What is a Heinz bet and what does it actually cost?

Updated October 2026

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A Heinz bet is a full-cover multiple on six selections, built out of 57 separate bets: 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 four-folds, 6 five-folds and 1 six-fold. There are no singles in a Heinz, every one of the 57 lines is a combination bet, so a losing single leg takes the whole structure down with it, no matter how well the other five run. This page walks through how a Heinz is built, how it settles, what it costs a £10 punter when only some legs win, and which licensed bookmakers offer it. It also covers the bonus terms, free-bet calculators, system-betting tips and the responsible-gambling tools every punter in Great Britain can use.

Data current as of 30 October 2026 and checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register.

Heinz free bet offers and bonus terms at UK bookmakers

Free bets and welcome bonuses change a Heinz from a question of stake size into a question of terms. The headline number on the promotional page is never the whole story: a £30 free bet is worth something quite different from a £30 bonus that has to be wagered ten times on selections at minimum odds before anything pays out. This section looks at what UK bookmakers actually attach to their Heinz-friendly offers, and what those conditions cost the punter who claims them.

A welcome bonus that credits free bets on the first settled wager is the most common shape on UK sites. Midnite runs exactly that: a new customer who bets £5 or more on a pre-match selection at evens (2.0) or greater within 14 days of signing up receives £25 in free bets plus 50 free spins, with the free bets valid for seven days after they land. The £5 entry bar is low, the minimum price is short, and the 14-day qualifying window is generous, but the £25 free bet has to be used inside a week. Spreadex gives £60 in free bets against a £10 fixed-odds qualifying bet, with the qualifying bet needing to be placed within 28 days of opening the account, and the free bets usable across both fixed-odds and spread betting. Spreadex also runs spread betting under Financial Conduct Authority oversight, where losses can exceed the original deposit; that is a different product from a Heinz on football, but the same £60 in free bets can drift into either side of the site.

A free-bet calculator is the tool that translates those numbers into something a Heinz punter can actually use. Three things go into the calculation: the free-bet amount, the odds the free bet is placed at, and the margin the bookmaker takes on the chosen market. For a free bet whose stake is not returned with a winning bet, the value comes out lower than the headline suggests, because the stake is consumed by the bet. A £10 free bet at odds of 5.00 on a market with a 5% margin returns £40 in profit, not £50, and that £40 is what the offer is worth on average. The Heinz makes the gap wider, because each of the 57 lines multiplies the same margin effect.

The Super Heinz is the seven-selection version of the same structure, with 120 bets. A Super Heinz free bet calculator answers the same question, only with seven legs to feed in. The Heinz flag is a variant where every leg has a named “flag” selection that the punter considers the banker; the math does not change, but the punter’s confidence is concentrated on one leg, so the calculator’s job is to show how badly the structure fares when that one leg loses.

Welcome bonuses attached to Heinz betting at the featured bookmakers fall into a few shapes. The first is the matched free bet, where a small qualifying wager unlocks a larger free-bet bundle. The second is the acca-insurance offer: BoyleSports refunds losing accumulators as a free bet when one leg lets the punter down, with a £5 minimum stake, minimum odds of 1/2, a maximum £20 refund as a free bet, an opt-in requirement, and the rule that the qualifying bets must be placed and settled on the same day. The third is the boosted-odds offer, where the bookmaker raises the price on a chosen acca. 888sport runs daily boosted odds across its pre-match and in-play feed; the boost is paid in cash winnings rather than free bets, which makes it a different deal from a free-bet bundle.

Wagering requirements are the condition that decides whether a bonus is worth the qualifying bet. Since 19 January 2026 the UK has run a 10x cap on bonus wagering requirements, so a £10 bonus can ask for no more than £100 of qualifying bets before the winnings are withdrawable. A Heinz punter should still read the small print, because the cap does not apply to every form of promotion and operators vary on which markets count toward the rollover.

Heinz betting tips, system strategies and staking plans

A Heinz is a system bet, which means the punter is not betting on a single outcome but on how six selections combine. The system rules are simple: any winning line pays out at the multiplied odds of its legs, and a losing leg removes every line it sits on. The strategy question is harder, because system betting looks like insurance against one bad leg and is, in practice, a way of paying for the privilege of keeping combinations alive when one selection lets the punter down.

