Accas, or accumulators, are a hugely popular type of bet that sees punters combine a number of selections into one bet. All picks must win and if they do the odds can mean huge net wins (at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival one lucky bettor scooped £250k from a cashed out acca). But what happens to your acca if one, or more than one, leg of the bet is a void?
Voids can happen for a range of reasons and these tend to vary according to the sport and the type of bet. The weather is a common theme across many sports though, with waterlogged or frozen tracks, pitches or courses often meaning events cannot go ahead as scheduled. Injury, illness or withdrawal of a player or team for some other reason is another typical explanation why a bet might be deemed a void in certain sports.
What Happens to the Overall Accumulator?
Irrespective of the reason behind the voided wager, what happens to the overall accumulator? Well, generally speaking, it is good news because your acca will typically still stand. With a normal acca the bookies will simply disregard the voided leg and your bet will stand on the other selections. As such, if you placed a 10-fold accumulator on all of the Premier League games in a given round and one game was postponed due to a frozen pitch, your bet would stand as a 9-fold on the remaining matches.
We cannot guarantee that this rule will always categorically apply at every single betting site in the world but it is certainly the way all major UK bookies do things. Of course, it can be very annoying to see your time-consuming work and perfectly crafted acca reduced but it will still at least stand. One leg can make a very big difference to returns of course but even so, the time and effort you put into researching all of the other legs could still pay off. And, who is to say that the voided game would have won anyway – perhaps that would have been the one annoying leg that seems to always let us down anyway!
What About Boosted Acca Offers?
Whilst the above protocol will apply in the vast majority of cases with “normal” accas, there are several circumstances where things might be a little different. The best football and racing betting sites often have various acca offers and a void leg may impact how these apply.
Offers will vary and so will what happens in the case of a void leg. Lots of promotions may relate to an acca of a certain size. So, for example, you might get insurance if one leg loses in a five-fold or more. Or accas of at least 10 legs may get a 25% boost. Or you may have access to slightly enhanced odds should you place a treble or upwards.
However, the general rule is that should you still meet the terms of the offer even allowing for the void selection you will still qualify for it. So, in the case of acca insurance on five-folds and more, if you place a six-leg acca, one leg is a void bet, one leg loses and the other four win, you should still qualify for the insurance. In essence, just as with a normal acca, the void leg is disregarded entirely and the wager is treated just as it would be have been had that selection not been added in the first place.
As such, your accumulator will be assessed on its resulting merit in regards to whatever offer you were taking up. Let us consider a price boost relevant to trebles and higher. The selections can be seen in the table below:
| Team | Standard Odds | Odds if part of winning treble or more | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everton to Win | Evens | 11/10 | Win |
| Liverpool to Win | 10/11 | Evens | Win |
| Leeds to Win | 2/1 | 21/10 | Void |
If you placed the above treble you would expect a £10 bet to return £130.20, based on the enhanced trebles odds of 11/10, evens and 21/10. However, with the Leeds portion of your acca voided, you have now only placed a double. So, whilst your bet still stands as a double on Everton and Liverpool both to win, you do not get the boosted odds of 11/10 and evens.
You might be expecting a return of £42 based on those prices; however, your wager no longer meets the terms of the promo and so instead you receive the standard odds. This means your returns are just £38.18, based on odds of evens and 10/11.
Free Bets & Void Accas
One other area that may be of concern is what happens to a free bet if it is used on an acca that contains one or more void selections. Unsurprisingly, in general, the same rules we have discussed apply. That means your void leg will be ignored and the bet will stand based on the other selections.
Of course, there is a chance that the free bet had specific terms: for example that it had to be used on accas of at least three legs, or with minimum total odds. As before, should you still meet these criteria then no problem but what if you don’t?
This is an infrequent occurrence and bookmakers may treat it differently. In some instances, you may unfortunately lose the free bet entirely. In others, the bookie may decide to simply pay out as normal based on the remaining legs, even if technically you did not meet the terms of the offer. Lastly, they may void the entire free bet but reissue it for you to use again.
Should you be unhappy with the decision they have taken in this regard, or in relation to anything we have discussed, the best thing to do is contact the betting site in question via live chat. The same applies if you simply are not sure what they have done in relation to your acca, acca offer or a free bet that is tied to such a bet.