If you’ve been reading all of our various guides to the different offers that bookmakers use to try to win customers then you’ll know that the majority of them are reasonably easy to understand and are quite self-explanatory just from reading the title of the offer. The same is not true when it comes to Lucky Bets and Bonuses as this is not just a matter of placing a bet and…well…getting lucky. Just because it’s something that doesn’t immediately make sense or you might not have heard of doesn’t mean you should be intimidated or concerned, however.
On this page we’ll tell you exactly what Lucky Bets are, how they work and why they’re the sort of thing you might be looking at placing when it comes to betting on the Cheltenham Festival. Lucky Bets might seem a tad confusing but the good news is that once you know what they entail they’re a really good way of placing bets. They’re also ideal for meetings when there are lots of different races involving any number of horses, meetings such as, say, a horse racing festival.
For acca offers see our dedicated page.
Bookmakers With Lucky Bonuses
What Is A Lucky 15?
Lucky Bets, such as Lucky 15, Lucky 31 or Lucky 63, are also known as full cover bets and are a way of covering all possibilities from a multiple bet. In order for you to get your head around them we’ll start with the simplest of Lucky Bets and work out way up from there. The ‘simplest’ is a Lucky 15 bet and the way to think about it is not as one bet, but fifteen different bets on 4 selections packaged into one product.
The ’15’ part of the bet’s title is in reference to the fact that there are fifteen bets made up of four single bets, six double bets, four treble bets and one fourfold bets. So, say you place a Lucky 15 bet on four different horses on Day One of the Festival, you’ll get money back if one of them wins and the more of them that win the more money you’ll see returned to you.
Let’s break it down further. You bet on Horse A in race 1, Horse B in race 2, Horse C in race 3 and Horse D in race 4. You have them covered as Single Win bets as part of the Lucky 15, so if any one of them wins then you’ll get a small return. If two of them win then you’ll get a return for your two single bets as well as for the double bet. If three of them win you’ll get returns for your three single bets, three doubles and treble bet. If all four of them win then, you guessed it, you’ll get the maximum payout.
Now that you understand the ’15’ part, what’s the ‘Lucky’ bit all about? Well, that’s because bookmakers tend to reward big winners with additional bonus winnings. How much of a bonus is offered differs from one company to the next, so that’s the sort of thing you’ll want to keep your eye out for.
For those that like Trivia the Lucky 15 was invented by Fred Done, one of the founders of Betfred.
What Is A Lucky 31 and Lucky 63?
| Name | No Bets | Singles | Doubles | Trebles | 4-folds | 5-folds | 6-folds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trixie | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Patent | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Yankee | 11 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Lucky 15 | 15 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Super Yankee | 26 | 0 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
| Lucky 31 | 31 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 0 |
| Heinz | 57 | 0 | 15 | 20 | 15 | 6 | 1 |
| Lucky 63 | 63 | 6 | 15 | 20 | 15 | 6 | 1 |
There are a whole host of various types of Lucky Bets that you can place, but if we explained them all we’d be here for ever. Now that you know the rough idea of how a Lucky 15 bet works you’ll probably be able to work the others out for yourself, but we’ll help out by looking at two of the other more popular ones, Lucky 31 and Lucky 63.
For a Lucky 31 bet you’ll choose five different selections, so you can add Horse E to the example above. This time you’ll get the cover of five single bets, ten double bets, ten treble bets, five four-fold bets and one five-leg accumulator. The beauty of a Lucky Bet as opposed to an accumulator is that with an acca just one leg can fail and the whole bet falls apart. Obviously that’s not the case with Lucky Bets and if only one bet doesn’t come home then you’re still in for a decent amount of winnings.
A Lucky 63 bet, you probably won’t be surprised to learn, involves picking six different selections. You’ll get serious cover of those bets, with six singles, fifteen double bets, twenty treble bets, fifteen four-fold bets, six five-fold bets and an accumulator of all six selections. Obviously that may all still seem quite complicated, but bookmakers know that so they offer a calculator function that helps you to work out winnings you may get depending on how many of your selections come off.
There are also full cover bets that are exactly the same but they don’t include the singles. For example a Yankee is a Lucky 15 but without the four singles (11 bets), a Super Yankee is a Lucky 31 without the five singles (26 bets) and a Heinz is a Lucky 63 without the 6 singles (57 bets).
A Super Heinz is 120 bets involving 7 selections and if you are feeling particularly lucky you could place a Goliath, this is 247 bets on 8 selections made up of 28 doubles, 56 trebles, 70 4-folds, 56 5-folds, 28 6-folds, 8 7-folds and one 8-fold accumulator.
For just three selections you could place a Patent consisting of 7 bets (3 singles, 3 doubles and a treble) or a Trixie consisting of 4 bets (3 doubles an one treble).
How To Place A Lucky Bet
With an accumulator you make your six selections, get odds and then select how much you’d like to bet, you bet your single stake and then wait and see if you get all the selections correct. if you do you win if one or more goes wrong you don’t. With Lucky Bets things are slightly different and you actually select a ‘unit stake’, which covers each of the individual bets in the package.
In a Lucky 15 bet a unit stake of £1 will cost you £15 in total. A Lucky 31 will set you back £31 if your unit stake is £1 and a Lucky 63 will cost, you’ve no doubt guessed, £63 for a £1 unit stake. Should you be the sort of person that likes to hedge your bets and opt for an Each-Way option then you’ll normally find that bookmakers only pay out for the Win part of the bet.
How To Use Lucky Bets At Cheltenham
If you take your betting seriously then the likelihood is that you’re going to have any number of horses to bet on when it comes to the Cheltenham Festival, or indeed any other meeting. Obviously you don’t have to place those bets using the full coverage offered by the Lucky system. There’s nothing at all wrong with placing Win Singles or Each-Way bets on all of the races you fancy and seeing how things work out.
What we would say, though, is that this site is all about helping you to make as much money as possible and placing Lucky Bets will help you to do just that because of the bonus funds added to winning selections. Place a Lucky 15 with Betfred, for example, and you’ll get a bonus to the tune of 3x the winnings if only one of your selections comes home. If there’s only one winner in a Lucky 31 you’ll get 4x the odds and in a Lucky 63 it’ll be 5x the odds. If all of the horses you select win then you’ll receive a 10% bonus on a Lucky 15 bet, 20% bonus on Lucky 31 and 25% bonus on Lucky 63 bets.
Pretty much every bookmaker that offers Lucky Bets will offer bonus funds if they all come home, so they’re well worth looking out for. They’re ideal for betting on the likes of the Cheltenham Festival because there are so many races going on. Our advice would be to pick a horse from each of the races in a day and have a bet on them through the Lucky system, then make a few other selections that you’re perhaps less confident on and bet on them whilst taking advantage of Best Odds Guaranteed.
Because bonus funds often need to be rolled over before you can withdraw your winnings, you can take advantage of whatever funds you’ve won by betting on the next day’s racing. You’ll likely already be emerged in the world of the Cheltenham Festival, so you’ll have a good idea of which horses to bet on to give you the best chance of winning and therefore hitting your rollover objective.