Lucky 15 Calculator: Work Out a Lucky 15, Yankee or Trixie

A Lucky 15 is fifteen bets on four selections: four singles, six doubles, four trebles and one fourfold. Because the singles are included, one winner is enough to get something back, and two or three winners can pay well if the prices are long enough. The Lucky 15 calculator below works out the whole bet for you. Enter three to eight selections, set each result, choose the stake per line and whether the bet is each-way, and it shows the bet type, the number of bets, the total staked, the return and the profit.

Below the calculator you will find how a Lucky 15 works, how to work one out by hand line by line, what each-way and place terms do to the return, and how the Trixie, Patent, Yankee and the bigger full-cover bets up to the Goliath are built.

How to use the Lucky 15 calculator

The calculator opens with a £1 each-way Lucky 15 at 1/4 odds on four horses: 2/1 won, 3/1 won, 6/4 placed and 4/1 lost. Change any field to match your own slip:

• Selections: type each price as the bookmaker shows it, in fractional (6/4), decimal (2.50) or American (+150) odds. Formats can be mixed. Press Add selection for more, up to eight, or Remove last to drop one. The minimum is three.
• Result: set each selection to Won, Placed, Lost or Push / void. A void selection, such as a non-runner, counts at odds of 1.00.
• Cover: Singles and up gives the Patent, Lucky 15, Lucky 31 and Lucky 63. Doubles and up gives the Trixie, Yankee, Canadian, Heinz, Super Heinz and Goliath.
• Stake per line: the amount on each bet, not the total. There is no currency symbol, so £1 goes in as 1.
• Each-way: Yes adds a place bet to every line and doubles the total staked. Place terms can be 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/5 of the odds.

The outputs are the bet type, which follows the number of selections and the cover you chose, the number of bets (lines), the total staked, the total return including stakes, and the profit, which is negative when the return is below the outlay. Seven or eight selections with singles have no common name, so the bet type shows a dash while the other figures still work.

With the default inputs the calculator shows 15 bets, £30 staked, a return of £34.33 and a profit of £4.33. Switch each-way to No and the same results give £15 staked and £19.00 back, a profit of £4.00.

What is a Lucky 15 bet

A Lucky 15 covers every combination of four selections. Label them A, B, C and D and the fifteen lines are four singles (A, B, C, D), six doubles (AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD), four trebles (ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD) and one fourfold (ABCD). Each line is a separate bet with the same stake and is settled on its own. A double only pays if both of its selections win, a treble needs all three, and the fourfold needs all four.

The stake you type on the slip is the stake per line, so a £1 Lucky 15 costs £15 and a £2 Lucky 15 costs £30. Each-way doubles that again: a £1 each-way Lucky 15 is thirty bets, fifteen to win and fifteen to place, for £30. Without the four singles the same bet is a Yankee, which is eleven lines.

It is most often placed on horse racing, usually four horses in different races on the same day, though nothing stops you using football (soccer), golf or tennis selections. The selections must be in different events, because the bookmaker treats each line as an accumulator and two outcomes from the same race cannot both win.

How to work out a Lucky 15 by hand

Turn every price into decimal odds first: 2/1 is 3.00, 3/1 is 4.00, 6/4 is 2.50 and 4/1 is 5.00. A single returns stake x odds, a double returns stake x odds x odds, and so on. Any line with a loser in it returns nothing.

For the place part, apply the place terms to the fractional price. At 1/4 odds, 2/1 becomes 1/2 (1.50), 3/1 becomes 3/4 (1.75), 6/4 becomes 3/8 (1.375) and 4/1 becomes 1/1 (2.00). A selection that placed without winning counts in the place lines only.

Here are the fifteen lines of the default £1 each-way bet, with A at 2/1 (won), B at 3/1 (won), C at 6/4 (placed) and D at 4/1 (lost):

• Single A: £3.00 win, £1.50 place.
• Single B: £4.00 win, £1.75 place.
• Single C: nothing on the win, £1.375 place.
• Single D: nothing.
• Double AB: £12.00 win (3.00 x 4.00), £2.625 place (1.50 x 1.75).
• Double AC: £2.0625 place only (1.50 x 1.375).
• Double BC: £2.40625 place only (1.75 x 1.375).
• Doubles AD, BD and CD: nothing, because D lost.
• Treble ABC: £3.609375 place only (1.50 x 1.75 x 1.375).
• Trebles ABD, ACD and BCD: nothing.
• Fourfold ABCD: nothing.

The win part adds up to 3 + 4 + 12 = £19.00. The place part is £4.625 from the singles, £7.09375 from the doubles and £3.609375 from the treble, £15.328125 in all. Together that is £34.33 back for £30 staked, a profit of £4.33. The calculator keeps fractions of a penny until the end and rounds the total, while a bookmaker may round each line, so the settled figure can differ by a penny or two.

Each-way Lucky 15s and place terms

Each-way is common on horse racing because Lucky 15s on racing are often built from prices of 2/1 or longer, in fields where any one horse is more likely to lose than win. The place part gives every line a second chance: in the example above a horse that only finished in the frame still contributed to four place lines. How each-way bets are split and settled is set out in each-way bets explained, and the each way calculator handles a single each-way bet.

Place terms move the return more than people expect, because the place fraction is multiplied through every double and treble. Run the same four results at 1/5 odds and the place prices drop to 1.40, 1.60 and 1.30. The place part falls from £15.33 to £13.35, so the bet returns £32.35, a profit of £2.35 instead of £4.33. Terms depend on the bookmaker, the race type and the number of runners, and the horse racing betting guide covers how they change when non-runners shrink a field.

