A 10 fold bet is an accumulator, or acca, that has 10 separate legs. All must win or you lose your stake, so there is absolutely no margin for error. However, get things right and you might just be calling your boss to say goodbye because the returns could be astronomical.
Accas work by rolling over both the stake and the winnings from one winning leg onto the next one and so on. If you are lucky enough to manage to get 10 winners (out of 10) on the same bet, the cumulative odds and consequently payout really snowball. That means that even a tiny stake, for example less than a pound, might just deliver a huge win.
Of course, getting 10 winners is hard. Like, seriously hard. 10 winners in a week of betting is achievable of course but getting a 100% strike rate, a perfect 10 out of 10, even at relatively low odds, takes some doing. But it can be done and so, if you want to know all about 10 fold betting, we’ve got you covered.
10 Fold, Tenfold, 10-Fold or What?
However you write it, a tenfold is just an acca with 10 folds, folds being another word for legs, selections, picks or, somewhat confusingly, bets. We tend to avoid calling the legs of an acca bets as it is the accumulator itself that is the bet and it is one single bet, consisting of 10 separate legs but requiring just one stake to cover them all.
10 fold bets, like all accas, are very simple. If all legs win, the whole bet wins. If any of your 10 picks fail to win (unless they are void, such as in the case of a non-runner – see below) then the bet loses and you lose your stake.
We have already looked at ninefolds and many other accas, right the way down to a “twofold”, more typically called a double and the smallest acca of the all. The basics about accas and some variations on them, such as backing them each way, can be found in most of those other pieces. For this reason, we are going to focus our attention elsewhere on this article, on two things that are especially relevant to accas like a 10 fold that have a lot of selections. That said, before we get onto that, let us very briefly cover the essentials of a 10 fold.
10 Fold in 10 Points
- Stake – A tenfold is one bet, with one stake, so a £10 tenfold costs £10.
- All or Nothing – Either all legs win and you win big, or if at least one leg loses, your stake is gone.
- What’s In? – You can basically include anything in your 10 fold and normally that means you can mix sports, odds, markets, ante post, pre-match, in-play and just about anything else.
- What’s Out? – The only tenfold no-no, ineligible for all accas, are selections that are related contingencies. Check out our article on doubles for more info but basically these are picks that are related to each other and affect the probability of one another.
- How Do I Work Out Winnings? – You can either do it manually by working out the winnings from each leg and rolling it over onto the next one, use a betting calculator online, or if you are familiar with decimal odds simply multiply the decimal odds for each pick together.
- How Much Can I Win? – How long is a piece of string? That said, a 10 fold acca with all picks at 2/1 equates to a single winner at a whopping price of 59,048/1.
- Can I Bet Each Way? – As long as all legs are eligible for each way bets, this is fine and you can see more about this in our trebles feature.
- 10 Out Of 11 or 12? – You can add more selections to give yourself a margin for error. Backing 10 folds from 11 selections requires 11 separate stakes whilst 10 from 12 means a £1 bet costs £66.
- How Do I Place a 10-fold? – Add 10 picks to your betting slip, hit the option to place an acca, or tenfold, then confirm as normal. Easy!
- Are There Offers for Placing a Tenfold? – Many online bookies have promotions that are relevant to tenfolds. The most common are acca insurance if one leg lets you down and an odds boost if you get them all right!
What About Voids or Postponements?
There is little worse than researching a bet, studying all the form, stats and news, believing you have found a great selection at odds that are too big… and then seeing the game called off or the horse not run or the player withdraw.
Such a scenario can occur for a range of reasons. A horse might prefer drier ground meaning that a late deluge sees its trainer declare it a non-runner. Ice around a football stadium might make it dangerous for fans to attend and see a match postponed. A player could get injured during the knock-up at tennis. A dangerous disease might take over the whole world and see fixtures cancelled… nah, that would never happen, right?
If the bet is a single it is usually obvious what happens. It is a void bet and you have your stake returned. Or, alternatively, if the fixture is played within a certain timeframe, your bet carries over. But what about a void or cancelled bet in an acca? Non-runners, late injuries and, even in Britain, terrible weather, are relatively rare. Most bets play out with no fuss and you only have to concern yourself with whether your sporting and betting knowledge was good, or lucky, enough, to get the better of the bookies.
However, when you get up to bigger accas, such as a tenfold, or even a ninefold or smaller, there is an increasing risk that one (or if your luck is really out, more) of the legs will be voided, for whatever reason. So, what happens to your acca? Is the whole bet a goner?
