="https://outplayed.com/sports-accumulator-betting-guide">accumulator bet</a>, also known as an ‘acca’, is a series of bets all rolled into one. Technically, a bet can be considered an accumulator as long as it has more than one leg, however most bookies only consider a bet to be an acca if it has at least four legs.

For example, you might make the following bet:

On a standard acca bet, you won’t win your bet unless all of the horses win their races. This means that your overall odds will probably be very high - as all four horses winning is pretty unlikely - and therefore that if you were to win, you would make an extremely high return on your stake.

Punters can also place bets that are a combination of singles and accas, to increase their chances of a payout even if not all the horses win. For example, a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/lucky-finder">Lucky 15</a> includes all the possible combinations of bets on four selections:

Accas don’t have to be limited to just four legs, either - there’s nothing to stop gamblers from placing accas with as many legs as they like, except the fact that the odds will become astronomical. The odds on acca bets are usually well into four figures, and occasionally five, six or even seven!

Some bookies will also have a limit on how much they will ever pay out, so there’d be no point in a punter placing an acca with odds so high that the bookie would simply refuse to pay out the full amount if it won.

So, how much have people managed to make from their betting? Let’s dive into some of the biggest acca wins in history, starting with the smaller end of things.

In 2015, one American punter placed a 50 cent bet on five horses to win the first five races, in what’s known as a ‘Pick Five’ wager in the USA.

Gamblers place bets - often with very small stakes - on five horses to win five races, and any bettors who turn out to be correct share a pool of winnings from all the bettors’ combined stakes. The pool will grow if nobody wins, meaning that it can reach exceptionally high values.

The person who won in this case was lucky enough to be the only one to correctly predict the outcome of all five races, meaning that he had the entire pool all to himself - hence managing to win almost half a million dollars from a 50 cent stake.

In 2014, an Irish gambler successfully predicted the outcomes of thirteen separate matches, five of which were draws and notoriously tricky to anticipate.

Having staked €20 on the outcomes of all thirteen matches, the punter was able to watch as, one by one, they all went his way - including one match where the goal that secured his win came only twelve seconds before the final whistle!

The €451,000 win was over a 2 million percent return on his initial investment - not bad going!

In September 1996, the Italian jockey Frankie Dettori made history by riding all seven winners on Queen Elizabeth II stakes day, catapulting himself to stardom.

And it was a very good day for a lot of gamblers as well, many of whom had backed Dettori. One such gambler was Darren Yates, who, despite assuring his wife that he wouldn’t back Dettori any more, placed £67.58 (an oddly specific amount!) on all seven of Dettori’s horses to win their races, at odds of 25,000 to 1.

No doubt his wife forgave him when he brought home over half a million pounds in winnings, though it sounds as though their marriage has probably been tested again since. In 2019, Yates broke the record for the most expensive jumps horse ever bought at public auction, when he spent £620,000 on Interconnected, a recent winner.

The Scottish record for the biggest ever horse racing accumulator win was broken in 2018 with this particular punter’s selections.

It was actually the birthday of the gambler in question, who spent £5 on an eight-fold acca at his local William Hill shop. Despite the staggeringly high odds, all eight horses came in as winners, and the bettor had an unexpectedly good birthday, with almost £700,000 to take home at the end of it.

After twenty years of unsuccessful accas, one punter achieved his life’s dream of winning big at Punchestown Champion Hurdles day in 2017.

He placed a combination of fourfold and fivefold bets on six horses at a cost of £19, at odds of 181,015 to 1, with five of those horses going on to win.

Interviewed after his astonishing win, he revealed that he’d been placing similar bets daily for the best part of twenty years, never with any success. Having finally enjoyed the win he’d been chasing all those years, he commented that he didn’t even know if he’d carry on betting now - though whether he continued to resist the pull of an acca we’ll never know, as he chose to remain anonymous.

In 2013, Paddy Power were obliged to make their single highest payout of the decade on horse racing, when one especially prescient bettor spent £10 on a six-fold acca.

The six horses were racing in Naas and Galway, and all managed to win within the space of what must have been an extremely exciting 90 minutes. The result was an incredible return on investment of almost 10 million percent.

3. £1,000,000 at the Cheltenham Festival

Between 2011 and 2012, stable lad Conor Murphy got to experience a modern day rags to riches story.

His employer, the National Hunt trainer Nicky Henderson, was entering the 2012 Cheltenham festival with his strongest ever squad and, in a fine example of professional loyalty, Murphy placed a £50 acca four months in advance on five of his boss’s horses to win their races, at odds of 64,000 to 1.

His total winnings ought to have been £3,000,000, but Bet365’s £1,000,000 payout cap took an entire two million off his return - not that Murphy was exactly complaining. He used his fortune to move to America and follow his dream of becoming a horse trainer himself; he now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he runs his own successful yard.

An even more tremendously lucky bettor was Yorkshireman Fred Craggs, who in 2008 was the first person to become a millionaire from a high street bet.

Just before his 60th birthday, he visited his local William Hill shop and placed a 50p eight-fold accumulator on a wide selection of races, including Nad Al Sheba in Dubai, at eye-wateringly high odds of 2,000,000 to 1.

Craggs didn’t realise he’d even won until he visited another betting shop the next day, where he was told that, against all odds, his bet had won.

In true Yorkshire fashion, he revealed after his win that he was still working as usual, and that his life hadn’t changed at all - he planned to use the £1,000,000 as his pension.

In 2011, a heating engineer from Devon, Steve Whitely, made history, winning almost £1.5 million from only a £2 wager. He’d placed a bet with the Tote Jackpot on six horses to win their respective races - and was the only person to correctly predict all six winners, ensuring that the entire jackpot went to him.

His winnings were the largest dividend in the history of the Tote Jackpot, and made him an overnight millionaire. He described himself as ‘not a horse racing man’, and was only there thanks to a promotion at the racecourse which gave him and six friends free tickets.

Like Fred Craggs, Whitely stated that he had no plans to retire, declaring, ‘I’ll work till I die.’ He did apparently consider upgrading his flights for the holiday he had planned the following week, however.

But Don’t Go And Gamble All Your Savings On An Acca!

Having read about all these extraordinarily lucky gamblers, you might well feel tempted to go and try your luck on an acca yourself.

And while there’s nothing particularly wrong with spending a few pounds every so often on an accumulator you’ve got a good feeling about, so long as you can afford it, you’d be sorely unwise to rest your hopes on an acca making your fortune.

It’s worth keeping in mind the fifth winner on our list, who had been unsuccessfully placing accas for twenty years before finally winning. It might have paid off in the end for him, but even so he’s definitely the exception, not the rule - which is why bookies make such enormous profits each year.

If you’d like to make money from betting without the risk, why not <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">consider Matched Betting</a>?

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