What Is A Yankee Bet?

When it comes to betting on multiple selections on things such as horses, sports teams, tennis players and the like, there are various ways which you can place your wager. You can bet on them as one bet, which would require them to all win, but that can, at times, be difficult to win, especially as the number of selections you make grows. So to counter that, you can do various bets which cover one, some, or all of your selections winning. One of these types of bets is called a Yankee, and it is a type of bet that covers four selections.

A Yankee consists of 11 bets – 6 doubles, 4 trebles and one fourfold. So a $1 would cost you $11 to place, and you would have a 6 doubles covered at $1 each, 4 trebles covered at $1 each and one $1 fourfold. So you need at least two of your selections to win to have any kind of return from a Yankee bet. So if all of your selections lose, of course, you win nothing, and if only one selection wins, you also get nothing. However, should you hit four winners, the returns can be extremely satisfying depending on the odds you get.

For example, you might sat watching tennis, and there are four televised matches which you decide to bet on. To give you something to keep you interested, you decide to bet on the outsiders in each of the four matches, and you have $11 in your betting account, so you decide to put on a Yankee. Many sportsbooks require you to place your doubles, treble and fourfolds separately, but if you are in the UK, you can walk into the bookies, write the names of the players on a betting slip and put £1 Yankee at the bottom of the slip. So the players are picked, and they have the following odds:

Player 1 – 2/1 (3.0)
Player 2 – 11/8 (2.38)
Player 3 – 4/1 (5.0)
Player 4 – 6/4 (2.5)

Now, if Player 1 and Player 2 win, and Player 3 and Player 4 lose, we have one double which pays a return of $7.12 including your $1 stake. If it was Player 1 and Player 3 that won, you would have a return of $15, giving a profit of $4.

If Player 1, Player 2 and Player 3 won, things start to get interesting. Not only do you have a treble, but you have three doubles as well. So your total return would be $69.62, giving you a profit of $58.62, which is definitely better than a slap in the face. Even if we replace Player 3 with Player 4, the return is still $38.38, so a profit of $27.38. As you can see, with three winners in a Yankee bet, the returns start to accumulate.

And finally, what you are hoping to hit is four winners out of four when placing a Yankee bet. It is not always easy to land, but when it does you get a great return because all 11 bets have come up. In our example, if all four players were to win their matches, we would see a return of $269.62, for a profit of $258.62. The fourfold alone pays $89.06, so the rest of the bets are like the cream on top.

A Yankee is a fun bet to use, and as you can see they can yield significant returns if you have one or two selections in the bet that are a decent price. It is not great when betting on shorter prices, because you start to require more than two winners just to get your stake back if the prices are too short.

It is also worth remembering that you can place a each-way Yankee on horse races, so if you have four outsiders that you like the look of, but are more confident of them placing rather than winning, that might be a better bet. It costs twice as much, but you cover yourself and if using it with bigger priced horses, you can end up winning huge amounts for a relatively low stake even with just two winners.