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4 selections, 11 bets, 6 doubles + 4 trebles + 1 fourfold. The cheapest 4-selection full-cover wager.
4 selections, 11 bets, 6 doubles + 4 trebles + 1 fourfold. The cheapest 4-selection full-cover wager.
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A Yankee is the 4-selection equivalent of a Trixie. You pick four selections, A, B, C and D, and the bookmaker writes 11 bets: 6 doubles (every possible pair), 4 trebles (every possible three), and 1 fourfold accumulator covering all four. There are no singles, which keeps the price down vs a Lucky 15, a £1 Yankee costs £11, a £1 Lucky 15 costs £15.
Because there are no singles, you need a minimum of two winners for the slip to return anything at all. The trade-off is the compounding upside: with 4 winners, you'll collect on every double, every treble, and the fourfold, and the fourfold alone returns multiples of your entire stake.
Four selections, all priced 2/1 (3.00 decimal), £1 unit stake, total outlay £11. Settling each component:
Total return = £243 on £11 outlay, a profit of £232, or roughly 22× your stake. The fourfold accumulator alone returns about a third of the total, which is the structural reason punters back full-cover bets rather than four separate doubles: you get the singles-style "all winners" jackpot without giving up the safety of the shorter combinations.
And if only 2 of 4 win at 2/1? You collect on one double, £9 return on £11 outlay, a £2 loss. Painful, but much milder than an accumulator (£11 wipeout).
The three closest 4–5 selection bets, ranked by structure:
| Bet type | Selections | Bets | Includes singles? | Bonus payouts? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yankee | 4 | 11 | No | No |
| Lucky 15 | 4 | 15 | Yes (4) | Usually |
| Canadian | 5 | 26 | No | No |
A Yankee is the cheapest 4-selection full-cover bet. Lucky 15 adds the singles and the bookie's bonus structure, which is why most punters at retail default to Lucky 15. Canadian is the same idea scaled to 5 selections.
Eleven bets, eleven layered slices of margin. The fourfold in particular compounds the overround across all four legs , a Yankee with four legs each carrying 4% margin gives the bookmaker about 17% expected take on that single bet alone. The maths that quietly takes a slice of every fold is the cornerstone reference for why the bookie's edge grows non-linearly as the multiplier deepens.