Heinz (57)

Pros and Cons of using the Heinz 57 bet

There are some system bets that place singles amongst your various bets, but the Heinz is one of many that starts the action off with a selection of doubles. Regardless of the amount of selections in the bet, and it's six in this case, the requirement of winning doubles puts you up against it from the start.

• Pro - A Heinz is like a middle ground between more modest Yankee (four selections) and the rather adventurous Goliath (eight selections). You can cover many bases with stakes that aren't too substantial.
• Pro - You can make big returns. If you're betting on Horse racing and you're dealing with some bigger prices (think 7/1 and beyond) then just two or three winners could mean you make profit from betting.

• Con - It's a poor option for some sports where best odds are naturally lower. Roughly even money selections would require four of six selections to win at least just for a small profit.
• Con - Like any bet where are you grouping together multiple selections, you're decreasing your chances of a win and handing more power to the bookmaker.

A Heinz 57 consists up 57 bets that are made up of 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 four-fold accumulators, six five-fold accumulators and a six-fold accumulator. Two winning teams is only enough to produce one winning bet from 57 bets, and on a bad day's betting it's quite feasible you may only win two of six.

Such a result will lead to substantial losses, while even three winning teams would only mean four winning bets (one treble and three doubles) from a possible 57, so the minimum requirement is generally four out of six unless you're dealing with rather handsome best odds.

A Heinz 57 can generally be applied to any sport as long as you have enough selections. It's just a case of navigating to your sport of choice, placing your six selections into the same bet slip and making sure you understand the staking options available to you.

Once you have added all six selections to your betslip, you'll see that it in this case you could enter your doubles, trebles and accumulator (folds) stakes separately, but it's much less hassle to just use the Heinz option provided. Doing it manually may result in having the ability to cash out on all of these sports bets once placed, but that only tends to complicate things and lead to mistakes.

The maths behind a Heinz 57

The number 57 is not a random selection but instead a product of wanting to give equal relevance to each selection. Each selection features in all three types of bet, double, treble and accumulator, an equal amount of times. There are so many different combinations of wins and losses but as a marker, winning four of six is the aim if you're betting on team sports. This is due to the nature of the best odds that are naturally lower unless you are lucky enough to identify six good outsiders.

You can work out your potential winnings on your own using the below equations, but when it comes to using system bets of this size it really is easier to search for an online calculator that will gladly work out your winnings or losses for you, and makes it easy to factor in variants like each-way sports betting.

• Doubles = Stake x Betting Odds x Betting Odds = Return (Read more about doubles here)
• Trebles = Stake x Betting Odds x Betting Odds x Betting Odds = Return (Read more about trebles here)
• Accumulator = same equation but with four, five and six sets of odds considered, e.g. Stake x Odds x Odds x Odds x Odds x etc = Return (Read more about accumulators here)

Using the bet for Horse Racing instead of team sports is preferable as shown below.

Possible Outcomes - Team Sport vs Horse Racing

If we are to use a perfectly rounded example where all odds are 1/1 (2.00) and let's say you place a £1 stake into the box, which remember will be multiplied by 57. You're staking £57 evenly across the 57 bets now. The potential losses and returns are shown below when betting on six reasonably priced teams. For both examples you need at least two winners or you will not see a return. This is because the smallest bet within this system bet is a double which requires two winners.

• One team wins out of six = Returns £0, -£57
• Two teams win out of six = Return £4, -£53
• Three teams win out of six = Return £20, -£37

Whilst some may avoid accumulators and system bets all together, already you get to see the difference and extra security in using system bets, as here you can afford to lose three out of six selections and still see a return. It's a loss and it isn't ideal. But just one loss out of six with an accumulator, or three, or five, and you'd be down -£57 all the same. At least with a system bet you have the opportunity to salvage something from a bad group of bets and go again with leaving empty handed.

• Four teams out of six = Returns £72, +£15
• Five teams out of six = Returns £232, +£175
• Six teams out of six = Returns £716, +£659

You can see that one, two, three winners result in a loss, whilst unless you're staking big money on such a scenario, even four winners it not a particularly fantastic outcome. Five and six winners is where the big money is, but remember, this is just a bunch of teams to win at small odds. How do the dynamics change when a Heinz 57 is applied to Horse Racing?

For a start you get bigger odds unless you're targeting runaway market leaders, in which case the above scenario is more relevant. But Horse Racing is ripe with big and juicy odds. Let's up the ante to six selections at 4/1 (5.00) which is still a relatively low key price compared to what's out there in the horse racing betting markets.

• One horse wins out of six = Returns £0, -£57
• Two horses win out of six = Return £25, -£32
• Three horses win out of six = Return £200, +143

The amount of winners needed to breach the £200 return marker from our sporting team odds example was five, however that's been done on just three winners here. Even just two winners out of six sees half your money returned. Higher betting odds of around 6/1 (7.00) and 8/1 (9.00) would make two winners out of six profitable with an overall return of £63.

You probably find yourself regularly betting on such odds from Horse Racing bets and the example shows how much easier it could be to use a Heinz 57 in conjunction with Horse Racing and profit from sports betting.

• Four horses win out of six = Returns £1,275, +£1,218
• Five horses win out of six = Returns £7,750, +£7,693
• Six horses win out of six = Returns £46,625, +£46,568

So , as you can see, if you can manage at least four wins out of six at the example odds of 4/1 (5.00) or better? You're laughing all the way to the bank.

A Heinz bet is a little bit more sensible than some of the bigger system bets, but it still asks a lot of bettors. Again it's something that professional bettors will likely steer away from all together, but anything from the 57 bets involved in a Heinz down to the smaller system bets are going to have their uses when placing Horse Racing bets.

This type of bet is arguably a bad betting strategy for many other sports, but it does depend on the odds and as demonstrated above it ultimately comes down to how successful your sports bets are on the day regardless of odds.