Free Yankee calculator

What a Yankee actually is

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.

Worked example — four winners at 2/1

Four selections, all priced 2/1 (3.00 decimal), £1 unit stake — total outlay £11. Settling each component:

• 6 doubles × (£1 × 3.00 × 3.00) = 6 × £9 = £54
• 4 trebles × (£1 × 27.00) = 4 × £27 = £108
• 1 fourfold × (£1 × 81.00) = £81

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).

Yankee vs Lucky 15 vs Canadian

The three closest 4–5 selection bets, ranked by structure:

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.

Where the bookmaker's edge sits

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.

Related tools and guides

• Betting Calculator — full multi-mode calculator: accumulator, system bets, lay, free bet, arbitrage.
• Lucky 15 Calculator — same 4 selections plus 4 singles and bookmaker bonuses.
• Canadian Calculator — the 5-selection equivalent (26 bets), no singles.
• Trixie Calculator — the 3-selection version of the same idea (4 bets).
• Odds Converter — Decimal ↔ Fractional ↔ American with implied probability.

Common questions