The Super Heinz bet explained: 120 bets across 7 selections

Updated October 2026

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A Super Heinz turns seven picks into a fixed package of 120 bets. There are no single bets inside it, only multiples, and the bookmaker treats every one of those 120 lines as a separate wager. The structure is old, the maths is straightforward, and the bill adds up faster than most first-time users expect. This guide walks through how the bet is built, how it settles, what it costs to place, where the British regulator stands, and which GB-licensed bookmakers support it. The angle throughout is the one a punter actually pays for: stake, return, margin, and the conditions that quietly shrink a win.

Current as of 27 October 2026 · Verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register.

Super Heinz betting sites in the UK

Every brand below holds a Gambling Commission remote licence for general betting on real events, and most add the betting-intermediary or pool-betting category. The list is the licensed set, not a ranking: a place in a comparison is not a licence, and the Commission register lists far more brands than any review can feature. What changes between them is the bet type they support, the price they offer, and the conditions attached to any free bet or boost.

Ladbrokes treats a Super Heinz as a regular multiple-bet product, which is the commonest case in Britain. The brand runs in-play, horse-racing price promises and acca boosts that the bet can pick up on the way in. For a Super Heinz built from racing selections, Best Odds Guaranteed softens the cost of taking an early price, and Acca Boost pays extra when enough legs land. A punter chasing acca-style returns will recognise the shape; the catch is that an acca boost usually pays on the winning combination, not on the smaller multiples inside the Heinz.

BetMGM offers the Super Heinz as part of its standard multiple-bet menu, with the welcome package centred on accas of four or more football selections. Two of the four free bets that come with a first deposit are tied to football four-folds or longer, which suits a Heinz-style approach if those legs come from the football coupon. The other two free bets cover sports multiples of two or more, so the same stake-fund can cover a few doubles. Seven days is tight, though: a free bet that expires inside a week is one that has to be used, not one that can be waited on.

NetBet carries the bet type and layers Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers on top, with a Bet Builder that lets the punter assemble a same-game leg into the seven. The Profit Boost is the relevant tool here: it multiplies the return on a winning multiple by a fixed factor, and applied to a Super Heinz it lifts only the winning line. Used honestly, on selections the punter would have backed anyway, it is a small lift. Used as a reason to take a bet, it is a small lift on top of a poor price.

Fitzwilliam Sports prices its selections against Oddschecker’s average, which is a fair hedge against the worst of the bookmaker’s margin and an honest approach to a multi-leg bet. The Heinz itself is settled as a standard 120-line bet, and the per-line stake determines the total bill. On a £0.50 unit stake the punter is committing £60 across the bet; on a £2 unit, £240. The price discipline does not change the structure; it changes the return when the lines land.

Fitzdares offers the Super Heinz alongside Lucky 15s and accumulators, and the antepost and in-play menus feed plenty of options into seven legs. Cash out is the tool that matters most for a Heinz user on this brand: with 120 lines in play, taking a return before the final selection is often a defensible trade. The cost is the bookmaker’s cash-out price, which is built from current odds minus their margin, and the punter pays that price for the certainty.

Kwiff markets a Super Heinz-compatible bet on the same app as any other multi, with the Supercharge feature as its differentiator. The feature can raise a price from 2/1 to 20/1 mid-bet, which sounds enormous but in practice means the bookmaker re-prices a single leg inside a multiple and the Super Heinz inherits the new number. The catch is that the boost is random and the underlying price is the one the punter would have taken anyway; on a winning bet the effect is a windfall, on a losing bet it is a marketing line on a lost slip.

Octobet is built around horse racing in Britain and Ireland, with Best Odds Guaranteed up to £150 per customer per race. For a Super Heinz constructed entirely from racing, BOG is a real saving: any leg taken at an early price is paid at SP if SP is higher, and on a 120-line bet several legs may move. Football and tennis selections do not get that protection, and the £150 cap per race is the kind of limit that lands hard on a punter running a wide Heinz across one meeting.