The cost of a Heinz is the first number to fix. With 57 bets, a £1 unit stake costs £57 in real money; a £2 unit stake costs £114. The return on a winning six-fold dominates the smaller combinations, because a six-fold pays the multiplied odds of all six legs. A treble that lands pays its own multiplied odds and nothing from the four-folds or the six-fold. The structure rewards the punter for getting all six right, and pays very little for partial accuracy.

The staking plan that pairs with a Heinz is the second decision. Many punters scale down the unit stake to match the wider structure: a £2 Heinz costs £114, the same stake as a £6 single on each leg. Others scale up because the structure has more chances to win. Neither approach is wrong on its own, but the punter who treats a Heinz as a low-stakes lottery ticket tends to over-stake in absolute terms. A £10 punter laying £2 per line is committing £570 of real money; a £10 punter using £1 per line is committing £285. The first plan demands a bankroll the punter can afford to lose outright.

Selection logic for a Heinz is the third layer. Six selections on the same coupon are not six independent opinions; they share selection conditions, fixtures, league form, weather and timing. If three of the six are Premier League fixtures played on the same Saturday afternoon, the punter’s exposure to a single set of variables is wider than it looks. Most Heinz-tipping pages advise punters to spread legs across fixtures and sports, on the ground that independent outcomes are easier to forecast.

Void selections change the math in a way the punter should know before placing the bet. When a leg in a multiple bet is void, that leg drops out: a treble on three selections settles as a double on the two that ran, an accumulator on four settles as a treble on the three that ran. A Heinz with one void leg settles as a 31-bet Lucky 31 on the five remaining selections, because the structure loses the lines that included the void leg. A Heinz with two void legs settles as a 15-bet Lucky 15 on four selections. The punter’s return drops with the structure.

System betting strategy pages sometimes recommend combining a Heinz with singles, treating the singles as the safety net. The combined book on a “Heinz plus six singles” is six singles plus the 57 Heinz lines, which is 63 bets. The singles return when only one leg wins; the Heinz pays only when at least two legs win. A punter who wants both protections in one structure is paying for them with a much larger total stake. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how much the punter trusts each individual leg.

The heinz bet calculator is the practical tool for working all of this out before the bet is placed. The punter types in six odds, the unit stake and the structure (Heinz, Super Heinz, Yankee, Lucky 15), and the calculator returns the total stake, the return if all six win, the return if five win, the return if four win, and so on. The same calculator handles the free-bet variant, where the stake is not returned. A punter who runs the numbers in the calculator before placing the bet has a much better sense of what the structure costs and what it pays.

Heinz explained: how a full-cover bet works

A full-cover bet is any multiple-bet structure where every possible combination of the chosen selections is wagered, given the size of the structure. A Lucky 15 on four selections covers every combination from singles up to the four-fold, which is 15 bets. A Yankee covers the doubles, trebles and four-fold, which is 11 bets and no singles. A Heinz is the six-selection cousin of the Yankee, with 57 bets covering every combination from two-fold up to six-fold and no singles.

The way the lines stack is the simple arithmetic behind the structure. The number of bets in a structure of size n, where every k-fold and above is covered down to the doubles, is the sum of all combinations from k=2 up to k=n. For n=6, that is C(6,2) + C(6,3) + C(6,4) + C(6,5) + C(6,6) = 15 + 20 + 15 + 6 + 1 = 57. The same rule gives the four-bet structure: C(4,2) + C(4,3) + C(4,4) = 6 + 4 + 1 = 11. The structure scales fast as n grows: n=7 gives 120 (Super Heinz), n=8 gives 247 (Goliath).

The payout of each line follows the same rule as any multiple bet. For a line of k selections at decimal odds o₁, o₂, …, oₖ, the line pays the multiplied odds, so a unit stake returns unit stake × o₁ × o₂ × … × oₖ. A treble at odds of 2.00, 2.50 and 3.00 returns 15 times the unit stake: 2.00 × 2.50 × 3.00 = 15.00. The full Heinz pays the sum of every winning line at the corresponding multiplied odds, and that sum is the return.

