At modern online bookies, punters are accustomed to having hundreds of different markets to choose from on the biggest events like a Champions League football match or the FA Cup final. As well as countless stats- and player-based markets, often broken down into various timeframes too, there are almost infinite options created by the use of betbuilders. However, it was not always this way and historically all bookies offered a far smaller range of bets across all sports (and they also covered fewer sports in general).
In order to stand out from each other and also to attract customers with different options and offerings, bookmakers have always tried to innovate and attract punters with different bets though. It is claimed that Fred Done, owner of Betfred, invented the Lucky 15 bet and in general the options provided before bookmakers had access to greater technology and data did revolve around combining selections.
An Any To Come (ATC) bet belongs to this era when bookies tried to create new multiples bets that were based on how a number of selections or legs could be combined in different ways. At this time innovation focussed on accas and other multiples, some of which we have covered elsewhere on the site. An ATC wager, which you may also see referred to as an “if cash” bet, or sometimes a “conditional bet”, is one of these bets and is the umbrella term used to cover a range of related wagering options.
How Do If Cash or Any To Come Bets Work?
An ATC is a bet which has more than one part and the second (or subsequent) legs are only placed if there is cash available after the first part of the bet, hence the “if cash” name some use. Equally one can see why they are also known as conditional bets because the second part of the wagers can only be placed, conditionally, if the first parts are successful. These bets may also be referred to as “Up and Down” bets, or UADs, although some may argue that a UAD is actually the most basic type of ATC, rather than another name for the type of bet in general. Simple right?
If you want to place such a bet we believe it is only possible in a bricks and mortar betting shop. If you know of an online UK bookie that does facilitate such wagers though please let us know and we can update this article but having scoured all of the big boys we’re pretty sure none of them offer it. Such bets may be possible by contacting a site’s customer service team, or via some variation of a request-a-bet service but in general any hardcore ATC fans should head to their local betting shop.
The logistics of placing such a wager aside, let us return to what these bets entail. The basic premise of these bets is that they involve multiple selections with an initial stake going on the first one and subsequent bets only being placed if that is successful and so cash is available for the others. So subsequent bets are only made if the first leg wins, part wins or is a push/void.
Different Types of Any To Come Bet
In one sense we could view an accumulator on four successive horse races at a given meeting as an ATC. The initial stake goes on the first leg and the second leg only comes into play if that first one wins. However, the fact that all of the stake and winnings roll over on each leg makes this an acca, rather than an ATC. To best explain what an ATC (or “if cash”) bet is, let us take a look at the different bets that fall under this umbrella.
Up and Down (UAD)
We have a separate dedicated feature on UADs and so for the fullest information you should check that out. However, because UADs can be seen as the building blocks for many other ATCs, we will cover them in some detail here also. Note that these wagers may also go by the name of a Vice Versa, a Twist, a Conditional Bet or a Single Stakes About (SSA) bet – as well as other similar names too!
By and large, we will stick to the term UAD though, although we will look at SSAs separately, as well as a Double Stakes About (DSA) bet. Sticking with a simple Up and Down for now, this wager uses two selections and places a standard single on each of them. So, for example, you might back Liverpool to beat Manchester United and Manchester City to beat Everton, as below:
| Bet | Wager | Stake | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool to beat Man Utd | £5 | Evens |
| 2 | Man City to beat Everton | £5 | Evens |
This would be described as a £5 UAD and similarly to a £5 each way bet that comes in two parts, the total cost would be £10. The conditional element of this wager, or the “if cash” aspect, is that if Liverpool beat Man United, the stake from that bet would roll over onto Man City as a separate single. You would keep the winnings but the original stake would then be used to make the conditional part of the bet.
Equally and in reverse, if City beat Everton, your stake from that would be placed as another single on Liverpool to beat the Red Devils. Once again, the winnings over and above your initial stake from the original bet would be retained but the stake itself would be recycled on the other part of the wager. So this would potentially give us two further bets, as below:
| Bet | Wager | Stake | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1a | Man City to beat Everton | £5 | Evens |
| 2a | Liverpool to beat Man Utd | £5 | Evens |
As said, we have much more detail in our separate article about UADs. However, to summarise, a £5 UAD like this would cost you £10. Assuming both teams win, the initial two bets, Bet 1 and Bet 2, would return a total of £10 (the £5 winnings from each £5 bet at evens). Bet 1a would then return £10 (£5 stake and another £5 winnings), with Bet 2a doing exactly the same giving you a total return of £30 and an advantage of £20 compared to where you started.
As we note in our UAD piece, the second portions of the bets, 1a and 2a, are not actually physically placed but rather applied in retrospect. This is because if the two games kick off at the same time, for example, you can only place these “if cash” segments after the games they relate to have already finished. From a punter’s perspective, it makes no difference to the end result of the bet but is just worth being aware of to avoid confusion about the mechanics of the wager.
A UAD wager can be compared to various options you would have when looking at, in our example, backing Liverpool and City. You might have opted for two singles, or you might instead have backed the pair as a double. How these wagers compare depends on how many of your two selections win. Obviously a double is an all or nothing bet that offers the best return if both picks are successful but, on the other hand, yields nothing if either side lets you down.
Equally, should just one leg win, a single will always be the best option. In this sense, a UAD offers some middle ground between backing two selections as singles or as an acca (double). The odds of the selections have an impact on what you might feel is the best option and in general, the higher the odds, the more attractive the double, and to a lesser extent the UAD are, whilst at lower odds the singles may seem more attractive. Confusing the matter further though is the obvious reality that the higher the odds, the harder it becomes to land a double. Once again, take a look at our feature on how UADs work for more info on these comparisons.