One winner, two winners or all four: how the returns change

The shape of a Lucky 15 is easiest to see with four selections at the same price. At 3/1 each (4.00), a £1 win-only Lucky 15 costs £15, and the return depends on how many win.

One winner returns £4, the single alone. Two winners return £24: two singles at £4 and one double at £16. Three winners return £124: three singles, three doubles at £16 and a treble at £64. All four return £624, made up of four singles, six doubles, four trebles at £64 and the fourfold at £256. A Yankee on the same prices costs £11 and returns nothing, £16, £112 and £608 for one, two, three and four winners.

So the singles are cheap insurance when one or two win, and the multiples carry almost all of the upside. With the default prices of 2/1, 3/1, 6/4 and 4/1, all four winning returns £419 on a £15 win-only stake: £14.50 from the singles, £77 from the doubles, £177.50 from the trebles and £150 from the fourfold.

A lone winner is where the bonuses mentioned above come in. Without one, the 4/1 shot winning alone returns £5 on £15, or £7 on £30 each-way if nothing else places. For one winner to cover the stake by itself it needs to be 14/1 or longer on a win-only Lucky 15, and roughly 23/1 or longer each-way at 1/4 odds. On a bookmaker that pays double odds on a single winner, that 4/1 single would be settled at 8/1, so check the terms of your bookmaker if that matters to you.

Void selections help more than a loser. If the 4/1 horse in the default bet had been a non-runner instead of a loser, it would count at 1.00 and every line containing it would pay at the odds of the rest. The win-only return rises from £19 to £39, because the D single returns its £1 and AD, BD and ABD pay £3, £4 and £12. Any Rule 4 deduction on the other horses would reduce that, and the calculator does not apply one.

Trixie, Patent, Yankee and the bigger full-cover bets

Every bet in this family follows the same rule: take a number of selections and cover every double, treble and larger accumulator (acca) between them, with or without the singles. The names, line counts and the cost at £1 per line are:

• Trixie: 3 selections, 4 bets (3 doubles, 1 treble). £4, or £8 each-way.
• Patent: 3 selections, 7 bets (a Trixie plus 3 singles). £7, or £14 each-way.
• Yankee: 4 selections, 11 bets (6 doubles, 4 trebles, 1 fourfold). £11, or £22 each-way.
• Lucky 15: 4 selections, 15 bets (a Yankee plus 4 singles). £15, or £30 each-way.
• Canadian, also called a Super Yankee: 5 selections, 26 bets (10 doubles, 10 trebles, 5 fourfolds, 1 fivefold). £26, or £52 each-way.
• Lucky 31: 5 selections, 31 bets (a Canadian plus 5 singles). £31, or £62 each-way.
• Heinz: 6 selections, 57 bets (15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 fourfolds, 6 fivefolds, 1 sixfold). £57, or £114 each-way.
• Lucky 63: 6 selections, 63 bets (a Heinz plus 6 singles). £63, or £126 each-way.
• Super Heinz: 7 selections, 120 bets, every combination from doubles to the sevenfold. £120, or £240 each-way.
• Goliath: 8 selections, 247 bets, every combination from doubles to the eightfold. £247, or £494 each-way.

A Trixie bet is the smallest of them and needs two winners to return anything. A Yankee bet is the Lucky 15 without singles, so it is cheaper but returns nothing with one winner. The Lucky 31 and Lucky 63 apply the Lucky 15 idea to five and six selections. All of them are system bets, and the parlays and accumulators guide shows how each multiple inside them settles. In the US the same structure is sold as a round robin, where you tick the parlay sizes yourself; the round robin calculator works it out in those terms.

Cost versus coverage

More lines buy more ways to get paid, but each line is another bet with the bookmaker's margin built in, and multiples carry more of it than singles. Suppose every price in your Lucky 15 returns 90p per £1 on average once the margin is taken out. A single keeps that 90p, a double 81p, a treble about 73p and a fourfold about 66p. Averaged over the fifteen lines, the Lucky 15 returns about 80p per £1 staked, and a Yankee, which has no singles, about 77p. The no-vig calculator shows how much margin sits in one price; in a multiple that margin is paid once for every leg.

The stake also climbs faster than it looks. A 50p each-way Lucky 15 is £15, a £1 each-way Heinz is £114, and a £1 Goliath is £247 before each-way. Judge the bet by the total staked, not the figure per line, and check the result for one or two winners in the calculator before you confirm, since that is the outcome you will see most often.

When a Lucky 15 makes sense

A Lucky 15 suits four selections you rate at prices long enough for two winners to cover the cost. With four 3/1 shots, two winners turn £15 into £24. With four 6/4 favourites (2.50), two winners return 2.50 + 2.50 + 6.25 = £11.25, a loss of £3.75, and you would need three of the four. Short prices make the singles too small and the doubles too modest to carry fifteen stakes.

It also makes sense only when you actually want the multiples. If you have four horses you like and no particular reason to combine them, four singles at £3.75 each cost the same £15 and carry the lower margin of a single bet. The Lucky 15 trades some of that for the chance of a big return when three or four land.

Before you place a Lucky 15

Run through this before you confirm the slip:

• Multiply the stake per line by 15, or by 30 each-way, and make sure that total sits inside your normal staking plan.
• Check the place terms and number of places for each race, since they can differ across your four selections.
• Put the prices into the calculator and look at the one-winner and two-winner results, not only the all-winners figure.
• Read your bookmaker's rules on Lucky 15 bonuses, non-runners and Rule 4, because the calculator leaves them out.
• Keep the four selections in separate events.

Betting laws differ between countries, so check what applies where you live and use a licensed bookmaker. Fifteen or thirty bets on one slip can make spending feel smaller than it is; if betting stops being fun, the responsible gambling page lists where to get help.