A worked example shows the cost and the band of possible outcomes. Take six selections at illustrative decimal odds of 1.50, 1.80, 2.00, 2.20, 2.50 and 3.00, with a unit stake of £2 per line. The total stake is 57 × £2 = £114. If all six selections win, the return depends on the multiplied odds. The two-fold returns cover 15 lines, the three-fold 20, the four-fold 15, the five-fold 6 and the six-fold 1. Computing each band of lines is a matter of multiplying the relevant leg combinations. The six-fold alone pays £2 × 1.50 × 1.80 × 2.00 × 2.20 × 2.50 × 3.00 = £2 × 35.64 = £71.28. The smaller combinations pay less per line but in greater number. The full return is the sum of all 57 line payouts.

If only five selections win and the 1.50 shot loses, the structure collapses to a Lucky 31 on the remaining five legs (31 bets, since the lines including the 1.50 leg drop out). The total stake effectively becomes 31 × £2 = £62, because the 26 lines that included the 1.50 leg are settled as losses. The return is the sum of the 31 line payouts across the five winners. If four selections win, the structure settles as a 15-line Lucky 15 across those four. If three win, only the trebles settle, so four lines pay. If two win, only one double pays. If one or none win, the bet is a total loss.

The Heinz differs from a Lucky 15 in one important respect: a Lucky 15 includes the four singles, while a Heinz does not. A Lucky 15 punter whose four selections produce three losers and one winner recovers that single’s return. A Heinz punter whose six selections produce five losers and one winner recovers nothing. The Lucky 15’s safety net is built in; the Heinz punter pays for the wider structure instead.

Related full-cover bets by size

A Trixie on three selections covers the doubles and the treble, four bets in total, no singles. A Lucky 15 on four selections covers every combination from the four singles up to the four-fold, 15 bets. A Canadian or Super Yankee on five selections covers the doubles, trebles, four-folds and the five-fold, 26 bets, no singles. A Super Heinz on seven selections covers the doubles through the seven-fold, 120 bets, no singles. A Goliath on eight selections covers the doubles through the eight-fold, 247 bets, no singles. The progression is straightforward: each step up adds one more leg and a much larger number of combinations.

What a Heinz pays: a worked example at £10 stake

A punter who lays a £10 Heinz on six illustrative selections at odds of 1/2 (1.50), evens (2.00) and 6/4 (2.50) is committing £570 of real money. The combination of three odds repeated gives a structure where the multiplied odds of the six-fold come out to 1.50 × 2.00 × 2.50 × 1.50 × 2.00 × 2.50, with two legs at each of the three prices. That product is (1.50 × 2.00 × 2.50)² = 7.50² = 56.25, so the six-fold alone pays £10 × 56.25 = £562.50, plus the smaller combinations whose multiplied odds add further to the return. If all six selections win, the return is comfortably above the £570 stake, but the net profit depends on the smaller combinations, which pay much less per line. The headline number on a winning six-fold is what a Heinz punter banks on; the smaller combinations pay the running cost.

The return on any other outcome is much lower. If only four of the six selections win, the structure settles as a Lucky 15 across those four legs, and the smaller combinations dominate the payout. A punter who treats the Heinz as a “lottery ticket” stake at £10 a line is paying a high premium for the chance of hitting the six-fold; a punter who treats the structure as a portfolio bet across 57 lines has to win at least two or three legs to recover the stake.

The accumulator equivalent gives the comparison. An accumulator on six selections at the same illustrative odds, at the same £10 stake, pays £562.50 if all six win and nothing at all if any leg loses. The Heinz pays less on the all-six-winning outcome (because the smaller combinations pay much less per line than the six-fold) but pays something on any outcome where at least two legs win. The trade is between variance and frequency: the accumulator pays one big number or zero, the Heinz pays many smaller numbers with a bigger upside if the structure lands.

What happens when a leg is void

A void leg is settled at odds of 1.00, which means it neither wins nor loses. The leg drops out of every line that contains it. A treble on three selections becomes a double on the two that ran; an accumulator on four becomes a treble on three. A Heinz with one void leg becomes a Lucky 31 on the remaining five selections: the structure loses the 26 lines that included the void leg, leaving the 31 lines across the five runners. A Heinz with two void legs becomes a 15-line Lucky 15 on four runners; with three voids, a 10-line structure on three runners (three doubles and one treble); with four voids, a single double on the two runners; with five voids, the bet is settled as a single on the one runner that stands. A Heinz with all six legs void is settled as a void bet and the stake is returned.

