7. Exotic Betting

Exotic Betting is an ill-defined term meaning different things to different people. For the purposes of our deliberations we define an Exotic Bet to mean "any bet that has been devised to try and better the odds of you winning just a little something each time, rather than trying to shoot for a large but almost unobtainable pot". In other words an Exotic Bet is, in our book, just a fancy term for certain types of hedge betting.

There is a whole range of exotic bets out there, all applicable to different levels of accumulator betting. Most have been concocted for forecast betting (outright Home and Away predictions) but some of them have been devised for use with Draw calls, and one or two for Correct Scores betting.

To test the effectiveness of some of these bets, we have built them into our Program, giving them the following clichéd but easy-to-remember names (since, to the best of our knowledge, none of them had copyrighted names before):

We explain in detail how each of the above works, thus you may find that you recognise some of them by other names. However, we also tell you about the quirks they possess, so you may perhaps discover that you weren't so familiar with those.

It is very important to remember that even Exotic Betting will not cover your outlay in the long-term unless you can identify strong "Bankers" for each bet. If you consistently rely on weak Bankers then you will lose your money, simply because more of the weak calls will let you down than you bargained for. Our advice is that if you have only managed to identify weak Bankers, stick to the straight accumulator and overall you will probably make more money.

For Exotic "Forecast" Betting you must be just as careful to ensure that your support matches too are as strong as possible and won't swing to the opposite result from that which you are hoping for. This is because all Fixed Odds accumulators automatically carry an in-built penalty due to the higher Over-Round applied by the Bookies that.

Don't get sucked in by those who regale you with tales of how they manage to win a lot using the large accumulator versions of such bets. First off, ask them how much they have won overall compared to their losses. Secondly, remind yourself that, just because there are occasional jackpot winners, it doesn't mean that everyone else will be able to achieve the same thing. And thirdly, when looking at the potential returns that Exotic Betting seems to offer, the following facts should be borne closely in mind:

It is very difficult to find a team that you can back with 75% certainty.
Even if you find 2 teams that you believe offer 75% chances of coming good, that still means you have only a 56% chance of winning a double (75% x 0.75).
Extend this thinking to trebles, quadruples and quintuples with the same 75% certainty per match and your chances reduce to 42% for the treble, 32% for the quadruple and 24% for the quintuple.
You will find it nigh on impossible to find 5 teams to back offering you 75% certainty of winning, so your quintuple chances will inevitably be far less than the 24% shown above. At best they will be around the 12% mark only (for example, 75% x 0.7 x 0.65 x 0.6 x 0.6), even if you think you have an in-depth knowledge of all the teams playing.
The gross return for £10 on a non-Value Fixed Odds quintuple with the chances in (iv) above will be £38.24 (10 x 1.14 x 1.25 x 1.33 x 1.42 x 1.42). With only a 12% chance of winning you will on average win only 1 in 8.33 times. That means you could end up paying out £83.30 (since a 1 in 8.33 chance of winning multiplied by £10 per bet = £83.30) to get back that meagre £38.24! So if you insist on betting where your calls have low chances of coming good for you, then you will simply be throwing your money away.
For the above example, even the Fair Odds for the same bet above (which the Bookies will never knowingly offer) would give you a return of only £82.37 (10 x 1.34 x 1.43 x 1.54 x 1.67 x 1.67), which means that you would simply break near enough even. This doubly emphasises why betting using weak calls will simply eat up your Base Bank week after week.
Since Exotic Betting is just hedge betting, you need to use it in such a way as will ensure that you get something back on average. Except on the odd lucky occasion it won't pay you back a fortune. Laying out lots of money on it is therefore not a sound approach in our book.