Matchbook is a betting exchange, which changes the cost profile of a Super Heinz. The punter pays commission on net winnings rather than a margin baked into every price, and on a winning line the return is the backer’s odds minus the exchange’s cut. On a losing line the loss is the backer’s stake. A Super Heinz on an exchange still has 120 lines, and a single weak leg is enough to drop a long combination. The cost saving is real on the lines that win, and zero on the lines that lose.

Betfred carries the bet with Bet Builder, Sub Switch, Racing Post data and Extra Places. The relevant extras for a Super Heinz are the price data, which feeds better-informed leg selection, and Extra Places, which extends each-way terms on selected handicaps. A Super Heinz is not an each-way bet, but the legs inside it can be, and Betfred’s place terms apply leg by leg. The structure is identical to every other bookmaker running the bet type; the difference is the depth of the racing data.

QuinnBet is the one brand on the list whose free-bet rules explicitly exclude Heinz-family bets: Trixies, Patents and Yankees are not eligible, and the Super Heinz is one step beyond a Yankee. Its free bets, on the other hand, can be used on straight accumulators at 1/2 or greater, with a maximum price of 50/1. A punter mixing free bets with a Super Heinz should split them: free bets on a single accumulator, the Heinz funded in cash. The verdict is the bookmaker’s stance, not the punter’s, and it is worth a sentence before a stake is committed.

What a Super Heinz actually is

A Super Heinz is a full-cover bet, which is the bookmaker’s term for a fixed package of multiples built from a given number of selections. With seven selections, the full-cover package contains every possible combination of two, three, four, five, six and all seven. That comes to 120 bets: 21 doubles, 35 trebles, 35 four-folds, 21 five-folds, 7 six-folds and 1 seven-fold accumulator. There are no singles inside a Super Heinz; the bet is built entirely from multiples.

The structure sits between a Heinz and a Goliath. A Heinz is the same package over six selections and contains 57 bets; a Goliath covers eight selections and contains 247 bets. The Super Heinz inherits the seven-leg middle position and is the largest of the family that punters commonly build by hand. Anything bigger moves into the territory of perms, where a punter picks a subset of combinations rather than every possible one, and into Lucky 15 / 31 / 63 territory, where each selection also generates a single and each pair is paired with a single on the same selection.

The number 120 comes from the binomial coefficient. The number of ways to choose 2 selections from 7 is 21; 3 from 7 is 35; 4 from 7 is 35; 5 from 7 is 21; 6 from 7 is 7; 7 from 7 is 1. The total is 120. That arithmetic is the reason the package is fixed: there is no choice in how many lines the bet contains, only in how much each line costs and which selections go in. A bookmaker that offered a Super Heinz with singles would be offering a Lucky 127, which is a different product.

Because the bet is built only from multiples, the failure of a single leg is more dramatic than in a perm. A treble in a Heinz that loses one leg becomes a double on the remaining two; a four-fold becomes a treble; a seven-fold becomes a six-fold. The bet is not over. But a Super Heinz with five winning legs and two losers is a long tail of small wins, and the headline prize, the seven-fold, is gone. That is the trade at the heart of the structure: the bet pays well when almost everything lands, and pays modestly when most things land. It pays nothing useful when several legs fail.

How a Super Heinz settles

A bookmaker settles a Super Heinz by working through every one of its 120 lines and applying the rule for a multiple bet. Each line’s return is the product of the odds of its selections, multiplied by the unit stake on that line. The total return is the sum of the returns on every winning line, and the profit is the return minus the total stake (unit stake times 120).

When a selection in a multiple bet is void, the bet drops to the next lowest multiple. A voided leg inside a treble means the bet becomes a double on the two remaining selections; a voided leg inside a seven-fold turns the bet into a six-fold. The bookmaker’s rules say how voids are treated, and the same rules apply to non-runners in horse racing: a non-runner inside an accumulator voids the leg and reduces the combination accordingly. Rule 4 deductions, where a horse withdraws and the bookmaker takes a fixed percentage off the winning returns, are applied leg by leg and reduce the odds on the affected line.