The rule is the bookmaker’s, not the punter’s, and the wording varies between operators. The principle is the same across UK-licensed bookmakers: a void leg drops out, the structure shrinks, and the punter’s stake on the dropped lines is returned. The punter who places a Heinz on six selections where one leg is non-runner-no-bets (NRNB) knows in advance that one leg carries no risk to the structure; the punter who places a Heinz where every leg is a normal selection has the full 57 lines at risk.

Heinz bet bookmakers licensed in Great Britain

Every bookmaker in this ranking is listed on the Gambling Commission’s public register against a holder of a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, except where the licence category differs. The table below summarises the licence and the Heinz-related terms each operator publishes.

The licence number is the first place a punter checks. The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and a brand that fails the search is not licensed to take remote bets in Great Britain. The terms column above is what each operator publishes at the time of writing; the punter who plans to claim an offer should check the operator’s own terms page on the day, because the small print changes more often than the headline.

Midnite

Midnite holds a remote general betting standard (real events) licence under account 101839, and the brand’s site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. The Heinz fits the acca-builder frame naturally, because each of the 57 lines is a multiple and the operator’s slip handles the multiplication automatically. The welcome offer is a useful fit for a Heinz punter: a £5 qualifying bet on a pre-match selection at evens or greater within 14 days returns £25 in free bets plus 50 free spins, with the free bets valid for 7 days. A punter who plans to use the £25 as a single free bet on one six-fold is treating the structure as a one-shot accumulator; a punter who spreads the £25 across several smaller bets has more chances to clear the offer but smaller upside on each line.

Smarkets

Smarkets is a betting exchange, not a traditional bookmaker, and its licence is a remote betting intermediary. The commission structure is different, with 2% charged on eligible exchange bets and new customers previously offered 0% commission for 60 days against a £10 minimum first deposit. The Heinz works on an exchange because the punter can back each combination separately or build the equivalent of a Heinz through a series of back and lay bets, but the standard Heinz slip is a bookmaker feature. A Heinz punter who wants the exchange’s commission model is paying a different cost for the structure: the 2% on winnings is much smaller than the margin on a bookmaker’s odds, but the punter pays the commission only on winning bets and cannot use free bets the same way.

888sport

888sport’s licence is a remote general betting standard (real events) under account 39028, held by 888 UK Limited. The brand runs pre-match and in-play betting, Cash Out, Bet Builder, racing streams, BetFinder form tools, a live bet feed and daily boosted odds. The Heinz fits the standard bookmaker frame, and the boosted-odds promotions sometimes target multi-leg accumulators, which can lift a six-fold’s price by a small margin. Cash Out is useful for Heinz punters who want to lock in a partial return on a structure that is winning so far but has uncertain legs to run.

BoyleSports

BoyleSports’ licence is held by Boylesports Enterprise under account 39469. The acca insurance offer is the brand’s stand-out Heinz feature: punters who opt in, place a £5 or greater accumulator with minimum odds of 1/2 per leg, and see the bet lose because one leg lets them down receive a refund of up to £20 as a free bet, with the qualifying bets needing to be placed and settled on the same day and the free bet expiring 7 days after issue. A Heinz fits the acca insurance rule, because every line is a multiple and a single losing leg takes the structure down. The £20 cap is the ceiling on the refund, so a Heinz that costs £114 in real money recovers at most £20, and only when exactly one leg loses.

William Hill

William Hill’s licence is held by WHG (International) Limited under account 39225. The Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) promotion pays the higher of the taken price or the starting price on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 AM on the day of the race, on both single and multiple bets, and does not apply to ante-post, tote or pari-mutuel bets. A Heinz whose legs are mostly UK and Irish racing is a natural fit, because BOG lifts the price on every leg in the structure. The same Heinz placed on football is unaffected by BOG, so the punter’s sport choice changes the value of the brand for Heinz betting.

LiveScore Bet

LiveScore Bet’s licence is held by LiveScore Betting and Gaming (Gibraltar) Limited under account 56859. The Bet Builder allows up to 10 selections across match result, both teams to score, corners, total goals, player scoring and card markets. A Heinz fits the bet builder frame because each of the 57 lines is a multiple that the punter can build leg by leg inside the same fixture, although the practical effect is to concentrate the Heinz’s risk on a small set of variables.