Double Stakes About
A standard UAD, the building block of many Any To Come bets, is a Single Stakes About bet. This is because on the second part of each bet we use the same value stake as we do on the first. With a Double Stakes About bet, you guessed it (hopefully!), the stake is doubled. So if we return to our example above on the two football matches, rather than parts 1a and 2a being bets for £5, they become bets for £10.
DSA wagers are only possible where the initial bets are placed at odds of evens or higher because odds shorter than this are insufficient to facilitate doubling the stake. If you make a £10 bet at 8/11, for example, the winnings are only £7.27 and so even if you roll all of this over to the second portion of your bet you would only be staking £17.27 – less than the £20 needed for a DSA.
Note that you can include odds-on shots in DSA bets but the second portion of one (or even both) of the bets will be less than double. Should you include a pick at lower than even money in a DSA bet, the whole return from part one will go onto part two, even if that is less than double the original stake.
The basics of this bet are the same as with an SSA, the only difference being that you retain less of the winnings from the first portion of your wager with a DSA in order to facilitate the larger stake on the second half of it. So, for example, if we imagine a horse racing DSA with two horses at odds of 3/1, the bet would work as follows:
| Bet | Wager | Stake | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rouge Ron | £5 | 3/1 |
| 2 | Bap Lion | £5 | 3/1 |
If Rouge Ron wins then that would return £20, that is £15 and your £5 stake. In order to double that stake for part 1a of this wager (a secondary bet on Bap Lion), a DSA would return just £10 to the bettor, rather than £15 as per an SSA. Assuming both horses win this would leave us with secondary bets as follows:
| Bet | Wager | Stake | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1a | Bap Lion | £5 | 3/1 |
| 2a | Rouge Ron | £5 | 3/1 |
So in this scenario, a DSA would return £10 from each of the first bets to the punter (£20 in total), plus a tidy £40 from each of the secondary bets giving an overall total of £100. The downside of a DSA, as compared to an SSA, is that your returns are lower should only one pick win because you have retained less of the winnings from the first bets. These bets are, as we note in our Up and Down article, “higher risk, with higher reward”.
Round Robin
A Round Robin, in common with most of the other ATCs we will look at, is effectively a variation on a specific full cover bet. A Trixie is one of a number of full cover bets that takes multiple selections and backs all possible accas that can be made from them. It does not include singles so the addition of the UADs is a nice way to make sure there is a return if just one leg wins.
A standard Trixie consists of three selections, using these to make three doubles and a treble. So for example you might place a Trixie on Mo Salah, Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling to score at any time. To those four bets, a Round Robin adds three UADs (relating to the three doubles) with each of these counting as two bets (requiring two separate stakes), meaning a Round Robin is a total of 10 bets, compared to the four of a Trixie. A £1 Round Robin as discussed here would cost £10 in total and include the following anytime scorer bets:
- Salah/Kane double
- Salah/Sterling double
- Kane/Sterling double
- Salah/Kane/Sterling treble
- Salah/Kane UAD
- Kane/Salah UAD
- Kane/Sterling UAD
- Sterling/Kane UAD
- Salah/Sterling UAD
- Sterling/Salah UAD
Flag
A Flag bet is to a Round Robin as a Yankee is to a Trixie. Put another way, a Flag is like a Round Robin but featuring four picks rather than three. So, for example, you might place a Flag on the four main races on a given day at Cheltenham, picking one horse in each race. A Yankee consists of 11 separate bets, six doubles, four trebles and an acca (a fourfold). The Flag simply creates an extra UAD for each of the six doubles, adding 12 further bets, meaning a £1 Flag will cost you £23, with just one of the four legs winning enough to yield some form of return.
Super Flag
Again keeping things nice and simple, a Super Flag is the ATC version of a Super Yankee, which is also to say it is like a Flag, but with one more selection. So rather than pick the winners in four horse races, for example, you might try and pick the winners of five tennis matches and combine these into a Super Flag. In summary, a Super Flag consists of:
- Five selections
- 46 individual bets
- 10 doubles
- 10 trebles
- 5 fourfolds
- 1 fivefold accumulator
- 10 Up and Downs (20 more bets in total)
Rounder
You could in theory create larger variations on the bets above, for example adding the ATC legs to a Heinz full cover bet which features six selections or the even larger Super Heinz or Goliaths (seven and eight legs respectively). However, these are non-standard options and ultimately just variations on the same theme and so the next ATC bet we will look at is a Rounder.
A Rounder is slightly different in that it incudes singles as its smallest bet and then adds the various “if cash” bets to these. A Rounder has three selections, so we might revert back to our bet on Kane, Salah and Sterling to score at anytime. If we call each of those singles 1, 2 and 3, a Rounder entails the following bets.
- Single on 1
- Single on 2
- Single on 3
- 1 and 2 ATC (2 bets)
- 1 and 3 ATC (2 bets)
- 2 and 3 ATC (2 bets)
This means a Rounder consists of nine bets in total and you should also note that these ATC wagers are SSA.
Roundabout
A Roundabout is a variation on a Rounder and so one might quite naturally assume that it includes an extra leg and perhaps uses four singles and four ATC bets. However, the way a Roundabout tweaks things is a little different. It is identical to a Rounder apart from that the “if cash” element of the wager is Double Stakes About. This makes it a slightly higher risk option, though one which is more rewarding if at least two of the three legs win.