Each-way terms apply leg by leg, but a Super Heinz is normally a win-only bet. An each-way Super Heinz doubles the number of lines to 240 (a win and a place line for each of the 120 combinations) and doubles the total stake. Place terms vary by race and by bookmaker, and the place portion of the bet pays at a fraction of the win odds, typically one-quarter or one-fifth. On a Super Heinz built largely from racing, an each-way structure is a serious undertaking: a £1 unit stake becomes a £240 total, and the punter is asking 240 lines to land rather than 120.

Settlement speed depends on the sport. Football and tennis markets settle within minutes of the final whistle or the final point. Horse racing settles on the result and the SP if the bet was placed at SP, and on the early price if the bet was taken at a price. In-play markets settle continuously as the event unfolds, and the Super Heinz is calculated line by line as each leg is decided. A Super Heinz with all seven legs in play at the same time is rare; the common pattern is a mix of early kick-offs, late kick-offs, evening racing, and the day-after horse meeting.

The maths: what a Super Heinz costs and pays

The unit stake is the figure that determines the bill. A £0.50 unit stake on a Super Heinz costs £60. A £1 unit stake costs £120. A £2 unit stake costs £240. The cost is fixed by the structure, not by the price of the selections, and the punter commits the full amount when the bet is placed, regardless of which legs win.

A worked example makes the return concrete. Take seven selections at illustrative odds of 1/2 (1.50), 1/2 (1.50), 1/2 (1.50), evens (2.00), evens (2.00), 6/4 (2.50) and 6/4 (2.50), and a £10 unit stake on a single seven-fold accumulator. The seven-fold odds are 1.50 × 1.50 × 1.50 × 2.00 × 2.00 × 2.50 × 2.50 = 84.375 in decimal. The return is the stake times the odds, so a £10 stake returns £843.75, with a profit of £833.75. The same seven selections, placed as a full-cover Super Heinz with a £2 unit stake per line, cost £240 to place. The return on the seven-fold alone is £168.75 (2 × 84.375), and the other 119 lines settle independently. The band the punter is interested in is the return on the full 120-line bet, and it is the product of the per-line stake, the per-line odds, and the number of winning lines. The illustrative inputs above give a return somewhere in the high three to low four figures when most legs land, and a return of a few tens of pounds when several legs fail, with the precise figure dependent on which legs win and at what price.

The same arithmetic carries to free bets. A free bet on a Super Heinz, if the bookmaker allows it, returns the winnings only: a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 10.00 returns £100, and the £10 stake is not paid back. Most bookmakers on the British market do not allow a free bet to fund a Super Heinz; QuinnBet’s rules exclude Trixies, Patents and Yankees, and a Super Heinz is one family beyond. A punter intending to use a free bet on a multiple should read the bookmaker’s free-bet terms first, where the eligible bet types and the minimum price are set out.

The bookmaker’s margin inside a Super Heinz

Every price on a betting market carries the bookmaker’s margin, also called the overround. The margin is the difference between the true probability of all outcomes (100%) and the implied probability of the prices on offer. On a two-outcome market priced at 1.91 / 1.91, the implied probabilities add to 104.5%, and the margin is 4.5%. On a three-outcome 1X2 football market at 5/4 / 12/5 / 11/4, the implied probabilities add to 107.7%, and the margin is 7.7%. The margin is the bookmaker’s edge, expressed as a percentage of turnover, and it is baked into every price.

Inside a Super Heinz, the margin compounds. A 5% margin on each of seven legs is, in the worst case, a 5% margin per leg, and the return on a winning line is reduced by the cumulative margin across its legs. The seven-fold return is the most exposed: all seven margins sit inside it. The smaller multiples inside the bet are less exposed per line, but the total exposure is the same, and the bookmaker’s edge on the bet as a whole is the weighted average of the margins on the legs. A Super Heinz built on high-margin markets is, in expectation, a more expensive bet than one built on low-margin markets, and a Super Heinz built on a mix is somewhere in between.