Betboro

Betboro’s licence is held by Webmedia Development N.V. under account 44181. The brand offers in-play markets and cash-out on football, racing and tennis, plus boosted odds on selected singles from £10 stakes, and the responsible-gambling tools (deposit limits, reality checks, self-exclusion) that the Commission’s licence conditions require. A Heinz punter at Betboro has access to the standard structure and the cash-out feature, which lets the punter lock in a partial return when the structure is winning so far.

Spreadex

Spreadex is a combined fixed-odds and spread-betting bookmaker, regulated by the Gambling Commission for fixed odds and by the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting. The brand’s licence is held by Spreadex Limited under account 8835. Spread-betting losses can exceed the original deposit, which is a category of risk that does not apply to a Heinz on fixed odds. The £60 free-bet offer against a £10 qualifying fixed-odds bet, usable across fixed odds and spread betting within a 28-day qualifying window, is one of the larger free-bet bundles on the list, but a Heinz punter who drifts into spread betting with the free-bet balance is moving into a different product.

Lottoland

Lottoland’s licence is held by EU Lotto Limited under account 38991, and the brand combines casino, lottery betting, sports betting and scratchcards under one Commission licence. A Heinz on sports at Lottoland runs through the standard sportsbook, but the punter who lands on the site through the lottery or casino products sees a different mix of features. The Heinz-friendly terms at Lottoland are the standard bookmaker terms rather than a Heinz-specific promotion.

Paddy Power

Paddy Power’s licence is held by PPB Counterparty Services Limited under account 39439. The app offers Bet Builder+, Popular Bet Builders, Super Sub (a bet that rolls over to the replacement player when a selected player is substituted), expanded Win More markets and player and ACCA stats. A Heinz fits the bet builder frame, and Super Sub is a useful feature for Heinz punters who build a structure around player-specific markets.

How the Heinz bet works in the wider betting market

A Heinz is one of several full-cover structures on the UK market, and it sits between the smaller Lucky 15 and the larger Super Heinz and Goliath. Punters choose a structure partly by bankroll and partly by selection confidence: a 57-bet Heinz needs a larger commitment than a 15-bet Lucky 15 but offers more lines, while a 247-bet Goliath needs an even larger commitment and rewards an even larger stake per line. The wider the structure, the more the punter pays in total stake and the more legs the structure can survive.

The Heinz is not the only multiple-bet structure on the UK market, and it is not always the best fit. A punters who backs six selections they all expect to win is over-paying with a Heinz, because the singles are not in the structure and the punter could simply place a single on each leg. A punters who backs six selections expecting four or five to win is closer to the Heinz’s natural use case, because the structure pays something on those outcomes. A punters who backs six selections expecting only two or three to win is wasting money on the structure, because the smaller combinations pay very little against the £114 stake at £2 a line.

The bookmaker’s margin sits inside every price on every line of a Heinz. A Heinz on six selections at average odds of 2.00 has a six-fold with multiplied odds of 64.00, but the bookmaker’s margin is built into each leg, so the realised return is less than the headline. The wider the structure, the more the margin compounds, and the more the punter pays for the privilege of having 57 lines in play. A Heinz is one of the more expensive structures per unit stake, because the small combinations pay very little but still carry the same margin as the bigger ones.

Legality and regulation of Heinz betting in Great Britain

The Gambling Commission (UKGC) regulates commercial betting in Great Britain under the Gambling Act 2005, and the licensing framework decides who can offer a Heinz and on what terms. Northern Ireland is outside the Act and runs its own older law, so a GB licence does not regulate Northern Ireland.

A bookmaker serving customers in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 brought remote betting into the point-of-consumption regime. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar business address is not a substitute for a Commission licence, and an operator that takes remote bets in Great Britain without one is committing an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005. The licensed bookmakers in this ranking all hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence or a remote betting intermediary licence in the case of Smarkets.

The Commission’s public register is the test of whether a brand holds a licence. The register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and any punter who wants to check a brand before depositing should run the search. The account number is the unique identifier; the licence categories show which products the brand is licensed to offer. A remote general betting standard (real events) licence covers sports betting on real events; a remote betting intermediary licence covers betting exchanges. Heinz betting runs under the standard real-events licence.

