THE HEINZ BET

Lots of punters these days want to trade in smaller stakes and simply keep their sport watching interesting. 

Not wishing to deal in simple singles or each-way bets. If, as is the case quite often, your individual bet is unsuccessful then you will feel you have received very little joy for your money and a lot of events can be over in a minutes, especially horse races.

Because of this, what we call "cover-bets"  have been popular in sport for many years. Cover bets are very useful when punters want to cover all available multiples while betting on several selections. Multiple bets can be placed for each of the selections to win, so backing two to win is called a ‘double’, three to win is a ‘treble’ and any more than three an accumulator. Although American punters call these “parlays”.

A punter can back as many as they wish in what would be an ‘accumulator bet’ or ‘parlay’, though every single selection would have to win for that bet to be successful.

Full cover bets make allowances for one or more selections in a multiple being unsuccessful. One good example is the Heinz Bet. This is one reason why this bet is a personal favourite of mine too.

The Heinz was named because its 6 selections create a total of 57 possible bets, i.e. ‘Heinz 57 varieties’ as in the Nations favourite Baked Beans!

The Heinz has been one of the most popular full cover bets for many years, especially with horse racing punters, who love to keep their bet going for a number of hours in order to keep things interesting! Even when one selection has failed, the 57 different bets on the coupon mean that the bet is still running if one or more already have lost.

The total of 57 bets in a Heinz are made up by the punter picking out 6 individual selections, as follows:

· 15 doubles

· 20 trebles

· 15 fourfolds

· 6 fivefolds

· 1 sixfold

As well as any winnings accruing any of these bets, some online bookies will offer bonuses on full cover bets too, perhaps an extra 10% or 20% on fivefolds and above. Check out the sites that offer these, as the boosts and bonuses are becoming ever-popular!

As soon as you’ve picked out your 6 selections an option will appear in the multiples section to place a Heinz bet.

As is usually the case with multiples, you must always remember that after entering a unit stake our overall stake will be much higher. In the case of the Heinz, there are 57 bets on the slip in total so if we were to make our unit stake 10p, the total bet amount would become £5.70. However, if this bet was to be an EACH WAY bet – this figure can now be doubled to - £11.40p.

I personally prefer to use the Each Way bet, especially if I am betting on selections over odds of 4/1 or 5/1, pending the place pay out. Most places are a fifth of the odds, a few are a quarter. It is vital you are mindful of this.

If 3 of our 6 selections should be successful and the other 3 lose, then your returns will be based on:

· 3 x winning doubles

· 1 x winning treble

Such a win would usually end up giving is a decent return on investment, even at 10p per unit stake and the returns may also be boosted by the bookmaker bonuses if entitled to them!