The way to see the margin in the prices is to add up the implied probabilities of all outcomes on a single market. Decimal odds of 1.50, 1.50 and 1.50 on a three-outcome market imply 200% of probability across 100% of outcomes, and the margin is 100% minus the reciprocal, so the margin is 50% on that line. A bookmaker that takes 50% on a leg is expensive; a bookmaker that takes 3% is sharp. The Super Heinz multiplies the cost of an expensive leg by the number of lines that include it, and the punter pays that cost on every one of them. A single leg at a high margin can be more expensive than five legs at a low margin combined.

A punter building a Super Heinz can lower the cost by sourcing selections from low-margin markets. Football’s Premier League and the major tennis tournaments are typically priced at margins of 3% to 6% on the main 1X2 and match-odds lines. Lesser leagues and exotic markets routinely sit above 8%. Horse racing before the off is priced at margins in the 15% to 30% range; the SP, the industry-wide starting price calculated from on-course bets, is usually lower. A Super Heinz built from a mix of football, tennis and SP racing selections will be cheaper in the long run than one built from morning prices on the same racing card.

Free bets, boosts and the cost of a Super Heinz welcome

The promotion rules in force in Great Britain since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x. A £10 bonus at 50x would have required £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap, no more than £100 of qualifying bets are required. Mixed-product promotions, where an offer conditions a free bet on gambling across two or more product categories, are banned. The cap is a structural change: it limits how hard a welcome offer can grind a new account.

Whether the cap applies to a free bet with no wagering condition is not established, and any cap on the money value of a bonus is not established either. Most British bookmakers run a free-bet welcome offer without a wagering condition, paying the winnings only when the free bet wins and letting the stake lapse. The bet type on which a free bet can be used varies, and the eligible types are set out in the bookmaker’s free-bet terms. QuinnBet’s rules are the clearest example: free bets are valid for 7 days, usable on any market at 1/2 (1.50) or greater, with a maximum price of 50/1, and Trixies, Patents and Yankees are excluded. A Super Heinz, sitting one family further on, is similarly out of reach on that brand.

A Super Heinz paid for with a free bet, where the bookmaker allows it, costs the punter the free-bet unit stake only. The total bill is the free bet amount, multiplied by 120, paid in the bookmaker’s free-bet currency. The return is the winnings on every winning line, with the stake not paid back. On a £10 free bet at a £0.10 unit stake, the total cost is £12 of free-bet credit and the maximum return is the sum of the winnings across the 120 lines, capped by the bookmaker’s maximum-payout rule and the maximum-price rule. A punter should not fund a Super Heinz with a free bet unless the math, line by line, beats the same bet paid in cash.

The honest framing is that a welcome offer is a marketing cost the bookmaker pays to acquire a customer, and the structural cap on wagering requirements is a recognition that the worst versions of those offers are not in the punter’s interest. A Super Heinz funded in cash at a price the punter has shopped is, in expectation, a better bet than the same structure funded with free-bet credit on a short-eligibility window. The free bet is a marketing nudge, not an edge.

What it costs when a leg fails

The cost of a Super Heinz is concentrated in the seven-fold. A single winning line at the top pays for many of the smaller lines underneath. When the seven-fold loses, the bet depends entirely on the smaller multiples, and the picture changes. With one leg failing out of seven, the bet is still a full set of multiples on the six remaining selections, and the returns come from the doubles, trebles and four-folds of the surviving legs. With two legs failing, the bet is a full set of multiples on five, and the returns are smaller. With three legs failing, the bet is on four, and the returns are again smaller, dominated by doubles. Below four surviving legs, the bet is essentially a series of doubles, and a Super Heinz with three winners and four losers is a bet on the three surviving legs: a £240 total stake for whatever those 119 (now reduced) lines pay.