A licensed operator is bound by the Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP), which set the marketing, identity-verification and player-protection standards. Every licensed operator uses GAMSTOP, the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme that is a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. GAMSTOP periods run for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. A Heinz punter who needs a break from betting should register with GAMSTOP, which blocks sign-up at every UK licensed online bookmaker at once.

Identity verification runs before the first deposit at a licensed site, since 7 May 2019. The operator checks name, address and date of birth, including for free bets and bonuses. A punter who fails verification cannot deposit or gamble. Higher spend triggers source-of-funds questions under the money-laundering rules, and a financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4) applies when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days; the check is a public-record check, not an income check or a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments have been announced in a staged plan with no start date.

Bonus wagering requirements are capped at 10x since 19 January 2026, so a £10 bonus can ask for no more than £100 of qualifying bets. Mixed-product promotions, where the offer requires the punter to gamble on two or more product types, are banned. The cap does not necessarily apply to free bets with no wagering condition. Advertising runs through the ASA-administered CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), alongside the Commission’s marketing conditions; no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role in the advertisement (CAP Code section 16). The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from 2026/27 is voluntary, not law.

The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain; General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%, with a new 25% remote betting rate from 1 April 2027 applying to remote bets outside UK horse racing, self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting. Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established. Spread betting has its own rates, 3% for financial spread betting and 10% for other spread betting.

Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence aimed at the operator, on summary conviction up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both; six months in Scotland. No offence aimed at a customer who bets on an unlicensed site was found, but the customer loses the protections a GB licence brings: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no 10x bonus cap, no £150 vulnerability check. Enforcement against unlicensed operators is disruption rather than blocking: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers. The Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers; ISP blocking is not in operation.

Responsible gambling and Heinz betting

A Heinz at £2 a line is £114 of real money at risk. A Heinz at £10 a line is £570. The structure is one of the more expensive multiple bets a punter can place, and the bankroll management that goes with it is one of the more demanding. Responsible-gambling tools at UK-licensed bookmakers exist to keep the punt within a budget and the time spent on betting within a window.

Deposit limits are the first tool. Since 31 October 2025 the Commission’s Remote Technical Standards (RTS 12) have required operators to offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, with a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026. The punter sets the limit; the operator enforces it. A Heinz punter who sets a weekly deposit limit of £100 is stopping themselves from placing more than one £2 Heinz in the week, which forces a slower pace.

Reality checks are pop-ups during a betting session that tell the punter how long they have been on the site and how much they have netted in the same window. The pop-up does not stop the punter from betting, but it does force a pause. A Heinz punter who has been on a betting site for three hours and is about to place a second £114 structure has a different decision to make after the reality check.

Self-exclusion is the strongest tool. GAMSTOP blocks the punter from every UK-licensed online bookmaker at once, for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the minimum period, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the punter asks GAMSTOP to remove it. A Heinz punter who has been chasing losses across multiple structures should register with GAMSTOP and stop. A Heinz at £114 a structure is a fast route to a depleted bankroll.

GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps. Betting shops use a separate service. A punter who self-excludes online but continues to bet in shops has not stopped betting. A punter who self-excludes in shops but continues online is similarly exposed.

Help services for problem gambling in Great Britain include GamCare and its National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware, NHS gambling clinics and Gamblers Anonymous. GamCare offers confidential support by phone, live chat and online. GambleAware funds treatment and education. NHS gambling clinics run in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. A Heinz punter who finds themselves betting more than they planned, chasing losses, or hiding their betting from family should reach out before the bankroll runs out.

A Heinz punter who sets a budget, sticks to it, treats the structure as entertainment rather than income, and stops when the entertainment stops is using the structure as it is designed to be used. A Heinz punter who treats the structure as a recovery mechanism, who raises the stake to chase earlier losses, who places the bet without checking the bankroll, or who places the structure as part of a wider pattern of risky gambling is heading in a different direction.

Heinz payout worked example

The arithmetic below uses illustrative odds that are not a quoted price, and a unit stake that is an example rather than a recommendation. The numbers show what the structure costs and what it returns at different outcomes.

