Trixie Calculator: Work Out Your Trixie Bet Returns, Win or Each Way

This Trixie calculator starts with the day most Trixies have: one horse lets you down. It is loaded with £1 on three horses at 11/8, 9/2 and 7/2. The 11/8 and 7/2 horses won and the 9/2 horse didn’t, so of the four bets only one pays. It returns £10.69 from a £4 stake.

That one line is the double on the two winners. The other two doubles each contain the loser, and so does the treble. A Trixie is built to survive exactly this, one loser from three, and the calculator shows which part of it did the surviving.

Entering a bet in the Trixie calculator

Choose Trixie as the bet type and the calculator sets three selections for you. Type the three prices, set the results, and enter the stake per bet. A “£1 Trixie” means £1 on each of its four bets, which is why the total stake reads £4.

If you’d rather spend a round sum, press Total. £10 in total is £2.50 a bet, and on the example prices that returns £26.72. Tick each way and the bet doubles to eight lines, so the same stake per bet costs twice as much.

The four lines, and which ones paid

Number the horses 1 to 3 in the order you entered them. The four bets are the doubles 1+2, 1+3 and 2+3, and the treble 1+2+3.

In the example, horse 2 is the loser. That kills the doubles 1+2 and 2+3 and the treble. The survivor is 1+3: £1 × 2.375 × 4.5 = £10.69. Open “every bet, one by one” below the slip and you will see exactly that: one line with a figure against it and three at nothing.

The breakdown by size shows the same thing from the other side. Doubles: one of three paying, £10.69. Trebles: none of one. It is a good habit to read that summary first, because it tells you straight away whether the bet is behaving as you expect.

Which two winners you get matters

Two winners always means one double pays, but not always the same amount. At these prices there are three possible pairs.

The 11/8 and 7/2 horses winning, as in the example, returns £10.69. The 11/8 and 9/2 horses winning returns £13.06. The 9/2 and 7/2 horses winning returns £24.75. Same bet, same stake, same number of winners, and the return more than doubles depending on which two came in.

That is the nature of multiples: the bigger prices carry most of the value. A Trixie with one short price and two bigger ones leans heavily on the two bigger ones winning together. Try it in the calculator by changing which horse is marked as the loser. The recipe line under the return updates as you go, so you can read off how many of the four bets paid each time without opening the full list.

With all three winning, every line pays. The three doubles and the treble return £107.28 together, of which the treble alone is £58.78.

Short prices and long prices

The calculator makes it easy to see how much the prices decide. Put three 4/5 shots into a £1 Trixie. Two winners return £3.24 from £4, a loss even though two of the three horses won. All three winning returns £15.55. Short-priced horses make a Trixie a cautious bet in name only: it needs almost everything to go right just to break even.

Now try three bigger prices, 6/1, 8/1 and 10/1. If the 6/1 and 8/1 horses win, the one surviving double returns £63. If the 8/1 and 10/1 horses win, it returns £99. All three winning returns £932 from the same £4. At these prices two winners is a very good day, and the bet makes much more sense.

The rule of thumb that falls out of this: a Trixie is strongest when the three prices are big enough that any single double pays well above the £4 cost. With three short prices, a treble or three singles may say what you mean more directly.

Each way Trixies

An each way Trixie is two Trixies: one on the win and one on the place. It costs twice as much, £8 at £1 a line.

With 1/5 terms in every race, the example returns £12.86 each way: £10.69 from the win side and £2.17 from the place double on the two winners, which count as placed. If the 9/2 horse had finished in the places instead of down the field, every place line would come alive, and the bet would return £22.63 from £8. And if all three had placed without any of them winning, the place Trixie alone would return £11.94.

That last figure is the argument for each way on a Trixie. Three placed horses and no winners is a day that returns nothing on a win-only Trixie. Each way, it gets more than the stake back at these prices. Whether that is worth doubling the outlay depends on the prices: the higher they are, the more the place lines are worth.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats

The Trixie calculator handles each of these on the row of the horse concerned.

A non-runner is kinder than a loser. If the 9/2 horse had been withdrawn instead of losing, its leg would count as 1.0. The double 1+2 becomes a single on horse 1, the double 2+3 becomes a single on horse 3, and the treble becomes the double 1+3. With horses 1 and 3 winning, all four lines pay, and the bet returns £28.25. The same result with a loser in that slot returned £10.69.

Rule 4 trims the winning horse’s price in every line it appears in. A 25p deduction on the 11/8 winner cuts its winnings by a quarter, and the surviving double drops to £9.14.

A dead heat halves the stake at that leg. If the 11/8 horse dead heated for first with one other, the double 1+3 is settled on half the stake, and the bet returns £5.34.

A Trixie against its neighbours

Two bets sit either side of the Trixie. Three doubles on the same horses is the Trixie without the treble, so it costs £3 at £1 a line and returns the same on any day with only two winners. The treble is the whole difference, and it only pays when all three win.

The Patent is the Trixie plus the three singles. It costs £7 at £1 a line. On the example day it would return £17.56, because the two winning singles add £2.38 and £4.50 to the double, and one winner at a big enough price would get something back.

If you are sure of all three horses, the treble calculator shows what a single £4 treble would pay instead. On the three winners above it would return £235.13, against £107.28 for a £1 Trixie that costs the same £4. For how the bet is put together and when it suits, see the Trixie bet guide.

Working a Trixie out by hand

It is worth doing once without the calculator, because it shows there is nothing hidden in the bet. Write the three prices as decimals: 11/8 is 2.375, 9/2 is 5.5 and 7/2 is 4.5. Then multiply them in pairs for the doubles. Horses 1 and 2 make 13.06, horses 1 and 3 make 10.69, horses 2 and 3 make 24.75. Multiply all three for the treble, which comes to 58.78.

Those four numbers are the returns for a £1 stake on each line, if every horse in that line wins. Cross out every line containing a loser, add up what is left, and multiply by your stake per bet. On the example day, only 10.69 survives, which is the £10.69 on the slip.

Written down like that, the whole bet fits on the back of an envelope, and it becomes obvious why the choice of horses matters so much. The line with the two biggest prices, 24.75, is worth more than twice the line with the two shortest. A Trixie is really three separate doubles and a treble that happen to share their horses, and each of them is only as good as the two or three prices inside it.

Stake per bet or total

Trixie stakes are almost always written per bet. “50p Trixie” means 50p on each of the four lines, £2 in total, and “£1 each way Trixie” means £8. On the example prices, a 50p Trixie returns £5.34, exactly half of the £1 figure, because every line scales with the stake.

If you work to a budget, the Total setting does the division. Type the amount you want to spend and the calculator shows the stake per bet it used, which is the figure to write on a betting slip. Keep an eye on each way: ticking it halves the stake per bet for the same total, because the money is now spread across eight lines instead of four.

Checking a Trixie settlement

To check a settled Trixie, enter the prices you were paid at and the declared results into the Trixie calculator. If you backed at SP, use the returned starting prices, and if you took early prices, use those. Then compare the line-by-line list with the settlement.

A difference is almost always one of three things: a Rule 4 deduction on one of the races, a dead heat in the result, or a price that was improved by an offer. The first two can be entered on the slip. The third can’t, because offers vary from firm to firm, so a settlement that is higher than the calculator’s figure usually has an offer in it.