The reason the structure is built this way is that the bookmaker is offering the punter a discount on the biggest payout, the seven-fold, in exchange for the punter’s commitment to the smaller lines. The discount is real: a £2 accumulator on seven legs at 84.375 decimal odds pays £168.75 on a £2 stake, while the same seven selections inside a Super Heinz at a £2 unit stake pay £168.75 on the seven-fold and something on every smaller combination that lands. The cost is the £238 paid for the other 119 lines, of which most will not win. The bet is a hedge against the seven-fold losing, paid for out of the punter’s stake.

In practice, the most common outcome of a Super Heinz is a small win or a small loss, and the long tail of small wins from the lower multiples is what the structure is buying. A punter running a Super Heinz every week on a £2 unit stake commits £120 a week, and the expected return is the stake times the weighted payout share of the markets inside. The expected return is below the stake, because the bookmaker’s margin sits on every leg. The bet is, like every multiple, an entertainment product with a built-in cost, and the structure simply determines how that cost is distributed across the lines.

The British legal frame

The Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, licenses the commercial market under the Gambling Act 2005. The Act covers Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is outside the Act, and a GB-licensed operator does not cover a customer in Belfast. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, and a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. A bookmaker that takes a bet from a customer in London without a Commission licence is operating illegally in Great Britain, regardless of where its servers sit.

A bookmaker that holds a Commission licence appears on the public register, which is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The register is the test. A punter who wants to confirm a brand’s licence should find the operator’s licence statement on its site, take the account number, and search the register. The list of licence categories is fixed: remote general betting standard (real events), remote general betting standard (virtual events), remote general betting limited, remote pool betting, and remote betting intermediary for exchanges. The Super Heinz is offered under the remote general betting standard (real events) category. Matchbook and a small number of other exchanges add the remote betting intermediary category, which covers back-and-lay betting between customers.

Betting exchanges run under a betting-intermediary licence, and the rules specific to exchanges — commission rates, lay liability, reserve requirements — are stated in the exchange’s own terms. The Super Heinz on an exchange is settled the same way as on a bookmaker, with the backer’s odds applying on each leg, but the price the punter pays on a winning line is the backer’s price, and the exchange’s commission is taken from the net winnings.

Betting and gaming are separate regimes. A bookmaker with a remote general betting standard (real events) licence can offer fixed-odds and pool betting on real events; it cannot offer a casino without a separate remote casino licence. A casino brand with a remote casino licence cannot offer a sportsbook without a betting licence. The licences are not interchangeable, and a customer playing a casino game on a sportsbook has crossed from one regime into another.

Player protection: what a GB licence actually means

A GB-licensed bookmaker is required to verify the customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit or the first bet, and that requirement has been in force since 7 May 2019. The verification covers free bets and bonuses: a new account cannot claim a welcome offer without it. The same rule means no anonymous play at a licensed site, and the punter who values privacy above convenience will find the verification step an early feature of every licensed account.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. A punter who signs up to GAMSTOP is excluded from every GB-licensed online bookmaker for the chosen period: 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 customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate self-exclusion service.

A financial vulnerability check, set out in LCCP condition 3.4.4 and in force since 30 August 2024, applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30-day period (the £150 trigger is itself in force since 28 February 2025). The check is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments, similar registers), not an income check and not a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments, sometimes called affordability checks in the press, are announced in a staged plan with no start date; the Commission’s public article of 7 July 2026 sets out the staging. A punter who crosses the £150 trigger should expect a public-record check, and may be asked for source-of-funds documentation if the operator escalates the case under the money-laundering rules.

Deposit limits (RTS 12) require operators to offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame. The first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, and a second phase has been postponed to 30 September 2026. The punter can set a deposit limit and the operator is required to enforce it. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting in Britain: limits are the customer’s choice, and the operator’s role is to offer the limit and to honour it.

