Lucky 15 Calculator: Work Out Your Lucky 15 Returns, Win or Each Way

The slip is set up with a 50p each way Lucky 15, which is 30 bets and £15 in total. The 5/2 and 11/4 horses won, the 9/2 horse placed at 1/5 odds and the 7/1 horse, in a race paying 1/4, finished down the field. It returns £18.93, so the bet made £3.93.

That figure hides a lot. Half the return came from the place lines on a bet with two winners, and the four-fold lost both ways. A Lucky 15 is really fifteen small bets tied to four horses, and the only way to understand what it did is to look at them separately.

The fifteen bets in a Lucky 15

Call the four horses A, B, C and D. The bet backs every combination of them:

• 4 singles: A, B, C, D
• 6 doubles: AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD
• 4 trebles: ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD
• 1 four-fold: ABCD

Each horse appears in eight of the fifteen lines: its single, three doubles, three trebles and the four-fold. That is why a single horse losing hurts so much. It kills more than half the bet in one go. Each way doubles all of it, with a win line and a place line for every combination, so thirty lines in total.

The slip’s line-by-line list uses the numbers 1 to 4 for the horses, in the order you enter them. “Double 1 + 3 · place” is the place line of the double on the first and third horse.

The example, line by line

With two winners, one placed horse and one loser, here is where the £18.93 came from.

The win lines first. Only the singles and double on the two winners can pay. 50p at 5/2 returns £1.75 and 50p at 11/4 returns £1.875. The double pays 50p × 3.5 × 3.75, which is £6.5625. Those three lines return £10.19 between them, and the other twelve win lines lose.

The place lines do better than you might expect. A winner also counts as placed, so three of the four horses were live for place purposes. At 1/5 odds the 5/2 horse is worth 1.5 in decimals, the 9/2 horse 1.9 and the 11/4 horse 1.55. Their three singles, three doubles and one treble all pay, and together they return £8.74.

Add the two halves and you have £18.93. The slip’s summary splits it by size of bet: the singles returned £6.10 across five paying lines, the doubles £10.62 across four, the trebles £2.21 from one, and the two four-folds nothing.

Try changing the 7/1 horse from unplaced to placed. Its race paid 1/4 odds, so it is worth 2.75 on the place side, and every place line it was killing comes back to life. The return jumps from £18.93 to £44.35, nearly three times the stake, on a day when two of the four horses did not win.

What one, two, three and four winners pay

The table below uses the same four prices, £1 a line win only, so the bet costs £15. It shows why a Lucky 15 is really two bets: a small insurance policy made of singles, and a long shot made of the multiples.

The Yankee costs £11 at £1 a line, so the columns are not like for like on stake.

One winner never gets the stake back at these prices. Two winners get it back when they are the shorter-priced pair, and turn a real profit once one of them is the bigger price. Three is where the bet pays properly, and four is the reason people place it. The difference between the two columns is always the four singles, which cost £4 extra on the slip.

When each way earns its place

Each way doubles the stake, and it is a straight trade. You give up some of the profit on a good day in return for a smaller loss, or a small profit, on a middling one.

Take the same four prices at 50p each way with 1/5 terms on every race. If all four place and none wins, the bet returns £30.93 from £15. Three placed and one out of the frame returns £11.82. A win-only Lucky 15 at £1 a line, which costs the same £15, returns nothing in either case. On the other hand, when all four win, the win-only bet returns £1,249.44 and the each way bet £655.65. Half the stake went on the place lines, and they cannot make up for the smaller win lines.

The prices matter more than anything. At 1/5 odds, a placed horse at 5/1 is paid at evens on the place side, which only gets back the total each way stake on its single, and anything shorter returns less than that. Each way works when the horses are big enough prices for the place part to be worth something, and when the races have enough runners to pay three or four places. For how terms are set, see the each way guide.

A practical point: the four horses in a Lucky 15 usually run in four different races, so they rarely share the same terms. A 16-runner handicap may pay four places at 1/4 while a novice chase on the same card pays three at 1/5. Set each row on its own.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats

A non-runner does less damage than a loser, and it is easy to see why once you look at the lines. Say the 9/2 horse is taken out. Its single hands back £1. Each double with it becomes a single on the other horse. Each treble with it becomes a double, and the four-fold becomes a treble.

What you are left with is two Patents on the remaining three horses, plus the refunded single. With the 5/2 and 11/4 horses winning and the 7/1 horse losing, that comes to £41.75 at £1 a line. One Patent on the same three horses would return £20.38, and two of them plus the £1 is exactly the figure on the slip.

Rule 4 cuts one horse’s price, so it cuts every line that horse appears in. Set it on that horse’s row, using the deduction the bookmaker applied, and the slip carries it through all eight lines. A dead heat works the same way: the stake is divided at that horse’s leg in every line it appears in. Both are covered in detail on the main bet calculator page.

Setting the stake: per line or in total

Most people think of a Lucky 15 by its line stake, “50p Lucky 15” or “£1 Lucky 15”, and the slip starts that way. If you would rather spend a round sum, press Total and type it in. £10 in total on a win-only Lucky 15 is 66.67p a line, and on the example prices it returns £13.58. The same £10 each way is 33.33p a line across 30 bets, and returns £12.62.

Those odd per-line figures are awkward to write on a slip or type into an app. The simplest way round them is to decide the line stake first and let the total follow. If you have a budget, divide it by 15 (or 30 each way) and round down to a stake you are happy with.

It is also worth being honest about what a Lucky 15 costs over a season. A £1 bet every Saturday is £15 a week, not £1. The slip puts the total next to the return so you can see both numbers at once.

Checking a settled Lucky 15

If a return looks wrong, the fastest check is to rebuild the bet on the slip exactly as it was settled. Enter the four prices you took, not the starting prices unless you asked for SP. Set each result, including any non-runner, and any Rule 4 the settlement shows. Then open the full list under the slip.

Each line there has its own return, and the bookmaker’s settlement should match it line for line. When they disagree, the difference is almost always in one of three places. A Rule 4 deduction may have been applied that you didn’t know about. The place terms on one race may not be the ones you assumed. Or a horse may have been settled as a dead heat. Find the first line where the figures part company and you have usually found the reason.

Lucky 15 or Yankee?

The only difference is the singles. You pay £4 more at £1 a line for them, and they pay out on a day with one winner, which is the day a Yankee returns nothing.

Which is better depends on how often you expect only one winner, and at what price. With four horses around 5/2 to 7/1, a lone winner is the most common good-ish outcome, and the singles turn a total loss into a partial one. With four short-priced horses you expect two or more to win, and the singles become an expensive extra. For more on the bet itself and how the combinations are built, read the Lucky 15 explained, or compare it with the Yankee.

The calculator here doesn’t include bookmaker bonuses. Some firms pay double odds on a Lucky 15 with one winner, or a bonus when all four win. Those change the answer, and they vary too much from firm to firm to build in. The slip shows the bet as it is settled on its own.