- Fact-checked by Josh Miller
- Edited by Diana Westfield
Full cover bets take a handful of selections and back every combination of them. What is a Trixie bet? Three picks covered as three doubles and a treble, four bets in all. A Yankee does the same with four picks, a Patent adds singles to a Trixie, and a Lucky 15 adds singles to a Yankee. They’re popular on a Saturday afternoon because one or two winners can still pay something, and they’re easy to get wrong because the cost multiplies fast. This guide lays them out side by side, and each one has its own free calculator.
What is a Trixie, Yankee, Patent and Lucky 15?
| Bet | Picks | Bets | What’s inside | Cost at £1 | Winners for a return |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trixie | 3 | 4 | 3 doubles, 1 treble | £4 | 2 |
| Patent | 3 | 7 | 3 singles, 3 doubles, 1 treble | £7 | 1 |
| Yankee | 4 | 11 | 6 doubles, 4 trebles, 1 fourfold | £11 | 2 |
| Lucky 15 | 4 | 15 | Yankee + 4 singles | £15 | 1 |
| Canadian | 5 | 26 | Doubles up to a fivefold | £26 | 2 |
| Lucky 31 | 5 | 31 | Canadian + 5 singles | £31 | 1 |
| Heinz | 6 | 57 | Doubles up to a sixfold | £57 | 2 |
| Lucky 63 | 6 | 63 | Heinz + 6 singles | £63 | 1 |
| Super Heinz | 7 | 120 | Doubles up to a sevenfold | £120 | 2 |
| Goliath | 8 | 247 | Doubles up to an eightfold | £247 | 2 |
The “£1” is per bet, so a “£1 Lucky 15″ is a £15 ticket. Make them each way and the cost doubles: a £1 each way Yankee is £22.
What is a Lucky 15 worth with one, two or three winners?
Take four horses at 3/1, 4/1, 5/1 and 6/1 in a £1 Lucky 15. One winner at 5/1 returns £6 from the single, against £15 staked; many bookmakers double the odds on a lone winner, which makes it £11. Two winners at 3/1 and 4/1 give two singles (£4 + £5) and a double (4 × 5 = £20), £29 in all. Three winners and the trebles kick in, and the return jumps past £150. That steep curve is why people love these bets: the payout grows much faster than the number of winners.
It’s also why they’re expensive. Every extra combination carries the bookmaker’s margin, and a bet that’s mostly doubles and trebles multiplies that margin through each leg. A Lucky 15 isn’t a bad bet so much as a pricey way of having a lot of action on four picks.
We put numbers on that in what every multiple bet really costs: a Lucky 15 returns about 82p in the pound at a 10% margin, a Goliath 68p.
What is a treble bet, a double and a Yankee in one line
A double is two picks that both have to win, with the winnings from the first rolled onto the second. A treble is three. A Yankee is all the doubles, trebles and the fourfold from four picks. Patent, Lucky 15 and Lucky 31 are the same ideas with singles added so a single winner returns something. If you want any of these settled exactly, including each way, Rule 4 and dead heats, the CasinoCalcs bet calculator handles all of them on one page.
Fifteen bets on four horses is still four horses. BeGambleAware.org has free support if Saturday betting is getting out of hand.