Help is available from GamCare (the National Gambling Helpline), from GambleAware, from the NHS gambling clinics, and from Gamblers Anonymous. GamCare is the main entry point. The helpline number is on the GamCare site; the NHS clinics take self-referrals and GP referrals. A punter who feels the betting has stopped being entertainment should call.

Advertising, bonuses and the marketing rules

The Commission does not license advertising; it sets marketing conditions under the LCCP, and the advertising rules are enforced by the ASA under the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and the BCAP Code (broadcast). CAP Code section 16 is the relevant section: marketing must be socially responsible, must not be of strong appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role in the advertisement (with an exception for marketing placed where a bet can be made directly). The rule is about who appears in the ad, not about who is allowed to bet.

Wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x since 19 January 2026. A £10 bonus at 50x wagering would require £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap no more than £100 of qualifying bets are required. Mixed-product promotions are banned. The cap is a structural change in the marketing rules: a bookmaker can no longer offer a bonus that grinds an account for a thousand pounds of qualifying bets.

“Whistle-to-whistle” is an industry code, not law: since 1 August 2019, betting advertisements have not been shown on TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed. Horse and greyhound racing are excluded. The Premier League clubs’ voluntary withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts, taking effect from the 2026/27 season, is a sectoral agreement, not a regulation, and the same voluntary framework leaves sleeves and pitchside hoardings alone. A punter watching a Premier League game from 2026 on will see fewer logos on the front of the shirt; the rest of the marketing has not changed.

Operators are responsible for marketing by their affiliates. A punter who clicks through an affiliate link to a bookmaker’s site is, in the regulator’s view, a customer the bookmaker has acquired through its own marketing, and the bookmaker is responsible for the affiliate’s compliance. A welcome offer advertised on a tipster site carries the same terms as a welcome offer advertised on the bookmaker’s own homepage.

Tax: the player pays nothing

Betting winnings in Great Britain are not taxed at the player’s level. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%. From 1 April 2027, a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within General Betting Duty, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15% (HM Government policy paper of 26 November 2025). Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15%; whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established, and a punter should not assume that duty is a separate charge on the stake.

Spread betting has its own rates: 3% on financial spread bets, 10% on other spread bets. Spreadex, the brand on the licensed list, is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and the company’s own statement is that spread-betting losses can exceed the deposit. That statement is the difference between fixed-odds and spread betting, and a punter moving from one to the other should read the firm’s risk-warning page before placing a position.

The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge on operators, not a tax on players. The player pays no tax on winnings and no levy on stakes. A professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser; the position is general information, not tax advice.

The offshore question

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, aimed at the operator, with sentences on summary conviction of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both (six months in Scotland). No offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was found in the statute: the cost to the punter is the loss of British protections, not a criminal record.

An offshore bookmaker that takes bets from a customer in London is not on the Commission’s register, is not part of GAMSTOP, is not subject to the 10x bonus cap, is not required to run the £150 vulnerability check, and is not bound by the ASA advertising rules. If the operator withholds funds, the punter has no British consumer redress and no approved dispute-resolution body. The Commission’s enforcement is disruption: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and court-order DNS blocking powers that have been given or are about to be given. The punter who bets on an unlicensed site gives up the British safety net and keeps no recourse in Britain.

A Super Heinz on an offshore bookmaker looks the same as on a GB-licensed one, and the maths is identical. The difference is what happens when something goes wrong. A withdrawal that is delayed, a bonus that is voided, a winning line that is settled at the wrong price: at a GB-licensed firm the punter has the Commission’s complaints route and an approved alternative-dispute-resolution body. At an offshore firm the punter has the operator’s customer service, the operator’s terms, and the courts of whatever jurisdiction the operator sits in. The honest framing is that licensed and unlicensed are not equivalent in protection, and a price comparison that ignores the difference is incomplete.

