Yankee Calculator: Work Out Your Yankee Bet Returns, Line by Line

The Yankee calculator above is loaded with a 50p Yankee that went reasonably well. Three of the four horses won, at 11/10, 13/8 and 6/1, and the 4/1 horse didn’t. Eleven bets cost £5.50, four of them came in, and the slip returns £38.59.

Those four winning lines are three doubles and one treble. Everything with the 4/1 horse in it lost, including the four-fold. The rest of this page takes that result apart, and then puts it back together with different results, to show how a Yankee earns its money. Every figure on it comes from the same settlement code that runs the slip, so you can reproduce any of them by changing the results above.

The eleven lines, and the four that paid

A Yankee takes four horses and backs every multiple they can make: every pair as a double, every three as a treble, and all four as a four-fold. There are six doubles, four trebles and one four-fold, all at the same stake. There are no singles, which is the whole difference between a Yankee and a Lucky 15.

Number the horses in the order entered: 1 is the 11/10 shot, 2 the 13/8, 3 the 4/1 loser, and 4 the 6/1 winner. Any line containing horse 3 is dead. That leaves three doubles and one treble.

The double 1+2 pays 50p × 2.1 × 2.625, which is £2.76. The double 1+4 pays 50p × 2.1 × 7, which is £7.35. The double 2+4 pays 50p × 2.625 × 7, which is £9.19. The treble 1+2+4 pays 50p × 2.1 × 2.625 × 7, which is £19.29. Together they make £38.59.

The calculator’s summary shows the same result by size: doubles, three of six paying, £19.29; trebles, one of four, £19.29; four-fold, none. The doubles and the treble happen to return the same amount here, which is a coincidence of these prices. On most days the split looks quite different.

Entering a bet in the Yankee calculator

Pick Yankee as the bet type and four selection rows appear. Type the prices in whatever form you have them: fractions, evens or decimals. Set each result. The stake is per bet, so “50p Yankee” means 50p in the stake box and £5.50 in the total.

If you want to spend a fixed amount instead, press Total. £10 in total works out at about 91p a bet, and on the example day it returns £70.16. Tick each way to add a place line to every bet, which doubles the count to twenty-two. Each row then gets its own terms box, because the four races are usually different sizes and may pay different fractions.

Winners, and which winners

A Yankee’s return depends on two things: how many horses win, and which ones.

One winner returns nothing. Every line needs at least two.

Two winners return one double. The two shortest horses in the example, 11/10 and 13/8, would return just £2.76 from £5.50. The two longest, 4/1 and 6/1, would return £17.50. Same number of winners, more than six times the money.

Three winners return three doubles and a treble. The three shortest would return £28.35. The three longest, 13/8, 4/1 and 6/1, would return £79.19. The example day, with the 4/1 horse as the loser, sits between them at £38.59.

Four winners return all eleven lines. At these prices that comes to £260.84: the six doubles make £48.61, the four trebles £115.76 and the four-fold £96.47. The single four-fold line returns almost twice as much as all six doubles together.

That pattern is the reason a Yankee rewards bigger prices so heavily. The bet has no singles to soften a poor day, and its value lives almost entirely in combinations. A Yankee of four short-priced horses needs three or four winners to show much of a profit at all.

Short prices against long prices

Two quick experiments show how much the price level decides. Fill the calculator with four horses at 4/5 and a 50p stake. Two winners return £1.62 from £5.50. Three winners return £7.78, still only a small profit. All four are needed to make it a good day, and even then the return is £26.63. A Yankee of odds-on and near-evens shots is a bet that loses money on most outcomes that sound like success.

Now put four horses in at 8/1. Two winners return £40.50, more than seven times the stake, from a single double. Three winners return £486. At these prices a Yankee does exactly what it was designed to do: turn two or three good results into a big return, without needing all four.

Real Yankees sit somewhere between the two, and that is the point of running your own four prices through the Yankee calculator before placing the bet. The number worth looking at is the two-winner return. If the cheapest pair of winners gets back less than the stake, the bet is relying on three or more.

Each way Yankees

An each way Yankee is two Yankees on the same horses, one on the win and one on the place. It costs twice the win-only stake: £11 at 50p.

With 1/5 terms on every race, the example day returns £43.97 each way. The win lines contribute the same £38.59 as before; the place lines add the rest, from the doubles and treble on the three horses that finished in the frame. If the 4/1 horse had placed rather than losing, every place line would pay and the total would rise to £57.94.

The strongest argument for each way on a Yankee is the day when horses place without winning. With all four placed and none winning, the place Yankee alone returns £19.35 from the £11 each way stake. Win only, that day returns nothing. As always, the argument gets weaker as the prices get shorter, because place prices are a fraction of the win price and a fraction of a short price is tiny.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats

A non-runner is not a loser. If the 4/1 horse had been withdrawn instead of beaten, its lines would not die. Its doubles become singles on the other horses, its trebles become doubles, and the four-fold becomes the treble on the three winners. All eleven lines would pay something, and the bet would return £83.04 instead of £38.59. What is left is exactly a Patent and a Trixie on the other three horses, which is why the figure jumps so much.

Rule 4 reduces a winner in every line it is in. A 25p deduction on the 11/10 winner cuts its winnings by a quarter. That horse appears in two of the winning doubles and the winning treble, and the total drops to £34.74.

A dead heat divides the stake wherever the horse appears. If the 11/10 horse had dead heated for first with one other, each line containing it would be settled on half the stake, and the bet would return £23.89.

In each case, set the change on the row of the horse it applies to. The calculator carries it through all seven lines that horse sits in: three doubles, three trebles and the four-fold.

Yankee or Lucky 15?

A Lucky 15 is a Yankee with a single on each horse: fifteen bets, £7.50 at 50p. On the example day it would return £44.45 against the Yankee’s £38.59. The extra £5.86 comes from the three winning singles, and they cost £2 more.

The singles matter most on the days the Yankee returns nothing. With one winner, the Lucky 15 still pays its single; the Yankee pays nothing at all. With three or four winners, the singles are a small part of a larger return. Deciding between them is really deciding how much a one-winner day is worth to you, and the calculator lets you test both bets on the same four horses in a few seconds by switching the bet type.

For three horses, the same pair of choices is the Trixie and the Patent. The Yankee bet guide covers the bet itself and how it compares to the rest of the full-cover family.

From a Yankee to a Super Yankee

Add a fifth horse and the same idea becomes a Canadian, also called a Super Yankee: every double, treble, four-fold and five-fold from five selections, 26 bets in all. At 50p a line that is £13, more than twice a Yankee, for one extra horse. The jump is steep because each new horse pairs with every existing combination.

The calculator handles a Canadian the same way. Choose it as the bet type, add the fifth price, and the eleven lines you know become twenty-six. The one-winner day still returns nothing, and the two-winner day still depends on which two. The Heinz calculator takes the family up to six horses.

Checking a Yankee settlement

A Yankee settlement lists up to eleven lines, and the easiest way to check it is line by line. Enter the four prices you were paid at, set the results as declared, and open “every bet, one by one”. Each line shows the combined multiplier and its return, and those should match the bookmaker’s figures to the penny.

Where the Yankee calculator and the settlement don’t agree, the difference is nearly always in one horse. A Rule 4 deduction from a withdrawal in that horse’s race is the usual cause, followed by a dead heat or a price that was taken at SP rather than the morning price you remember. Because every horse appears in seven of the eleven lines, a wrong price for one horse shows up in all seven of them, which makes it easy to spot in the list.