A Tenfold Becomes a Ninefold
Thankfully, bookies treat voids within an acca very fairly and simply exclude the selection from the bet. As such, a tenfold becomes a ninefold and an eightfold becomes a sevenfold and so on. If, for example, you had a 10-fold with five races from York and five from Ascot, and the entire card at York was cancelled due to a waterlogged track, your bet would now simply become a fivefold.
You May Lose a Tenfold Bonus
The only thing to note that may disrupt your plans is that should a void leg mean your new wager is ineligible for a promotion, the bookies will judge the issue based on the bet that stands, not the one you placed. So if, for example, there was a free bet granted if you placed an acca with 10 or more legs and one horse in your 10-fold was a non-runner, usually you would not qualify for the free bet. Equally, if there was a 100% winnings boost on tenfolds and higher, your winning ninefold (10 minus one non-runner) would not receive that boost.
Should I Cash Out My Acca?
When cash out was first offered many punters felt it was a great tool and really loved it. However, choice is not always a good thing and for many, cash out now adds an extra layer of decision-making and complexity to their bets. Cash out has particular relevance to large accas, such as tenfolds, because by the eighth of ninth selection there is chance that your cashout offer could reach a really significant sum.
If you place a fiver on Ronaldo to get a hat-trick and he scores twice early on you might get a cash out value of £40. Refuse that £40 in the hope of winning £80 and you will, for sure, regret it should he be subbed off after an hour with United 2-0 up and your £5 heading to the bookmaker’s vaults. But £40 is not a huge sum and, no doubt, you will forget about your missed win within a few days.
However, what if your cashout offer is for £2,000? Or £20,000? Or even a six-figure sum? To the vast majority of people in the UK, that is an amount that would make a real difference and could well be the only time they ever win. Go with your heart and hold out for the £10,000, £50,000, £700,000, or whatever it might be, and it might be a decision you regret for a long, long time. On the other hand, go with your head and take the money but then have to live with the “what could have been” if your final leg or legs come in.
There are two ways to look at the issue. The first is from a value point of view. Looking at things this way makes things easy: never take cash out. Although, having said that, from this point of view, most people, most of the time, shouldn’t place any bets at all. However, the fact of the matter is that when you make your initial acca the bookie is almost certainly giving you far lower odds than is fair from a purely probabilistic perspective. Then, should you take cash out, they are scalping further value from you and taking another cut.
Few punters have the cold head or deep pockets to be able to take this point of view. So, the other question to ask is can you afford not to take the cash out? On one level the answer will always be yes, because it is not your money and it is money you never had. If the last leg lets you down, you have lost 10p, a quid, or perhaps a tenner. It was money you expected to lose deep down and could afford to lose.
However, looked at another way, the question should perhaps be, would the pain of not taking the £20k be worse than the pain of taking the £20k but not winning the £50,000 you would have won had you refused the cash out? Ultimately this is a decision only you can make and hopefully, if you are lucky enough to ever make it that far into a tenfold, you make the right choice!
Partial Cashout Offers Middle Ground
One option that appeals to many punters is to opt for a partial cash out. This means you can take some of the cash out but still have skin in the game and stand to win more if your final pick, or picks, win. Deciding how to skew this is yet another choice but this way, at least, you are assured a net win whilst still maintaining an interest in the final games.
The very smallest cash out some people opt for in this scenario is to cover their stake, so at least they do not lose money on the bet. However, with a large acca the stake is only likely to be very small, so such a strategy is not as relevant as it might be with a single or double. A more realistic stance might be to take around half of the cash out value and still leave a decent chunk of the bet active.
Cash Out Not the Only Hedge
One last thing to consider if you do decide you want to go down the route of locking in some cash from your bet is that cash out almost certainly won’t give you the best return. More than likely, using an exchange to lay your final pick, or a bookie to back the opponent (or opponents), will deliver a better return than the cash out.
There are two clear downsides to this: first, you may need a substantial amount of cash. Second, it is slightly more complex and you will need to calculate how much you need to lay (or back) in order to achieve the outcome you desire (be this the equivalent of total cash out or partial).
Obviously if your last leg is Man City to beat Norwich at 1/5 and it stands to win you £500,000, the stake required to either lay City, or back Norwich +0.5 (or Norwich/Draw double chance), would be huge. Few regular punters could afford to front such a hedge and so cash out – or letting the bet ride – might be the only option. However, in other circumstances, you might need a far smaller sum to achieve the sort of position you want and, in this scenario, laying your final pick at an exchange or betting on their opponent, could well be the best avenue to explore.