The cost of a Super Heinz in three numbers

Three numbers sum up the cost. The unit stake is the figure the punter multiplies by 120, and the total bill is the product. The average margin across the seven legs is the figure the punter pays per pound staked, in expectation, over the long run. The percentage of selections that need to land for the bet to show a profit is the figure that determines whether the bet is in front or behind on the day.

A £1 unit stake costs £120. A £2 unit stake costs £240. A £0.50 unit stake costs £60. The choice between them is the punter’s appetite for the bet, and the bookmaker does not care which is chosen: the price the bookmaker offers is the same per line, and the total bill is the same proportion of a bankroll whichever unit stake is set.

A 5% average margin across the legs, applied to a 1X2 market, means the punter keeps 95p of every £1 staked in the long run. On a Super Heinz at a £1 unit stake and 5% margin, the expected loss is £6 (£120 × 5%). On a 10% margin, the expected loss is £12. The long-run cost is the product of the total stake and the average margin, and the punter pays it on every Super Heinz, win or lose. The bookmaker’s edge is in every line, and the Super Heinz is no exception.

The percentage of selections that need to land is a more complex calculation, because it depends on the price of each selection and the unit stake. A rough rule: on a Super Heinz built from selections at average decimal odds of 2.00, the punter needs four or more legs to land for the bet to return more than the total stake, and the seven-fold to land for the bet to return a meaningful profit. On selections at average decimal odds of 5.00, the threshold is lower: three or four legs can return more than the total stake, and the seven-fold pays a small fortune. The bet’s structure rewards longer prices on each leg, and the punter building a Super Heinz from short-priced favourites is paying a high total stake for a low expected return.

Picking the seven legs

The seven legs are the only variable the punter controls. The bookmaker sets the price, the structure sets the number of lines, and the unit stake sets the bill; the legs are the punter’s own. The discipline is to pick selections the punter would back as singles and then assemble them into the Super Heinz, rather than picking selections for the multiple and hoping the singles would also have worked. The latter is the marketing pitch (“build a Super Heinz on today’s acca”); the former is the betting discipline.

A short-priced favourite at 1/5 (1.20) is the commonest filler in a Super Heinz. The punter takes the favourite because the favourite is expected to win, and the bet feels safer for having it. The cost is that the favourite returns a small amount on the lines that include it, and the seven-fold that includes several short-priced favourites pays a low multiple. A £1 seven-fold on seven 1/5 shots returns £2.07, well below the £1 stake across the seven-fold, and the bet is structurally unprofitable. The punter who replaces a 1/5 shot with a 5/2 (3.50) selection sees the seven-fold return grow by a factor of three, and the bet becomes closer to paying for itself on a single strong leg.

The other discipline is diversity. A Super Heinz built from seven football matches on the same Saturday is correlated: if one match is upset, several may be. A Super Heinz that mixes football with tennis, horse racing and American football is less correlated, and the bet survives an upset in one sport on the legs from the others. The bookmaker’s margin on each leg is the same; the bet’s resilience to a correlated loss is a function of the diversity of the legs. The punter building a Super Heinz should pick the most informative price for each selection, and the most independent source of probability, rather than the closest match on the coupon.

The third discipline is shop. The bookmaker’s margin is the largest cost on a Super Heinz, and a punter who takes the first price on offer pays the bookmaker’s full margin. A punter who shops each leg across two or three bookmakers and takes the best price on each leg pays a lower margin. The discipline takes time, and the time is the punter’s cost. The savings are real, and the long-run difference between a Super Heinz built from shopped prices and one built from the first bookmaker’s prices is measurable.

When a Super Heinz is the right bet

The Super Heinz is the right bet for a punter with a strong view on seven selections, a bankroll that can absorb the total stake, and the patience to wait for a full set of results. The structure pays well when almost everything lands, and pays modestly when most things land; it pays poorly when several legs fail, and the punter who builds a Super Heinz expecting most legs to fail is building the wrong bet. The structure is also the right bet for a punter who wants exposure to the seven-fold without paying the seven-fold’s full stake: the Super Heinz reduces the seven-fold’s effective stake by spreading the cost across 119 other lines, most of which will not win, and the punter pays for that hedge out of the smaller lines.

