Trixie bets

A Trixie is a type of full cover bet. It covers all possible combinations of multiples given three selections. Most popular in horse racing circles, the advantage of a Trixie is that it gives you the chance of winning a very healthy return even from a small stake.

How a Trixie bet works

In the case of a Trixie, each of three selections has to appear in two of the three doubles and in the treble, as follows:

• double: selections 1 and 2
• double: selections 2 and 3
• double: selections 1 and 3
• treble: selections 1, 2 and 3.

Note that if you place a £1 Trixie bet, your actual stake for the bet will be £4 (£1 for each of the four bets – the three doubles and a treble).

If any one of the doubles or the treble wins, you’ll be paid out based on the combined odds for the winning selections.

Example of a Trixie bet

You want to bet on three selections – A, B and C – and you decide to place a Trixie.

To keep the example simple (but still illustrate how profitable a Trixie can be if your luck holds), let’s say that the odds for each of the three selections are 2/1. You place a £1 bet, meaning that your actual stake is £4 – or £1 for each of the four component bets that make up the Trixie.

If you were placing a single bet at odds of 2/1 and your bet won, you’d get a total payout of – £3. In the case of a double, the odds are multiplied – meaning that if two selections win, you’ll receive a payout of £9 (excluding your stake).

So you’ll have a total payout of £9 if

• A and B win
• B and C win, or
• A and C win.

If A, B and C win, it means you’ll win the treble bet. In that case, the odds are multiplied again – giving you a payout of £27. Plus you’ll be paid out £9 for each of the three doubles, giving you another £27. This means that in total, you’ll get a return of £54 (a profit of £50 once you subtract your stake). This is a superb return from a stake of just £4.

Comparing a Trixie to three singles

By comparison, if you were to place a separate single bet on each selection at odds of 2/1 and all three selections won, you’d win only £9 (£3 for each single, given the odds of 2/1) – a profit of £6 once you account for your stakes. A long way off from the profit of £50 you’d get from a winning Trixie.

Of course the down side to a Trixie bet is that you have to be pretty lucky for all three of your selections to win! However, even if just two selections win, you’ll still make a decent profit.