Trixie Calculator

This Trixie calculator works out your total outlay and return on a three-pick Trixie bet, built from your moneyline picks across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL, so you know your payout before you place four bets instead of one.

What Is a Trixie?

A Trixie is a full cover bet built from three moneyline picks. Instead of placing one bet on all three picks together, a Trixie splits those picks into every possible combination of two or more: three doubles and one three-pick parlay, which bettors also call a treble. That works out to four separate bets, each settled on its own.

Because a Trixie contains no singles, none of your outlay rides on a single pick winning by itself. That keeps the total cost lower than a full cover bet that does include singles, but it also raises the bar for a return: at least two of your three picks have to win before any line in the Trixie pays out. Get only one winner, and every one of the four lines fails, because each line needs a minimum of two correct picks to land.

The trade-off is straightforward: a Trixie is cheaper to place than bets that add singles on the same three picks, since it skips the three bets that would ride on each pick alone, but it needs a stronger overall result before it returns anything. Bettors who like Trixies tend to be confident that at least two of their three picks will come in, and accept an all-or-mostly-nothing structure to avoid paying for singles they don’t think they need.

A Trixie always covers exactly three picks. Covering more selections with the same doubles-and-up structure means moving to a bet like a Patent or a Yankee instead.

How a Trixie Is Calculated

A Trixie is built by counting every combination of two or more from your three picks. With three selections, there are three possible pairs — pick one and two, pick one and three, and pick two and three — each becoming a double. There’s exactly one way to combine all three together, which becomes the treble. Three doubles plus one treble equals four bets, a count that never changes with exactly three picks.

Your total outlay is simply four multiplied by your unit stake, since every line carries the same stake. Each bet is then settled separately: a double wins or loses based on whether both of its picks win, and the treble wins or loses based on all three winning. Once every line is settled, whatever those lines returned is added together for the total return.

To settle any individual line, American odds get converted to decimal odds so the picks in a double or treble can be multiplied together. In this calculator’s own example, Chiefs to beat Broncos at -125 converts to 1.80, Lakers to beat Kings at +100 converts to 2.00, and Yankees to beat Red Sox at +150 converts to 2.50. A double multiplies the decimal odds of its two picks together, and the treble multiplies all three, before the result is applied to the unit stake.

What the Calculator Shows You

Once you enter your three picks’ odds and your unit stake, the calculator lays out what a Trixie contains: the number of bets, and the breakdown between doubles and the treble. It shows your total outlay, so you can see the full cost of the four lines before you commit any money.

Mark each of your three picks as a win, loss, or push, and the calculator settles every line individually — each double checked against its two picks, and the treble checked against all three — before adding the results together. It then reports your total return and profit, reflecting exactly which combination of picks came in. If only some win, the calculator shows the smaller return from whichever single line, if any, still survives.

Worked Example

Take a Trixie on three moneyline picks — Chiefs to beat Broncos at -125, Lakers to beat Kings at +100, and Yankees to beat Red Sox at +150 — at a $2.00 unit stake. Those picks convert to decimal odds of 1.80, 2.00, and 2.50. A Trixie on three picks always produces four bets: three doubles and one treble. At $2.00 per line, the total outlay is 4 x $2.00, which comes to $8.00.

If all three picks win, every one of the four lines comes in. The Chiefs-Lakers double, the Chiefs-Yankees double, and the Lakers-Yankees double all pay out, and so does the Chiefs-Lakers-Yankees treble. Added together, those four winning lines return $44.20 on the $8.00 outlay, for a profit of $36.20.

Now suppose the Yankees lose while the Chiefs and Lakers both win. Because a Trixie needs at least two correct picks on any given line, the Chiefs-Lakers double is the only line that still has both of its picks winning — the other two doubles and the treble each include the losing Yankees pick, so all three fail. With only that double surviving, the Trixie returns $7.20. Against the $8.00 outlay, that leaves a loss of $0.80.

That comparison shows why the Trixie’s structure matters: going from three winners to two doesn’t just shrink the return, it eliminates three of the four lines outright and swings the result from a $36.20 profit to a $0.80 loss. The calculator settles each line independently against whichever picks you mark as winners, losers, or pushes, then adds up whatever survives for the total return and profit.

What the 4 Bets in a Trixie Actually Are

Every Trixie on three picks breaks down into the same fixed set of bets, no matter which sport or odds you use. Three of the four lines are doubles, each combining two of your three picks, and the fourth is the treble, combining all three. The table below lists that breakdown alongside the total.

Total Outlay for a Trixie at Different Unit Stakes

Since a Trixie on three picks is always four bets, your total outlay scales in a straight line with your unit stake — always four times whatever you stake per line. The table below shows that relationship at a few common unit stakes, from $1.00 up to $10.00.

Why One Winner Returns Nothing

The Trixie’s biggest weakness is the same thing that makes it cheap: it has no singles. Every one of its four lines — all three doubles and the treble — needs at least two of your three picks to win. If only one pick comes in, all four lines fail and the Trixie returns nothing at all, regardless of how strong that one winning pick was.

This is a direct consequence of skipping singles. A bet type that included singles on the same three picks would have at least one line resting on each individual pick, so a single winner would still produce some return. The Trixie has no such safety net: every line requires a pair or better, so a solitary winning pick sits inside three failed doubles and a failed treble with nothing to show for it.

That’s the price of the Trixie’s lower outlay. A Patent built on the same three picks adds those three missing singles on top of the three doubles and the treble, for seven bets instead of four. Because of those extra singles, a Patent costs almost twice as much as a Trixie for the same three picks — but it pays out on a single winner where the Trixie pays out on nothing.

When a Trixie Makes Sense

A Trixie fits best when you have three picks you’re reasonably confident in individually, but you’d rather not pay for the three singles a bigger full cover bet would add. Because it needs at least two of your three picks to win before any line pays out, it suits bettors who see their picks as strong enough together — a solid favorite alongside two picks they also like — that getting two right feels realistic, even if all three winning is less certain.

Bankroll-wise, a Trixie’s appeal is that its total outlay is fixed and modest: four times your unit stake. That makes it easy to size relative to the rest of your bankroll, since you know the exact cost of the four lines before placing any of them. It’s a middle ground between a single three-pick parlay, cheaper but paying nothing unless all three picks land, and a bigger full cover bet like a Patent, which costs more but still returns something on one winner.

Where a Trixie makes less sense is when your three picks are genuinely independent long shots, where getting even two right is unlikely. There, all four lines failing because of a single winner becomes the most probable outcome, and paying for a Patent’s extra singles — or simply parlaying fewer picks together — may suit your bankroll better. A Trixie rewards bettors who trust their pairs more than the full three-pick sweep, and accept nothing back on a lone winner for a lower total cost.

Common Mistakes

A common mistake is expecting some return when only one of the three picks wins — with no singles, one winner out of three returns nothing. Another is reading the unit stake as the total cost, when a Trixie actually costs four times that unit stake. Bettors also confuse a Trixie with a straight three-pick parlay, but a parlay is a single bet on all three picks together, while a Trixie is four separate bets built from doubles and a treble. Finally, adding a weak third pick is risky, since it appears in every double it’s part of and in the treble, dragging down each of those lines at once.

Trixie vs the Other Three-Pick Bets

A Trixie is one of several ways to bet on the same three picks, differing only in how many possible combinations get covered. A three-pick parlay covers just one line, a Trixie covers four, a Patent adds the three singles for seven, and a Round Robin covers all ten combinations.