The Super Heinz is the wrong bet for a punter with a small bankroll and a high appetite for the seven-fold. The same seven selections on a £2 accumulator, costing £14, expose the punter to the seven-fold’s return and nothing else; the £2 Super Heinz, costing £240, exposes the punter to the seven-fold’s return and 119 other lines, most of which will lose. The two bets are not equivalent: the Super Heinz diversifies the punter’s exposure, the accumulator concentrates it, and the punter who wants concentration should bet an accumulator.

The Super Heinz is also the wrong bet for a punter who wants each-way exposure. A Super Heinz paid in cash is a win-only bet. An each-way Super Heinz doubles the lines and the stake, and most of the doubled lines are place bets that pay at a fraction of the win odds. The structure is built for win betting, and the punter who wants place exposure should consider a Lucky 63 or a Trixie on the same legs, with an each-way unit stake, rather than a Super Heinz doubled into each-way.

A note on the angle

This page has taken the position that a Super Heinz is a bet whose cost is the dominant feature, and the rest of the structure is the way the cost is distributed. The 120 lines are the cost, the seven-fold is the return, and the smaller multiples are the hedge. The bookmaker’s margin is the long-run loss, and the punter’s discipline is to keep the margin low and the selections informed. A Super Heinz is a betting product like any other: it has a price, a return, and a structural cost, and the punter’s job is to pay the price and take the return, with eyes open.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Super Heinz bet?

A Super Heinz is a full-cover bet on seven selections containing 120 bets. There are no single bets inside it. The unit stake is multiplied by 120 to find the total cost, and the return is the sum of the returns on every winning line, with the seven-fold paying the most when it lands and the smaller multiples paying out when most legs win.

What is a Heinz bet?

A Heinz is the same full-cover structure over six selections rather than seven. It contains 57 bets: 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 four-folds, 6 five-folds and 1 six-fold. The Heinz is one step smaller than the Super Heinz and one step larger than a Canadian (also called a Super Yankee, 26 bets over 5 selections). The cost of a Heinz is the unit stake times 57, and the structure is the same family as the Super Heinz.

How many bets in a Super Heinz?

A Super Heinz contains 120 bets. The number comes from the binomial coefficient: the number of ways to choose 2 from 7 is 21, 3 from 7 is 35, 4 from 7 is 35, 5 from 7 is 21, 6 from 7 is 7, and 7 from 7 is 1. The total is 120. The bet is fixed at 120 lines regardless of price, and the punter’s choice is the unit stake, which multiplied by 120 gives the total cost.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The punter should find the bookmaker’s licence statement on its site, take the account number, and search the register. The register entry shows the licence categories the bookmaker holds, the trading names, and the operating companies. A bookmaker on the register under remote general betting standard (real events) is licensed to offer fixed-odds and pool betting on real events in Great Britain. A bookmaker not on the register is not licensed for the British market.

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

The return on a single bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 bet at decimal odds of 6.00 returns £60, with a profit of £50. The return on a multiple is the stake multiplied by the product of the odds of each leg. A £10 accumulator on three selections at 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 returns £10 × (2.00 × 3.00 × 4.00) = £240. For a Super Heinz, the return is the sum of the returns on every winning line, and the total cost is the unit stake multiplied by 120.

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

The margin is the difference between the true probability of all outcomes (100%) and the implied probability of the prices on offer. To see it, convert each decimal price to its implied probability (1 divided by the odds), add the probabilities, and subtract from 100%. On a two-outcome market at 1.91 and 1.91, the implied probabilities are 52.4% each, adding to 104.8%, and the margin is 4.8%. The margin is the bookmaker’s edge per pound staked, and it is the largest single cost in a Super Heinz. Shopping the price on each leg across bookmakers lowers the average margin, and lowers the long-run cost of the bet.

Content created by the «Basketball betting» team