Using the same illustrative odds and £2 unit stake as the previous worked example, a Heinz costs £114 in total. The returns are calculated across all 57 lines, with the six-fold combination providing the largest single return and the smaller multiples contributing in proportion to the number of winning selections.

If all six selections win, the return is the sum of the 57 line payouts. The five-folds (six lines), the four-folds (15 lines), the trebles (20 lines) and the doubles (15 lines) each return their multiplied odds at £2 a line. The headline return on the all-six-winning outcome is in the high hundreds of pounds, comfortably above the £114 stake, with the six-fold contributing the bulk.

If five selections win and the 1.50 shot loses, the structure collapses to a 31-line Lucky 31 on the remaining five legs. The 26 lines that included the 1.50 leg are settled as losses, returning zero, and the £2 stake on those lines is lost. The 31 lines across the five winners pay their multiplied odds at £2 a line. The return is a fraction of the all-six-winning payout, because the structure has shrunk and the lines have shifted.

If four selections win, the structure settles as a 15-line Lucky 15 across those four legs. The return is smaller still, dominated by the four-fold (one line) and the smaller combinations. If three selections win, only the four trebles settle. If two selections win, only the one double settles. If one or none win, the bet is a total loss.

The accumulator equivalent gives the comparison. An accumulator on six selections at the same illustrative odds, at the same £10 stake, pays £10 × 35.64 = £356.40 if all six win and nothing at all if any leg loses. The Heinz at £2 per line costs £114 and pays £356.40 on the six-fold plus the smaller combinations; the accumulator costs £10 and pays £356.40 with no smaller combinations. The Heinz punter is paying £104 extra for the privilege of having something back on outcomes where one or two legs lose. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how confident the punter is that all six will win.

The free-bet version follows the same arithmetic with one adjustment. A £10 free bet at odds of 6.00 on a market with a 5% margin returns £10 × (6.00 − 1) ÷ 6.00 × 0.95 = £7.92 on average, not the headline £50. A £10 free bet on a single six-fold leg at the same odds returns the same average. A £25 free bet split across five £5 free bets across five legs of a Heinz returns less per leg but in greater number; the average return across the structure depends on the same margin.

Frequently asked questions about Heinz bets

What is a Heinz bet?

A Heinz is a full-cover multiple bet on six selections, made up of 57 separate bets: 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 four-folds, 6 five-folds and 1 six-fold. There are no singles in the structure, so every one of the 57 lines is a combination bet and a losing single leg takes the whole structure down with it.

What is a Super Heinz bet?

A Super Heinz is the seven-selection version of the Heinz, made up of 120 separate bets: 21 doubles, 35 trebles, 35 four-folds, 21 five-folds, 7 six-folds and 1 seven-fold. There are no singles in the structure. The Super Heinz costs 120 unit stakes in real money, so a £1 Super Heinz costs £120 and a £2 Super Heinz costs £240.

How many bets are in a Super Heinz?

A Super Heinz contains 120 bets: 21 doubles, 35 trebles, 35 four-folds, 21 five-folds, 7 six-folds and 1 seven-fold. The general formula is the sum of all combinations of k selections from 2 up to n, where n is the number of selections.

How can a punter check whether a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Gambling Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A punter who wants to check a brand before depositing should search the register directly. The account number is the unique identifier, and a brand that does not appear in the register is not licensed to take remote bets in Great Britain.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return on a single bet at decimal odds is the stake multiplied by the odds. A £10 bet at odds of 3.00 returns £30. The net profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one: £10 × (3.00 − 1) = £20. For a multiple bet, the odds of the legs multiply into one price, and the return is the stake multiplied by the combined odds. A treble at odds of 2.00, 2.50 and 3.00 returns £10 × 15.00 = £150.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The bookmaker’s margin is the share of every pound bet that the bookmaker keeps on average. It is calculated as 1 minus the payout share, where the payout share is 1 divided by the sum of the reciprocals of the odds across all outcomes of a market. In a two-outcome market at odds of 2.10 and 1.80, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/2.10 + 1/1.80) = 1 ÷ 0.4762 + 0.5556 = 1 ÷ 1.0317 = 0.9693, so the margin is 1 − 0.9693 = 0.0307, or about 3.1%. The wider the margin, the less the bookmaker pays back on average.

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