There are so many different types of wagers you can make, be it on football, horse racing, or anything else. We have got information on them all, starting from a basic double and going right up to a mighty Goliath, as well as covering everything in between and other bets besides.
There is, naturally, considerable overlap and so to avoid repeating ourselves too much, this piece on fivefolds (5-folds, five folds – call them what you will) will be to the point. For those wanting more in-depth information on any of the points raised we will direct you accordingly, chiefly to the fivefold’s immediate little brother, the fourfold.
What Is a Fivefold Bet?
In that particular article, we explain that a “4 fold is, quite simply, an accumulator, or acca, with four separate legs. In the order of accas, we have a double, a treble, then the 4 fold, 5 fold and so on”. So, therefore, it should not surprise you to learn that a fivefold is an acca with five legs.
As usual, when it comes to an acca, you have one stake that covers all five legs and all five must win in what is an all-or-nothing wager. If the five picks do indeed win, you will be looking at a handsome return but if, however, any single leg should let you down, you lose your entire stake and will not be troubling the bookie for a single penny.
What Bets Can I Add to a 5 Fold?
Keeping things brief, you can typically add any bet you want to your fivefold. You can pick five horses to win, five games of football to finish with over 2.5 goals, five home wins in the rugby or anything else that takes your fancy. The five selections can be from one sport or from five different ones; they can be from the same or similar markets, or from totally different ones.
The only exception to that laissez-faire, anything-goes approach, is that selections within a fivefold, as with any acca, cannot be related. The technical term for this is related contingencies but really you just need to think about it as two selections where the chance of one thing happening is related to the chance of the other.
When placing bets online you are unlikely to have any issues because you simply will not be able to combine bets that are related contingencies into an accumulator of any size (there is a tiny chance that something could slip through the net but this is highly unlikely). In a shop, however, things are different, because many bets are processed manually, as this punter disappointingly found out.
This example was a very clearcut and obvious one as the punter tried to place a double that had Emma Radacanu to win her next match as one leg, and for her to win the whole tournament (the US Open) as the other. This created a double with odds of almost 18/1 but the odds on her winning the tournament were 15/2. She could not win the tournament without winning her next match so why would the bookie pay 18/1 when the real odds were 15/2?
Some non-eligible acca inclusions are more obviously related than others but this is something we look at in far more detail elsewhere. In short, if you are unable to add certain selections to the same betting slip it is probably because they are related contingencies, especially if they on the same event. If you have any doubts, check with live chat online, or a member of staff in a high street betting shop.
How Much Will I Win?
Your initial stake and winnings essentially roll over from one leg to the next, accumulating as they do – hence the name of this type of bet. So, a £10 winner in your first leg at evens, becomes £20 on the second leg. If that wins at odds of 2/1, you then have £60 on the third pick and so on. Of course, as soon as one of your selections fails to win, all is lost and it is back to the 5-fold drawing board!
For those who use, or at least understand, decimal odds, things are very simple as you just multiple all of the odds together to create the effective odds of the whole acca. Thus, selections at 4.0, 2.2, 6.5, 2.0 and 11.0 will pay out at 1,258.4 – just over 1257/1 – because 4×2.2×6.5x2x11 = 1258.4. However you calculate your winnings (online you will see your potential returns on the slip when you place your bet), you can be sure that a winning fivefold will deliver considerable bang for your buck. For example, even five odds-on picks (4/5, 10/11, 1/3, 1/5 and 8/11) will pay out at odds of more than 8/1!
Backing a 5 Fold Each Way
You can back your fivefold acca each way, just like you can with any bet, be it a single, double or anything else. We look at each way accumulators in far more detail in our feature about doubles but in short, as with any each way bet, there will be two stakes. As such, a £10 each way 5-fold will cost £20, with £10 on the win bet and £10 on the each way or place portion of the wager.
Such a bet would most commonly be placed on horse racing but could be used on any market or sport where each way bets are possible. All five legs are backed as one each way acca, so you will need all five legs to win in order to land both bets, or a mix of wins and places (or just places) to win the each way part of your bet.
The place terms are specific to each leg. So, for example, if your first selection is Andy Murray to win the Australian Open, the place terms will be half the normal odds if he makes the final. On the other hand, if another leg is the winner of the US Masters golf, the each way terms might be a quarter of the odds for a top-six finish.
5 Folds from Multiple Selections
As we explained in our fourfolds article, one interesting option that gives you a little more room for manoeuvre with accumulators is to create multiple bets that draw from a higher number of selections. What we mean by this is that rather than making a standard fivefold bet, where you pick five bets and they all must win, you include more than five selections but make a number of different five folds from them.
If you are a football fan, for example, you might decide to go for a bet based on who will win the 10 Premier League games on a given weekend. You pick your 10 winners and then make every possible fivefold bet from them all. This is called a “fivefolds from 10 selections bet” but if you were unsure of a couple of games you might just pick the winner of eight of the 10 matches and opt for a fivefolds from eight selections instead. Or if there were just six games you were confident about, you could do fivefolds from six selections.
How this works may be easier to explain if we look at the simplest of those examples, 5 folds from 6 selections. Let’s say that the six bets were as follows:
- Man City to win
- Liverpool to win
- Chelsea to win
- Man United to win
- Arsenal to win
- West Ham to win
The first fivefold you would place would be on the first five sides listed above to win, a bet we can denote numerically as 12345 (so omitting the sixth leg, in this case West Ham). A 5 folds from six selections wager creates a total of six different bets (because each fivefold excludes one of your six base picks) and so a £10 bet of this nature would cost £60. The other five bets would be 12346, 12356, 12456, 13456 and 23456.
Whilst opting for fivefolds from six selections creates a very manageable six bets, each requiring a stake, when you increase the number of selections the total number of wagers rises dramatically. So, for example, fivefolds from eight selections means a total of 56 bets and if we increase that to 10 picks you have a massive 252 different fivefolds to cover, such that a £10 bet would cost £2,520!
Whatever type of “X-folds from Y selections” wager you go for, you need at least “X” legs, in this case five, to win, to see any return. Obviously, it is far easier to get five match predictions correct out of 10 games than it is to get five out of five. However, should you get just five of them correct, you will only land one winning fivefold and lose the other 251! You would need to get all 10 correct to land all 252 fivefolds.
Returns will very much vary according to the odds of your winning selections. However, with a football bet like this (5-folds from 10) you would probably require six, seven or perhaps eight correct to make a net win. That said, if you land a fivefold with a few winners at longer odds you can easily make a net win from a bet like this with just five correct and only one winning acca. If you can pick upsets at, for example, 3/1, 3/1, 4/1, 5/2 and 2/1, that solitary winning fivefold accumulator would deliver a win of 839/1, leaving you with a solid net win.