System bets explained: Trixie, Patent, Yankee and more

A system bet is a bundle of accumulators: instead of one bet that needs every leg to win, you buy every double, treble and larger combination across your picks, one stake per line. A Trixie is 4 bets on three picks, a Patent 7, a Yankee 11 on four picks and a Lucky 15 fifteen. You get paid with fewer winners than a full accumulator needs, but you pay many stakes to get there.

That trade is the whole subject. The table below lists every common full-cover bet, the worked Yankee shows what two, three and four winners actually return, and the last section maps the UK names onto the German "Systemwette" notation. If you want a number for the legs themselves before you combine them, BAI8 researches football matches one by one: open the predictions to see the assessed games. The Free plan gives you 5 assessments a month, no card needed.

Every full-cover bet in one table

A full-cover bet covers every combination of two or more selections. The "Lucky" versions add a single on each pick, which is why one winner is enough for something back.

Bet	Selections	Total bets	Singles included	Winners needed for a return
Trixie	3	4	No	2
Patent	3	7	Yes, 3	1
Yankee	4	11	No	2
Lucky 15	4	15	Yes, 4	1
Canadian (Super Yankee)	5	26	No	2
Lucky 31	5	31	Yes, 5	1
Heinz	6	57	No	2
Lucky 63	6	63	Yes, 6	1
Super Heinz	7	120	No	2
Goliath	8	247	No	2

The counts match William Hill's own guide to bet types and the L&L Europe help centre, which both list Trixie 4, Patent 7, Yankee 11, Lucky 15 fifteen, Super Yankee 26, Lucky 31, Heinz 57, Lucky 63, Super Heinz 120 and Goliath 247. William Hill treats Canadian and Super Yankee as the same five-pick, 26 bet structure. The cost scales with the bet count: a 1 euro Goliath is 247 euros out of your account.

The rule behind every row is simple. With n picks there are 2 to the power n minus 1 possible lines. Drop the n singles and you have the non-Lucky version: four picks give 15 lines with singles, 11 without.

A worked Yankee on four football selections

Take four football home wins at round example prices, so the arithmetic is easy to follow: A at 2.00, B at 2.50, C at 3.00 and D at 1.80. These are illustrations, not quotes for any fixture. Stake 1 euro per line, 11 euros in total.

Each line returns its prices multiplied together. The six doubles return 5.00 (A and B), 6.00 (A and C), 3.60 (A and D), 7.50 (B and C), 4.50 (B and D) and 5.40 (C and D). The four trebles return 15.00, 9.00, 10.80 and 13.50. The fourfold returns 27.00.

Winners	Lines that pay	Return	Profit or loss
0 or 1	none	0.00	minus 11.00
2 (A and D, the shortest pair)	1 double	3.60	minus 7.40
2 (B and C, the longest pair)	1 double	7.50	minus 3.50
3 (A, B and D)	3 doubles, 1 treble	22.10	plus 11.10
3 (A, B and C)	3 doubles, 1 treble	33.50	plus 22.50
4	6 doubles, 4 trebles, 1 fourfold	107.30	plus 96.30

The lesson is in the second and third rows. Two winners return one double, and here no double reaches the 11 euros staked, so two out of four still loses money at these prices. A Yankee is in profit only on three winners or more, or on two winners priced high enough that their product beats 11.

Make it a Lucky 15 by adding the four singles (15 euros total) and one winner now returns something: C alone pays 3.00, still a loss of 12. With all four in, the singles add 9.30, so the Lucky 15 returns 116.60. For how the fourfold line behaves on its own, see accumulator odds explained.

Lucky 15 bonuses vary by bookmaker

The "Lucky" name comes from bonuses bookmakers attach to these bets, the most common being double the odds when only one selection wins. The terms are not standard. Spreadex's published Lucky Double Odds offer doubles the odds of a lone winner on Lucky 15, 31 and 63 bets, but only on horse racing and greyhounds, only when every selection runs and exactly one wins, and only on the win part of an each-way bet. A football Lucky 15 there gets no bonus at all. The L&L Europe help centre adds that bookmakers also run all-winner and one-loser bonuses, usually as a percentage on returns, and that terms change, so read the offer page of the book you use on the day. On how the place part of an each-way line is settled, see each-way betting explained.

Systemwette 2 aus 4: the German notation

German and Austrian bookmakers write system bets as "X aus Y": X picks per line, from Y selections. Vierklee Sportwetten's help page puts it plainly: a Systemwette 3 aus 4 has 4 lines and a 2 aus 4 has 6, with the total stake split evenly across the lines (10 euros on a 3 aus 4 is 2.50 per line).

That makes "2 aus 4" only part of a Yankee. Mapped across:

UK name	German notation	Lines
Trixie	2 und 3 aus 3	3 + 1 = 4
Patent	1, 2 und 3 aus 3	3 + 3 + 1 = 7
Yankee	2, 3 und 4 aus 4	6 + 4 + 1 = 11
Lucky 15	1, 2, 3 und 4 aus 4	4 + 6 + 4 + 1 = 15
Canadian	2, 3, 4 und 5 aus 5	10 + 10 + 5 + 1 = 26

So a "system yankee" on a German slip means ticking the 2, 3 and 4 aus 4 lines together, not choosing 2 aus 4 alone. One practical difference: UK slips quote a stake per line, German slips usually take a total stake and divide it. Eleven euros total on a Yankee is 1 euro a line, but typing 11 into a UK per-line stake box costs 121.

How to size the stake

Because a system bet is many bets, the number that matters is the total, not the stake per line. If your normal bet is one unit, a Yankee at one unit a line is eleven of them on four opinions. Size it from the total down, the way a betting unit is sized, and the wider rules are in staking without going broke.

What this does not tell you

The example prices above are illustrations, so the returns describe the mechanics and not any real match. A system bet does not remove the bookmaker's margin: every one of the 11 lines in a Yankee pays it, and combining legs compounds it. It does not make a weak pick good either; if you would not back a leg as a single, covering it in a Yankee only spreads the loss. Bonus terms, settlement of void legs and stake entry differ by bookmaker and change without notice, so the book's own rules page is the final word. Whether any of the four legs is worth backing is a question about the matches, and that is what the BAI8 predictions answer, with the Free plan covering 5 assessments a month, no card needed.