Hedging is a great betting tool to use for your wagers as it has a couple of key purposes. It can either be used to guarantee some profit on the outcome of an event, or it can be used as a tool when you have changed your mind on the outcome of a bet, or it can be used to try and minimize a loss on an existing wager.
While you will find Hedging most commonly used on Two-Way or Three-Way situations (where an event has either two or three outcomes only) the system can be used with great effect on Accumulator betting. Here we are going to take a look at how to employ a bit of Hedging on an Acca as well as explaining why you may want to consider doing it.
What Hedging is
The first place to start is by fully understanding just what Hedging is. This is a system whereby you bet on both the outcomes of an event so that you are guaranteed a profit no matter the outcome. This is done by calculation how much of a stake needs to go to each bet. For example, if you have bet on Andy Murray to win a tournament and he has made it to the Final. In order to cut the risk of him losing, you can put a proportionate stake on his opponent to win the match. How that works is by calculating how much stake needs to go to each of the outcome options.
Why Hedge an Acca?
For the same reason, as we outplayed above, you may want to Hedge an Accumulator. The main reason to do so would be to eliminate the risk of losing. Remember when you are Hedging, because you are placing a second bet in order to minimize risk, that does come with a cost. You are cutting into your potential profit margin for a bit of a security.
It is like backing England to win the World Cup, but also placing stakes on Brazil and Germany just in case the Three Lions didn’t manage to get their hands on the title. Because you are outlying more stakes on the outcome of a single event, if England were to win the World Cup, some of your profit would have been diminished because of having put money up on the other options.
Accumulator Hedging Example
So let’s look at a potential use for Hedging an Accumulator. It is a busy weekend of tennis and you have created yourself a nice sixfold acca that you feel pretty confident in. The first five teams that you have selected have all managed to win their legs for you and now you find yourself in a position of everything riding on that one final leg of the bet.
You could of course just let everything ride and go for the big jackpot by leaving your win single on the Acca running.
Or you could hedge a bet on that final outcome.
Let’s say that your overall acca came out to 51.00 odds. You placed a £20 stake on that wager. That means you would be in line for a £1,020 payout if that sixth and final bet came up good. It would be at this point where you would perhaps think, what if the final leg doesn’t?
Is it better to take a bit of coverage on that final leg? Let’s say the final leg of your accumulator was Serena Williams to beat Simona Halep (a 2.05 odds selection). If Williams failed to get the win in that match you would be out of your £20 stake and would have missed out on over a £1,000 payout. You look at the odds and see that Halep is 1.91 odds to win the game.
So if you were to go and place a bet of say £100 on Halep to win, if she did win then that would be a £191.00 return from that single stake on the Hedge Bet. Of course, the profit of that would be 91 minus the £20 stake from your original bet. But you would still be banking a good £71 profit then if your final leg of the original accumulator didn’t win.
Sure it is not the big £1,020 payout that you would have been celebrating, but by Hedging, you are not going to find yourself in a situation where you come away with a loss. The amount of stake that you put on the Hedge Bet would be up to your discretion. But remember if you had bet that £100 on Halep as your Hedge Bet, but Williams still went out and won, making your original ACCA complete, that would be an extra £100 eaten out of your profit because of the Hedge Bet stake.
So that’s something to take into consideration. So the way to look at it would be to perhaps create the situation of a balanced bet.
Divide the return of the initial bet by the odds price of the opposite outcome.
You had placed a 20 stake at 51.00 odds on the acca
£20 x 51.00 = £1,020
The odds on the other outcome of Halep as the Hedge Bet is 1.91
So £1020/1.91 = £534
So you would have to bet 534 on Halep to create a balanced book.
So if Halep won that final leg at 1.91 odds = £1,019.94 return
If Halep loses the final leg of the acca your original bet of £20 at 51.00 odds = £1,020
Again though, and this is an important part of the scenario to not forget. That is the original Accumulator bet won and you had Hedged it with a Balanced book, your final returns in total on that event would be the £1,020 payout minus the £534 stake that you Hedged on Halep which would leave you with £486. So once again you have paid a premium and in this case a big one, cutting out that original risk of the Accumulator losing.
Preference
So in that situation about with the Accumulator, it would be down to personal preference of whether you would be looking to get to a balanced outcome, or if you wanted to Hedge a bet just to try and cover the loss of the original steak on the Accumulator bet. This really is a great thing about Hedge Betting that you do get that flexibility to plan it out on your terms to your own personal needs.
Hedging Thoughts
In this situation, the value of Hedging could come into play very well and it’s a good option to have. There is something to be said for cutting out risk in a situation, but the con of the situation would be that you are sacrificing potential original returns to ensure that you do come out without a loss. The ability to play with the stake on the second option gives you so much control over how you do handle this. So next time you are looking at an accumulator, consider the option of Hedging and weigh up the pros and cons of it to see whether it is something that you would want to roll with.
