The ITV7 - Accumulators
Today I thought I might talk about a free bet that I have a love/hate relationship with - the ITV7.
The ITV7 is a free bet that can be placed on 7 nominated races which may or may not be shown by ITV. Each of the legs has to win and in the event of more than one winner a tie break question based upon the number of winning lengths has to be answered. Many people get great pleasure from this bet.
People often underestimate the difficulty of the task that they face. To pick out 7 horses to win in a row, even in races which you have picked yourself, is an extreme task. To pick out 7 in a row in races nominated by someone else, is even harder. The people behind ITV7 have been very clever as to minimise payouts they have also put in a tie break question of how many lengths one of the selections will win by in a nominated race. This to my mind does seem a little harsh. I feel I would be very annoyed to get it up and lose the tie break.
Often the races are some of the most difficult to pick on the card. After spending so long picking the horses it is only natural the enthusiastic ITV7 picker will want to bet on the horses that they have chosen. This is a clever move by the bookies as it is hard to cover all 7 selections and make profit on what can often be a nightmare collection of races.
An accumulator bet might be required as nobody wants to miss out on the tie break. The average punter will get nervous about the idea of 7 winning and either back it ew by doubling the win stake or by turning the win stake in to an ew stake. Both of these solutions are pleasing to the bookie as a 1-point ew acc will make for overall larger profit margins as it will usually lose and 0.5-point EW reduces the win part to a more manageable amount. No bookie loses sleep over the ew part of a 7-fold.
If cash out is an option, as the returns start to mount the temptation to take the money will grow every time you hit a winner. Imagine you are sat pretty with 6. Are you really going to trust the 7th horse to win you that house or are you going to take the new car...!
If you are going to do a 7-fold cover bet keep the stakes small and back win only. There is a much better way to cover the place option. Many people will have managed to get all 7 placed at least a few times. The Tote runs a ITV7 Placepot based on a new bet type called the placepot7. I have only just discovered this and I feel extremely enthusiastic about the concept as I feel it is very achievable. The minimum bet is 50p on the Tote website and the minimum stake per line is 1p. As the bet becomes more well-known and popular, I hope to see the pools increase which will help boost the dividends. If nobody wins the money in the pool gets rolled over to the next Placepot7.
My advice is to play the IT7 Tote placepot to get a decent return for all to be placed and to just have 0.25 to 1 point on the win 7-fold acc.
Recent Placepot7 results:
1st May: There were 15.18 correct selections each winning £738.90
7th May: There were 0.40 correct selections winning £2,558.40 - Remainder rolled over to next time.
14th May: There were 117.91 correct selections each winning £90.90
21st May: There were 19.36 correct selections each winning £361.70
I will be writing more on this subject in the future. Why not check out some of the other blogs?